Fasting is a miracle cure and many chronic conditions are improved if you take up fasting. Allergies, arthritis, various digestive and skin disorders, even heart disease and asthma are some of the conditions that will improve by fasting. This happens largely because by fasting, you are able to give your regular body functions a rest. When your body does not have to deal with an onslaught of food, it has time to focus on its own self-healing.
Remember the GM diet that had become so popular more than a decade ago? It was nothing but a form of fasting as it allowed you to take only certain foods a day. That five-day diet plan was touted as a purification ritual and we hailed it as something special, little realising that in India, the concept of fasting has always been based on having only a few special, easy-to-digest foods on certain days. The GM diet guaranteed you a weight loss of more than 4 kgs after just five days and one felt lighter and cleansed. I tried it myself on a couple of occasions, so I can vouch for its effectiveness.
The easiest is to go on a moong dal and rice-based diet at least once a week.
Ayurveda insists that the consistency of the concoction is also important. This food is light and easy and the body finds it simple to digest it quickly.
Fasting, as traditional ayurvedacharyas and naturopaths say is a beautiful gift that you can give yourself, a holiday of sorts for your ‘weary and damaged body’. And that happens only because, during fasting, your body gets a rest from the constant bombardment of wrong foodstuffs that are processed and packed artificially.
Basically, what fasting achieves is that it frees up energy so that your body can take up more important issues like concentrating on healing. It is like a vacation that you need from the stress generated from constant overeating and overindulgence in your food. Oh sure, you are absolutely entitled to enjoy your food and tuck into all kinds of delicacies, but that is not how nature had designed your digestive system to work. And you know how excesses build up in the body, and soon enough you are left battling with all kinds of nasty ailments that range from diabetes to cholesterol, thyroid malfunctions and sleep deprivation.
And how can you sleep peacefully anyway, when your body is sick with the after-effects of foods that make people burp and belch, run to the loo and battle with ‘loosies’?
Food gives us energy, but let’s pledge to take it in its natural and simple form, before the original substance is broken down to something totally unrecognisable.
The medical community says that activities like digesting, assimilating and metabolising food require energy — and one website says that almost ‘65 per cent of the body’s energy must be directed to the digestive organs after a heavy meal’. It says that freeing up this energy will aid healing, recuperation and detoxification.