Another wonderful question from Curious Cat:

What alternative recommendations would suggest to someone who cannot fast due to health issues? I already eat relatively clean … I’d like to re-start my system, but can’t entirely forgo food due to a compromised immune system. Any suggestions?

This is a surprisingly deep question, and one with plenty of alternatives.  I answered it on Curious Cat, but I want to go into more depth about it here, because it turns out there’s a lot to say.  Also, it just so happens that I’ve written about fasting long ago in two posts from 2012, here and here, which I only remembered after writing most of this current post.  Still, I think it’s time for a refresher and see what new information I might be able to put to paper here, now that I’m a little older and maybe a little bit wiser, too.

First, what exactly is fasting?  Fasting is fundamentally a practice of abstinence that typically focuses on one’s diet and which is composed of three main things:

• A set of prohibitions on food, drink, and other substances we take into our bodies
• A set of prohibitions on how we take food, drink, and other substances into our bodies
• A duration of time for which above prohibitions are to be observed

The most common sorts of fasting is an absolute fast (absolutely no food or liquid) or a water fast (no food but water is permitted), and this is typically what we think of when we hear about fasting.  There are plenty of reasons for this—diagnostic fasting to achieve a baseline for medical testing or hunger strikes for the sake of political or humanitarian protests come to mind—but one of the most common reasons for fasting is for religious or spiritual purposes, and is seen in many religions across the world for an equally wide number of reasons:

• Cultivate and maintain discipline
• Develop spiritual powers or blessings
• Atonement and repentance for sins or lawlessness
• Purification of the body and spirit
• Devotion to higher powers
• Mourning
• Following the example of a saint, prophet, or holy exemplar of the religion
• Preparation for a ritual or feast

Basically, in general, when we fast for a religious or spiritual purpose, we’re essentially engaging in a form of asceticism, putting our body under an ordeal of abstinence from things that please us our our senses, holding back our taste for worldly sustenance so that we can instead feast on heavenly delights.  Asceticism and some forms of drastic fasting can also include self-mortification, but we’re not interested in that here; we don’t want to harm or destroy the body, but we do want to control and purify it through abstinence.

The thing is that absolute fasting or water fasting can be dangerous for many people: those with autoimmune disorders, blood sugar disorders (especially diabetes), hormonal imbalances (e.g. thyroid or adrenaline issues), and the like can and will suffer harm to their bodies up to and including death if they go without food for too long.  Moreover, there are also a number of religions where fasting just isn’t a thing or which is actively discouraged.  Heck, for myself, I have a specific spiritual prohibition from La Regla de Ocha Lukumí (a.k.a. Santería) where I can’t skip lunch, which I interpret a little more broadly to mean “no absolute/water fasts”, so I can’t engage in that kind of practice anymore, either.  To that end, I engage in intermittent fasting, where I don’t eat from sunrise to sunset, a la Muslim Ramaḍān or the Bahá’í Nineteen Day Fast, though I do permit myself to have water at all times and only permit other drinks during eating-time, if I don’t set a prohibition on those as well.  In the end, though, it’s important to remember that fasting isn’t the be-all end-all of spiritual practices, or even of ways to purify and refine the body and spirit.  If you’re part of a religion or tradition that recommends or requires it, or if you feel like you should engage in it, then do so, and do so safely and reasonably without causing harm or torment to yourself; otherwise, you should feel no obligation to do so, since there are plenty of other practices you can engage in towards the same ends.

But, let’s say you want to do some sort of fast or fasting-like practice, but you can’t do an absolute or water fast for health reasons, and you’re not discouraged from a fasting practice in general.  What can you do?  Quite a lot, actually.  If we interpret “fasting” to mean “abstinence” more broadly, and consider the three parts of fasting (prohibitions on food/liquid/etc., prohibitions on how we eat/drink/etc., and durations), then there are plenty of things we can hone in on, whether taken as a single thing to abstain from or taken as a cluster of rules to be observed simultaneously.  In short, rather than an absolute fast or a water fast, we engage in a so-called partial fast, where we only abstain from particular things in our diet.  The following lists of prohibitions are by no means exhaustive, but they’re intended as examples for further inspiration, and are pulled from a variety of traditions, cultures, practices, religions, and the like for consideration.

Restrictions on what food or drink is permissible :

• No processed grains
• No grains at all
• No leavened bread
• No bread or flour-based products at all (e.g. noodles, porridge, crackers).
• No grain-, starch-, pulse-, bean-, tuber-, or nut-based staple foods
• No meat of mammals or birds (essentially a pescatarian diet)
• No meat at all (essentially a vegetarian diet)
• No dairy
• No animal products generally (essentially a vegan diet)
• No gritty foods
• No solid foods (i.e. broths and soups only)
• No oils added to food or drink
• No sweeteners added to food or drink
• No spices added to food or drink
• No salt added to food or drink
• No sweet food eaten or drink drunk for the reason of being sweet
• No carbonated drinks
• No drinks that are not plain water
• No drinking clear alcohols (e.g. white rum or vodka, but excluding creme liqueurs or red wines)
• No drinking alcohol at all
• No drinking more than a set amount of liquid each day
• No food prepared with sauce, gravy, or dressing of any kind
• No food or drink of a particular color (e.g. red food, brown food, white food)
• No food or drink that are root vegetables (e.g. potatoes, onions, carrots)
• No food or drink that are not root vegetables
• No food or drink that contain caffeine of any kind (e.g. coffee, tea, chocolate)
• No food or drink that contain a specific kind of ingredient (e.g. pumpkin, eggs, wheat, corn)
• No food or drink that doesn’t contain a specific kind of ingredient (e.g. tree nuts, legumes, potatoes, beans)
• No vitamins, dietary supplements, or medicines that are not strictly necessary for medical reasons
• Etc.

Restrictions on how food or drink is cooked or processed:

• No cooked food or drink
• No cooked food or drink older than 24 hours (i.e. no leftovers)
• No preserved food or drink
• No prepackaged food or drink
• No food or drinks that are colder than ambient room temperature (e.g. nothing ice-cold or chilled)
• No food or drinks that are hotter than ambient room temperature (e.g. nothing warm or hot)
• No food or drink that has been touched by fire
• No food or drink that has been cooked with or come in contact with metal
• No food or drink that is fermented
• No food or drink that was not cooked or prepared by your own hands
• No food or drink that was not freely given to you by another person
• No food or drink that was not prepared using a specially-dedicated, consecrated, or otherwise set-apart set of cookware or dishes
• Etc.

Restrictions on when we eat or drink:

• No eating between sunset and sunrise
• No eating or drinking between sunset and sunrise
• No dining more than once a day
• No dining before a particular task or set of tasks have been done
• Etc.

Restrictions on how we eat or drink:

• No engaging in talking, writing, or any other activity when eating
• No dining at restaurants, at other people’s homes, or anywhere outside your own home
• No dining with other people
• No dining unless in the company of other people
• No dining with metal implements
• No dining while seated at a table (i.e. only while sitting on the ground)
• Etc.

Besides just focusing on dietary prohibitions, though, there are also behavioral prohibitions that we can incorporate, either instead of dietary prohibitions or in addition to them.  Again, if we engage in fasting as a means of restraining ourselves by means of abstaining from things that give us sensual pleasures and distractions from spiritual development, then we can also include a bunch of behaviors, habits, addictions, or other things we like doing (rather than just eating or drinking) that can be at least as spiritually distracting or impure as any kind of food or drink.  After all, consider that the original questioner from Curious Cat already eats pretty clean and sparingly, so trying to restrict or further inhibit or prohibit their food/drink intake might just be a case of diminishing returns, so it might not be a bad idea to expand our scope of prohibitions to behaviors.  Some examples include (again, not a definitive or exhaustive list):

• No sexual activity, whether with someone else or by oneself
• No playing games or sports, listening to music, watching movies or TV, or any other activity for the sole purpose of entertainment
• No social media
• No computer or mobile use between sunset and sunrise
• No smoking of tobacco, cannabis, salvia, or any other inhaled drug
• No recreational or psychotropic drugs except those for explicitly medical or required spiritual purposes
• No sleeping on a bed or any surface higher than the width of two fingers
• No wearing makeup, nail polish, or any other cosmetics for the purpose of embellishing or hiding the natural form of the body
• No using perfumes, colognes, scented oils, fragrances, or any other odoriferous substance outside of purely religious or spiritual reasons
• No wearing jewelry, fine clothes, immodest clothes, or any other articles for the purpose of ostentation or displaying appeal
• No wearing clothes of a particular color (e.g. black clothes, red clothes)
• No bathing or washing any part of the body with hot water
• No being in direct sunlight or moonlight
• No being in complete darkness
• No lying, exaggerating, undue modesty, deceit, or misleading of any kind
• No cursing, arguing, yelling, raising one’s voice, gossiping, or using any kind of heated or improper language
• No violence to any living being
• No using or carrying of weapons of any kind
• No using, lighting, carrying, or being around fire
• No sleeping in late or taking naps
• No cutting any of the hair on the head or the body
• No capitalizing the first-person singular pronoun “I” (i.e. always write it as “i went to the store”)
• Etc.

(I admit that a bunch of those behavioral rules are those that are common-enough prohibitions from the initiatory year of Lukumí, the Year in White, which I had to observe for…quite some time, and some I still have to observe for other reasons, but are general enough and smart enough rules to be used by plenty of people.)

With all the options above we have for abstaining from particular foods and drinks, how they’re prepared, how we can abstain from them, and other behaviors, I think it’s important to remember that fasting is an ordeal, and should be taken seriously as such.  Yes, you could do a fast from all pork products, but if you never or only rarely eat pork, then you’re not really abstaining from something that you weren’t already abstaining from.  Fasting, whether absolute or partial or whether total or intermittent, should be a time when we give up and abstain from things that we actively enjoy or find ourselves relying on or addicted to; when you fast, take away the things that give you a sense of pleasure and which distract you from focusing on spiritual stuff.  If you eat a lot of candy, give that up; if you don’t eat candy, give something else up instead.  If you don’t have the ability to sleep in (e.g. if you live on a regimented, scheduled military base or if you have a farm), then you’re already de facto abstaining from that, so give something else up instead.  Of the things that you don’t strictly need for medical or health-related reasons, pick the things you dread or fear to give up yet which you’re able to, and then you’ll be properly fasting.

Then, finally, then there’s one last thing to consider: how long do we observe all the above prohibitions, and when should we do it?  While all of the above is really up to you in how seriously (or not) you want to engage in your own personalized kind of fasting, this is where it can get really customized.  This is where you should really focus on what your traditions or religions say, because those are the guiding principles here along with whatever your priests or mentors or gurus or godparents might prescribe or recommend, but there are some guiding rules that I like to follow for my own practices and traditions.  Some examples of fasting durations include (again, not a definitive or exhaustive list):

• One day every week on a day set aside for the worship, veneration, or devotion of a particular spirit or deity
• The day of the New Moon (technically, the day of the first sighting of the Moon rather than the day of syzygy between the Moon and the Sun)
• The three days before, the day of, and the day after the Full Moon
• Three, four, seven, or sixteen days leading up to any feast or regular celebration
• Three days leading up to any minor ritual, whether for yourself or another
• Seven days leading up to any major ritual, whether for yourself or another
• Three, four, seven, sixteen, or more days after any major initiation, according to that tradition’s rules
• The two days before and of religious communion or communal worship
• The forty days of Lent (for Christians)
• The thirty(ish) days of Ramaḍān (for Muslims)
• The nineteen days of the Nineteen Day Fast (for Bahá’í)
• The forty-nine days after the death of a close family member
• Throughout spiritual retreats or prolonged holy festivals or gatherings
• The three or more days after one has committed a particularly bad spiritual offense
• Once a week on a particular weekday for a set number of weeks (e.g. every Sunday from sunrise to sunset for six weeks straight)
• Whenever vows or rules are adopted in devotion to a spirit or as part of a pact or payment

When fasting for a prolonged period of time more than a single day, there’s also the notion of progressive fasting, where as time goes by, you bring on more and more prohibitions.  For instance, in one of the posts from 2012 I mentioned, there’s the four-day progressive fast from the Scribbler (whose blog is no longer active) where, for example, on the first day I would abstain from meat, alcohol, and soda; on the second, all the above plus abstinence from breads and noodles as well as all non-clear liquid drinks; on the third day, all the above plus abstinence from anything that wasn’t fresh fruits and water; on the fourth and final day, all the above plus abstinence from anything that wasn’t just water, i.e. a water fast.  Progressive fasts can be useful for those who need time for their body to adjust to heavier and heavier kinds of fasting, especially if a particular substance is one we habitually eat and which we might rely on as a staple, and which can be a way for the body to acclimate for more severe or austere fasting practices so that they won’t cause a total shock to the body which could result in medical harm.

What happens when we violate one or more of the prohibitions we have set for us?  Honestly, that depends on your tradition’s or practice’s rules on fasting or how you set up the rule or agreement of fasting, but it’s probably most important how you violated it.  If you started running into severe medical issues from a particular prohibition, then it’s best to get rid of that prohibition entirely so that you can fast more safely; it’s not an indulgence if it’s absolutely necessary for your health!  Likewise, if even a partial fast or if even intermittent fasting is causing you problems at all, then stop fasting.  It’s better you live and find other ways to hone and temper the body without suffering and putting yourself at major risk for health problems or death.  What if you were forced to fast, like if you were incarcerated or imprisoned and forced to eat things you wouldn’t against your will?  Honestly, nobody would blame you for getting by, and you’re already in a bad and potentially ascetic situation; better to survive under duress and save your strength than suffer righteously with the risk of death.

All of those could be considered accidental or unintentional violations, but what about if you just decided “eh, fuck it, let’s have a cheat day” or if you thought nobody was looking?  Tough luck, pal; you intentionally and willfully committed a violation of your prohibitions when you had no reason not to, and that’s where you should own up to your violation and make amends.  How you do that is up to you, your tradition, and your spirits; you might add on another day (or week, or month, etc.) of fasting for every willful violation you committed, add on another prohibition in addition to the ones you already had pay a “fine” through donating or caring for others out of your own pocket, put yourself through another spiritual ordeal such as intense purifications or heightened prayers, or make formal amends through heavy offerings to God, the gods, or other spirits to make up for your violation.  Or, you could just eat it (heh) and accept that you were weak and carry on as normal, being more mindful as time goes on, perhaps with letting someone know as a kind of confession.  Sometimes, it’s okay to perform a fast with built-in cheat days or days of leniency, but these should be limited; remember, the whole point of a fast is to not indulge.

However, note that all of the above are almost all focused on prohibitions, rules that take things away from ourselves.  That’s entirely a workable and practical way to do fasting, but consider: instead of taking things away, why not add things?  If we consider a fast to be a duration of time to cultivate and refine the spirit, then there are plenty of other things we can do, whether instead of piling on prohibitions or to be done along with them.  This is an idea that I got from Catholic writings a few years back, specifically for Lent; rather than just take things away, incorporate new things to fill the gaps left behind or just for the sake of upping our spiritual practices and devotions generally. Some examples include (again, not a definitive or exhaustive list):

• Say a prayer to formally begin a fast, whenever you break the fast, and when you formally end the fast.
• When you sit down to eat, pray over and bless the meal before you do so.
• Engage in daily prayer, or add more prayers to your daily practice
• Participate in daily communal worship (e.g. going to daily mass, having a daily circle with a coven)
• Read and contemplate scripture daily
• Commit to doing works of charity frequently (e.g. giving to the poor, working at a kitchen, setting aside income as donations for noble causes)
• Commit to creating a devotional work of art every day (e.g. poetry, drawing, sculpture)
• Commit to environmental works (e.g. picking up litter, tending to a communal garden)
• Commit to helping or organizing religious works (e.g. signing up to be an altar-server, assisting with setting up circle devotions, providing guidance to students)
• Commit to daily offerings, whether dedicated to a particular spirit or deity specifically or more generally for the benefit of all sentient beings
• Perform a daily purification (e.g. ablution, spiritual bath, banishing)
• Etc.

In the end, when it comes to abstinence for spiritual purposes, we can do a lot better than just simply cutting out food, and we can focus on a number of different aspects of the practice of fasting that can provide for a well-rounded period of intense spiritual work that can work for anyone, regardless of their health conditions, so that we can all derive benefit by focusing on the higher while tempering (but not utterly neglecting) the lower:

• Prohibitions on what food and drink one takes in
• Prohibitions on how food or drink is prepared
• Prohibitions on when one can eat or drink
• Prohibitions on how food or drink is consumed
• Prohibitions on behaviors and activities outside eating and drinking
• Mandates on behaviors to include spiritual or spiritually-oriented activities
• The duration for which prohibitions and mandates are to be observed

Now, what about me?  There are times when I’ll fast for my own practices (like for those Sixteen Days of Cultivation leading up to the spring equinox I did not too long ago), or before receiving or participating in ceremony for Lukumí purposes, sure.  But, lest we all forget, I’m a Hermeticist, and there’s some useful stuff in the Corpus Hermeticum and other Hermetic texts that touch on this same topic, too. There’s this almost-universal, quasi-gnostic notion that you can’t really engage in a spiritually pure practice without somehow abstaining from physical pleasures or indulgences, and that abstaining from food and drink, whether entirely or from particular kinds or from particular ways of having it, is one of the most common ways to do that.  Food and drink is what sustains the body, yes, and we should care for the body since it’s our vessel for living in this world.  But since we’re spiritual entities ourselves that just so happen to have a body, and since we’re all always trying to become better spiritual entities, we need to care for the body only as much as we need to, and focus on the spirit at least as much as we care for the body, if not much more than that.  To focus overmuch on the body is to neglect the spirit; just as in the Buddha’s method of taking the Middle Path, we should care for the body just enough that it’s healthy and can stay healthy, and give the rest of our time, energy, and attention to spiritual works.  That’s really the whole purpose of fasting: to cut back on indulging the body so that we can indulge the spirit, instead.  We don’t need to completely neglect or harm the body; otherwise, you may as well just kill yourself off quickly and painlessly than starve yourself to death painfully!  We need our body to host our spirit for as long as our spirit needs the body, and until the point when our spirit is ready to go, we need to care for the body.  But we only need to care for it, not indulge it.  And even then, remember: fasting is not the be-all end-all of ways to accomplish spiritual evolution.  Do it if you want to or if your tradition requires you to, and if you do engage in fasting, do so safely.  If you don’t engage in it, there still so many ways to indulge the spirit and encourage its cultivation rather than just tempering the body.

What about you, dear reader?  Do you fast, and if so, how do you fast?  Do you engage in total fasting, partial fasting, or intermittent fasting?  Do you abstain from only certain things or practices?  What else do you do when you fast?  Let me know in the comments!