Why Do People Fast?
Fasting is choosing to stop eating or drinking, or both, for a specific period. A person can choose to eat after one day or for just 12 hours. There are people who fast for forty days without taking in anything solid but resort to a liquid diet instead. Choosing to drink only water and abstaining from any alcoholic drinks, milk, juices or other energy giving beverages can be part of the fasting plan for some individuals. There are several reasons why people want to fast.
One primary reason for fasting is for the purpose of flushing out the toxins from the body. Not all of the things we eat are good for us. Sometimes, even without our knowledge, we ingest substances that are not harmful to the body when taken in minute amounts but are detrimental once it accumulates enough to prove toxic. Fasting can be recommended by doctors so that they may be able to monitor the effect of such a substance on a person’s body.
Fasting is also a popular option for people who wish to lose weight quickly. Dieters like these believe that if they keep away from taking anything solid, they will automatically lose a lot of weight. What they actually lose is a lot of water. If done consecutively and for a prolonged period of time, dieters who fast religiously do tend to lose a lot of weight. The state of their health is another matter since fasting keeps your body from adding calories to your system. It also starves it of the necessary materials and nutrients to keep it going.
Why do people fast if it is going to hurt their bodies? The sad truth is that to this day and age, when almost everything is instant, a lot of people believe that losing weight can be done in an instant too. They have a rather simplistic idea that since the food that they overfed their body with and made it bigger, when keeping off it, it will make them slimmer too. With a mindset like this, it is no wonder that people give up on dieting so easily. Fasting can and should never be a shortcut to healthy weight loss.
On the other hand, fasting is also applied to religious practices. Almost every major religion has a precept that encourages abstaining from food and drink. There are beliefs that fast for a special religious occasion, for cleansing before a ritual or a sacrifice for the bestowal of special requests. Practitioners of fasting believe that doing this sacrifice will show their God that their request is worthy of being heard while ritual fasting renders them clean to raise their offerings to their deity. Therefore, it is important there is no other sufficient reason to ask why people do fast?
