If you don’t feel ready to try out water fasting, then juice fasting is a great place to start.  Otherwise known as a “juice diet”, it involves the elimination of solid food from your daily consumption.  In other words, instead of eating and drinking, you only drink. Beyond this single restriction, the possibilities of how to juice-fast are virtually endless.  Fundamentally, though, there are two basic categories: juices based on fruits or those based on vegetables. If you’ve never tried a juice fast before, you’ll probably find it easier to begin with fruit juices, given that the high sugar content will provide your body with plenty of calories to get through the day.  In fact, you may well find that you have more energy than usual!  Consequently, it’s no problem to live on a fruit diet while continuing your usual life and work.  The only complaint about fruit-juice fasts tends to be that people sometimes find it too acidic on the stomach.  Often, though, this occurs because the stomach itself is chronically over-stressed through eating …

What on earth does an intestinal wash have to do with water fasting? In one sense, nothing. But… after you get over the shock of it :-), there are certainly good reasons to contemplate such a cleanse before undertaking a water fast, especially in the case of a fast lasting more than a day or two.  The sad fact is that most people’s bowels are covered with a sticky, tarry muck called mucoid plaque, which interferes with the absorption of nutrients through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream, as well as providing a perfect breeding ground for harmful bacteria.  (According to an old saying, ‘all illness begins in the gut.’  Mucoid plaque is one reason why.)  Gradually hardening into a black rubbery substance glued to the intestinal wall, it can accumulate over the years in increasingly thick layers, to the point that it can even begin to obstruct the flow of food.  It’s also one reason why so many people develop beer bellies as they grow older.  People often carry around literally kilograms of …

If a one-day water fast feels too frightening, beyond reach, that’s totally okay.  Today in the modern world many people feel the same.  Rather than pushing yourself into something you’re not ready for, intermittent fasting is a less extreme, more easily achievable goal – and it still offers significant health benefits over the long term. Intermittent fasting consists of simply extending the natural fast you undertake each and every day: the one between dinner and break-fast.  By lengthening the time without food from around 12 hours each night to 16 hours, you allow your entire digestive system to rest more fully.  This is time during which it can regenerate, time in which your whole body can begin to heal – especially given that you’ll be asleep and in ‘healing mode’ anyway during much of this time. Intermittent fasting is something which works best when done everyday: something which is built into your daily schedule.  In order to reach a daily fast of 16 hours (that is, restricting your eating within an eight-hour timeframe), most people …