For religious reasons, lately a friend of mine has been fasting. I respect her commitment. There was one day where she went 24 hours without eating or drinking anything. She said going without food made her weak. She realized she needed to conserve energy and therefore was less active. She chose to do more difficult mental tasks early in the day knowing it would become harder to think later on without food. We talked a little bit about why one would fast. For her it is part of her culture, her other family members did it. But what do you learn from choosing to deprive yourself of food?
I have never seriously tried it myself. There have been individual days where I tried to go without eating, usually as part of some ill fated diet resolution. I have never, nor do I think I would willingly deprive myself of liquid. As an adult, the little experience I have had with it usually involves a light headache and a slight sickish feeling. Being hungry makes me feel angry and frantic. You have heard of an angry drunk, I am an angry hungry guy. What I have found is to deprive myself of something that I want tends to focus my mind on obtaining that thing, sometimes singularly. None of those are particular spiritual aspects that I care to cultivate.
When I was little, my parents led a group of teenagers at my church through an overnight fast. The purpose of the event was to better understand world hunger by fasting. I think they did allow themselves to eat plain white rice during the time, but really, why bother? Because my sister and I were younger, we did not have to participate, but we could try it to the extent we wanted to. The details are fuzzy at this point, but being teenagers, there was much sneaking and hiding of food, particularly candy bars. I suppose hoarding and cheating are components of world hunger worth understanding.
The best thing that I can come up with as a reason for fasting is to purposely alter the mind body connection, and for a short time anyway, let the mind control and notice the body's reaction. Gratitude is another reason. It might help me better understand that a constant food supply is not necessarily a given and therefore I could better appreciate my next few bites of healthy, nutritious food.
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