Loss of weight indicates, almost guarantees, that detoxification and healing
is occurring. I can"t stress this too much. Of all the things I find my patients
seem to misunderstand or forget after being told, it is that they can"t heal in
a rapid manner without getting smaller. This reality is especially hard for the
family and friends of someone who is fasting, who will say, "you"re looking
terrible dear, so thin. Your skin is hanging on your bones. You"re not eating
enough protein or nutrient food to be healthy and you must eat more or
you"re going to develop serious deficiencies. You don"t have any energy,
you must be getting sicker. You"re doing the wrong thing, obviously. You
have less energy and look worse every day. Go and see a doctor before it
is too late." To succeed with friends like this, a faster has to be a mighty
self-determined person with a powerful ability to disagree with others.
Medical personnel claim that rapid weight loss often causes dangerous
deficiencies; these deficiencies force the person to overeat and regain even
more weight afterward. This is largely untrue, though there is one true
aspect to it: a fasted, detoxified body becomes a much more efficient
digester and assimilator, extracting a lot more nutrition from the same
amount food is used to eat. If, after extended fasting a person returns to
eating the same number of calories as they did before; they will gain weight
even more rapidly than before they stated fasting.
When fasting for weight loss, the only way to keep the weight off is to
greatly reform the diet; to go on, and stay on, a diet made up largely of nonstarchy,
watery fruits and vegetables, limited quantities of cooked food, and
very limited amounts of highly concentrated food sources like cereals and
cooked legumes. Unless, of course, after fasting, one"s lifestyle involves
much very hard physical labor or exercise. I’ve had a few obese fasters
become quite angry with me for this reason; they hoped to get thin through
fasting and after the fast, to resume overeating with complete
irresponsibility as before, without weight gain.
People also fear weight loss during fasting because they fear becoming
anorexic or bulimic. They won’t! A person who abstains from eating for the
purpose of improving their health, in order to prevent or treat illness, or
even one who fasts for weight loss will not develop an eating disorder.
Eating disorders mean eating compulsively because of a distorted body
image. Anorexics and bulimics have obsessions with the thinner-is-better
school of thought. The anorexic looks at their emaciated frame in the mirror
and thinks they are fat! This is the distorted perception of a very insecure
person badly in need of therapy. A bulimic, on the other hand stuffs
themselves, usually with bad food, and then purges it by vomiting, or with
laxatives. Anorexics and bulimics are not accelerating the healing potential
of their bodies; these are life threatening conditions. Fasters are genuinely
trying to enhance their survival potential.
Occasionally a neurotic individual with a pre-existing eating disorder will
become obsessed with fasting and colon cleansing as a justification to
legitimize their compulsion. During my career while monitoring hundreds of
fasters, I"ve known two of these. I discourage them from fasting or colon
cleansing, and refuse to assist them, because they carry the practices to
absurd extremes, and contribute to bad press about natural medicine by
ending up in the emergency ward of a hospital with an intravenous feeding
tube in their arm.
