The Fast: Only if You Must 153Do it properly!
So let me say that the minimum fast advocated is four days. That means that
if you feel well you can begin introducing foods on the fifth day – no sooner.
Unless you have a will of iron, you can make it easier on yourself when
starting a fast by using a step-down approach. Spend a day eating only a
chosen fruit – say, grapes – and drinking spring water. Next day take only
the spring water, and you will have moved into a fast fairly effortlessly.
Count the grapes-only day as part of the fast, but only proceed with food testing
on the fifth day if you feel quite well. You would not, of course, test grapes that
day in case they are not voided from the bowel.
There is no point in starting the test introductions until you do feel
well, so you may need to go on longer than four days. However, without
expert medical supervision – and by that I mean a doctor who has had
experience of managing fasts – the longest you should continue a fast is
for seven days. It has its own hazards, which come into play the longer you
carry on; therefore you must not prolong it needlessly.
Let us be quite clear: this is a medical business, not a spiritual
process. All we are trying to do is clear the bowel so that we may carry out
food tests without the masking effect obscuring the result. The best guide
to when your bowel is clear is how you feel. If your symptoms suddenly
clear on or about the fifth day, that’s what we want.
If this has not happened by the eighth morning (unless you have
been very constipated), it probably never will and you must desist. In that
event it is almost proof positive that you do not have significant food
intolerances or allergies and you must look for other explanations for your
symptoms instead.
Coping
Responses to fasting vary enormously: some people make light of it and
continue their normal work routine. I climbed one of Scotland’s highest
mountains while on the fourth day of a fast and slept out on the summit
under the stars and never felt such vibrant energies, before or since (be
sure, I had emergency rations if I had needed sustenance in the wilderness).
Others are prostrate and take to their beds for virtually the entire period.
Most fall somewhere in between.
You must assume a possible reaction that will prevent you being
able to work and make arrangements accordingly. I feel bound to advise
you to tell your own doctor what you propose to do in advance. Yet in most