True Fasting?

Isaiah 58: v 6

This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.

I woke up this morning with a sense of emptiness in my stomach. Not hunger – the discomfort and craving for food which I experienced in the first few days of my fast are not with me any longer – but a strange hollow feeling.

While emptiness is uncomfortable, it is easily bearable. And it is much to be preferred over the early part of the fast, when the body is effectively detoxing and craving all kinds of substances, sugar, salt, and fat in particular.

I have now reached the stage of Ketosis, the point in the fast where the body begins to break down its fat deposits via the liver, to turn them into energy. Until this stage ends, I am not expecting to be terribly uncomfortable for a while.

But the thing is this: Most people who are going without food in the UK today are not doing so over long drawn out periods of never eating. They are missing meals here and there, they are going without food for a couple of days at a time.

More than that, they don’t have the luxury of planning or researching their hunger, as I have my fast.

Often these short blood sugar draining spells of hunger can lead to rash decisions. Just as most of us know we should not go food shopping when we feel hungry, so it’s best not to apply for a pay-day loan while you have low blood sugar. Hungry people are easy targets for exploitation.

Occasionally these rash hungry decisions can end up in criminal acts – there is nothing new about this: an ancient Hebrew Proverb calls on God to neither provide too much nor too little – in order that one should neither grow rich and ignore God, or grow poor and have to steal to get what one needs. (Proverbs 30: 7-9)

Another side effect of the early stages of going without food is a slow down of the body’s essential services, in particular the ability to regulate heat. I’m a naturally warm person, but even I was cold and shivery in the first couple of days of the fast.

This reminds me too that one of the big tussles people have financially is with the costs of heating their homes – the ever present card or key meter ticking down until ‘clunk’ the energy goes off. No central heating, no hot water. The difficult decision of whether to put more money on the gas card, or to get some food is not one to be made when the body is craving sugar.

I’ll continue to blog my thoughts on hunger as I fast through Lent – I’m now on day five, an eighth of the way through, and the other 35 days still seem like an improbably long period of time, but there is light at the end of my tunnel – I will eat again. I am privileged to be able to make this choice. Others are starting their own involuntary fasts today, and for them there is no clear way out.

You can sign up to join the End Hunger Fast campaign here – why not join the many others who have pledged to fast for the day on April 4th?