Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Healing Your Soul

This insightful guide from a Research Assistant Professor at Catholic University of America, who is also a New York Times bestselling author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, teaches contemporary Christians how to use the current leading wellness trend—intermittent fasting—as a means of spiritual awakening, incorporating the traditions our Christian ancestors applied for centuries into modern life.

Intermittent fasting is becoming more popular among health-conscious individuals looking to improve their wellbeing. To be sure, we aren't the first people in history to deliberately fast. Our spiritual forebears followed this practise regularly for the better part of 1500 years.

According to Jay Richards, PhD., Christians should rediscover fasting not just to strengthen their physical health but also their spiritual well-being. Eat, Fast, Feast mixes ancient spiritual teachings on fasting and feasting with the new research on the health benefits of ketogenic diets and fasting. It is based on his famous series "Fasting, Body and Soul" in The Stream and investigates what it means to satisfy our spiritual hunger by restricting our physical intake. It looks at what contemporary science and ancient monastics have to say about the practise of fasting.

Richards claims that the sugar and processed carbohydrates that are staples of the current Western diet have trapped us in a metabolic rut that renders fasting futile and celebrations meaningless. Good news, he says: millions of individuals are resisting the tyranny of processed foods by adopting low-carb, ketogenic, paleo, and primal eating plans. Many health professionals are now saying that a diet high in natural fat and low in carbohydrates is not only healthy, but superior to the standard American diet.

Richards offers a 40-day programme that integrates spiritual practises with nutritional ketosis for the long term. Any time of year is appropriate for this strategy, but it works especially well during Advent and Lent, two penitential seasons in the Christian calendar.

To help Christians better their lives and health and bring them closer to God, Eat, Fast, Feast synthesises modern science with ancient wisdom to bring together the physical, mental, and spiritual advantages of intermittent fasting.