I’m not one to use the word “miracle” lightly, so when I say it feels like I have been blessed with a miracle healing in just 7-days, please trust me that I mean it.

I mentioned in my email the other day that while traveling through Israel, I also decided to do a 7-day Daniel Fast.

For those who are unfamiliar, a Daniel Fast is a partial fast where you don’t give up eating, but you refrain from eating certain foods. The inspiration of this fast, naturally, comes from the book of Daniel.

Daniel was an old testament Hebrew prophet who lived in a time where the Hebrews (i.e. God’s chosen people) were living under oppression by the Babylonians and the King Nebuchadnezzar. In spite of that, Daniel and 3 of his Hebrew friends (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) were specially chosen to try out to be a part of the King’s guard.

For these tryouts and trainings, Daniel and his buddies decided to stick with their Hebrew law and abstain from eating the common foods of the King. In fact, when pushed on it, he offered to make it a competition to see if his way of eating would make them excel above the other competitors.

“Please test your servants for 10 days, and let the give us vegetables [one translation says pulse which is a word that means “food grown from seed”] to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance be examined before you, and the appearance of the young men who eat the portion of the King’s delicacies; and as you see fit, so deal with your servants.” Daniel 1:12-13

The results of this test where highly in favor of Daniel and his friends. The Bible tells us they excelled high and above all the other guards not only physically, but in integrity, wisdom, and skills.

You see, it wasn’t just about the food for them, or us. It was about being obedient to God, sacrificing in simple ways even in the face of being marked an “outsider.” This humble sacrifice of Daniel surely paid off. He was promoted to the highest ranks of the King.

So, this Daniel Fast is something that many churches challenge their congregations to do in the New Year for 21-days (the 21-day part comes from Daniel 10:2-3).

I did a version of the Daniel Fast two years ago for 28 days while as I was just starting A. Wright Fit, but when I did it, I didn’t do much research into it and did not cut out caffeine nor all sugar. I still had a great experience.

I have had it on my heart to lead a Daniel Fast challenge in the New Year with the ladies I coach in the her Health Lounge and also invite anyone else that would be up for a nutrition challenge and training! I will be leading the 6-week nutrition course alongside a special weekly online Bible study on Discipline for 2017. It’s going to be amazing.

Therefore, with this on my heart, I thought while I’m in the Holy Land and studying this ancient fast, why don’t I go ahead and do a short version of the Daniel Fast so I have a better understanding to be able to coach from in the New Year.

Well, this experience FAR exceeded my expectations.

To add a little background about what I have been going through lately with my health, I should add that I have kinda been feeling off in my body lately.

I had a back injury 2.5 years ago (a bulging disc) and my back has been in terrible pain for longer than I can remember. I can usually do some mobility and alignment drills in the AM to get it all worked out, but it’s very hard to get out of bed a lot of days and traveling is especially brutal.

About a week or two ago, I visited a chiropractor that said he believed it was caused by inflammation of the tendons that surround my spine. He advised me to stop bending over, stop crossing my legs, and stop twisting too much from the spine. Uh, kind of challenging for a trainer, right? But I took his advice and had seen some improvements.

The other thing that had been kinda bothering me (but not too much) was that I had put on weight that I couldn’t seem to drop. I had found a set weight of 155lbs for over a year and then this year, though my eating and exercise was always relatively on point, it had crept up to 162-164. It seemed that nothing would make it come back down. So I kinda just accepted it and moved on, it’s only a number after all.

Well, in Israel last week, I have to fully admit that this Daniel Fast is a LEGIT detox for your body. It is pretty brutal the first several days.

My vices have always been caffeine (which is why I will give you a slow progression to follow for all my coffee and tea lovers), chocolate, and some wine.

Well, on the Daniel Fast, you cut out all beverages except water, you eliminate all animal products (i.e. eat Vegan), all yeast-containing bread, anything processed or with sugar or chemicals, and essentially feast on salads, nuts, legumes, whole grains, fruit, vegetables etc. Frankly, for me, it was kinda a treat to eat so many carbs!

Oddly enough, even through we were staying in a hotel the entire time, I had NO PROBLEM finding foods to eat (see pics below). So the good news is that there are plenty of options.

But, the bad news was that the combination of jet lag + cutting all caffeine caused some sluggish days, plenty of headaches, and what was most surprising was some serious BACK PAIN.

The inflamed tendons up and down my spine were definitely yelling at me. At first I thought it was the travel and perhaps an injury, but then as I was reading the Daniel Fast book by Susan Gregory, I read that back pain is a common symptom of the detox. Therefore, I just swallowed some Advil and stuck with it.

MY RESULTS:

Well, after just 4 days of bad symptoms, I started to feel like myself again. My cravings were severely diminished.

Better yet, all that back pain COMPLETELY went away!! I mean ZERO back pain.

I never dawned on me that my pain could have been caused by my eating and drinking habits. Now I realize that my over-consumption of caffeine and was a huge factor.

Not only that, but when I returned back home this week and began transitioning slowly to eating back to my Nutrient Based eating (another aspect I’ll be coaching you through) and did some gentle workouts, I went to weigh myself and had lost 7 lbs!

Now, let’s be clear, this is not fat loss, this is for sure predominantly water weight. But even so, it felt great to see the inflammation in my thighs, face, and stomach drop as well!

All this to say, that while doing a “cleanse” will always be tempting for the human side of us that wants “quick results.” But that’s not what the Daniel Fast is for. It’s NOT a diet. It’s not a quick fix.

It’s an act of Spiritual discipline and sacrifice that makes way for you to grow closer to God and experience God’s healing physically and spiritually.

I am SO EXCITED to see what 21-days of this journey will look like in the New Year and I hope you will pray and see if God is calling you to join me!

Even if you do this with your church, you might find that having a support and accountability group of women online is really helpful for you to stick with it. I’ll be giving a whole class and book on recipes, instructions, and spiritual practices to make it success! It will also include my Nutrient Based Eating program too!

I will be offering this 6-week course as a BLACK FRIDAY & CYBER MONDAY deal, so look for the discounted offer next week!

If you have any questions, feel free to respond back to this email and I’ll be glad to share more!

With Love and Light,

Mandi

The first time I heard of someone doing this, I thought they were crazy and were going to send themselves into starvation. I mentally judged them, immediately, and came up with a ton snippets of “health tips” that would disprove their practice as fallacy! Ha!

Cut to about 3 months later, when I decided to take a quiz from one of my favorite teaching blogs on all things Metabolism (Read: Fat Loss) related, Metabolic Effect, and guess what this quiz advised me to do? The VERY act that I so ruefully mentally judged others in the fitness industry for doing! Typical, right? (God was listening ;-))

So now, every day, I don’t eat my first meal until about 11am. I eat my last meal by 7 or 8pm. Basically, I eat in a 8-9 hour window.

WHAT IT IS:

So, I’m talking about Intermittent Fasting. Let me start by saying that I hate the term “Fasting” because anytime you say that, it makes people think of either a spiritual prayer practice (which is good, but not related), or a detox or cleanse. Which again, those two things can be good for you (if done right), but all these words seem to spark up a lot of “judgey judgertons” just like I admitted to being.

Intermittent Fasting is just a term used to describe going an extended period of time, every day, without eating. We ALL fast every day. This is called sleeping. So, intermittent fasting is a way to just extend the “non-eating” phase of your day because it essentially extends the Fat Burning period of your day.

Studies (and HERE) have actually shown that the TIMING of when we eat can have a bigger impact on our weight that the actual amount of calories we eat! In fact, I talked about this rat study on my blog on NUTRIENT BASED TIMING, HERE. The most recent study published in Cell Metabolism Journal, essentially tested two groups of rats who both ate the exact same amount of calories but one group ate all day long while the other group only at in a 10-12 hour window. The results showed that the group that ate at all hours of the day got obese while the intermittent fasted group of rats stayed at a normal weight. With the exact same amount of food!

The way our fast paced world has been operating lately, we can easily fall into the trap of GRAZING all day, every day. We need a snack at all occasions! I truly believe this contributes heavily (no pun intended) to the deathly serious overweight and obesity epidemic we have on our hands.

WHY I DECIDED TO TRY IT:

So, back to my decision to bite my own judgement and take the advice from the Metabolic Effect quiz I took. First, I have already done a lot of research on the Metabolic Effect website, read their books and know they are Doctors with credentials I trust. This is the most important part about taking advice from any health hack out there (myself included!).

Second, I had already been eating in a 12-hour window for 8+ months at this point. This was something I knew I needed to do not only because I had heard about that rat studies but also just by pure math. I have a large appetite and so if I don’t pay attention to the times and quantities I eat, I can (and have) eaten several hundred more calories than I need to in a day.

Third, the reason why this quiz advised me to push this fasting period back even further is because I had already taken several steps in the (w)right direction for my health and this was just the next best step in the (W)right direction for ME. Meaning, I was already eating a Nutrient-Based diet of clean, holistic foods CONSISTENTLY. While also regularly looking into different meal reviews so I have the option to change my meal plans up a little while still eating the healthy sustenance I need. I has also already practiced short periods of intermittent fasting first before by eating within a 12 and 10-hour window. I was also already active and healthy. I just had stopped seeing results, so it was time to try something new.

HOW IT’S BEEN WORKING SO FAR:

So, I decided this step would be something worth trying to see if it worked for me!

The way to TEST any new dietary change is to monitor 4 areas *H.E.C.D.* (a modified tool from Metabolic Effect as well): 1. Hunger 2. Energy 3. Cravings 4. Digestion. So as I made the change to move my first meal back to 11am and as I ate my meals, I monitored those 4 categories. I told myself I would try it for a full week to let my body adapt and get a real feel for how it was working (or not working).

PROS:
SHOCKING!

-My HUNGER actually went WAY down over the course of the day. I had been used to eating 5-6 meals per day and my body had been conditioned to get hungry when I had been used to eating. So where I thought that I would be building up several more hours of HUNGER from not eating at those times, I was SHOCKED to feel substantially less hungry. I believe this tactic helped to mellow out my hormones (ghrelin and leptin are your hunger and satiety hormones) . I don’t have the exact science as to why, but this is how it turned out for ME.

-Moreover, I actually had less CRAVINGS for sugar and other food items I normally crave as well! My hardest part is still at night more than in the morning, so I do still have a sweet tooth but I manage that with other tools anyway.

-My ENERGY felt about the same! I often found that by overeating so often before, I would put myself into a food-coma and feel lethargic. Now my mornings are my most productive time!

-My DIGESTION is on par. This one relies most on the quality of foods I eat, but going longer between meals helps move things along much better for my body!

On top of all of these factors, the other benefit of doing this is in those months where I was not really being careful about WHAT I ate (I had a ton more sugar, frozen yogurt, and BBQs during the month of July) but I still stuck to this 8-9 hour window, I DID NOT GAIN WEIGHT. At all. So this proves to me that the rat test they conducted is in fact on par with my this human body works too!

Overall, I AM eating enough food (almost the same amount of calories) just in the tighter time-frame. This is VERY IMPORTANT that I’m not starving my body as a crash diet. I am only changing the timing of my eating, not the quantity of food. Since I love big meals, this works great for me too.

CONS:

There are a few things I had to adjust and some ways to trouble shoot this that are not the easiest.

I rely more on coffee and caffeine in the AM. I have been getting up by 5-6am to start writing and working, so I’m tired of course, but also that is a pretty long window of being awake without eating. So, coffee (without cream or sugar) and tea are my solutions to keep my stomach calm. If I do experience stomach growls, I’ll drink more water first.
I had to move back my workout time: I was a morning workout girl for a long time but decided that working out fasted is not the smarted idea for me. This worked out though because I needed my mornings for productivity and writing anyway. It will always take an adjustment period to get hyped up enough for an afternoon workout. It also is harder to avoid the excuses of getting “too busy” to go to the gym. Good thing I only do 30-45 min workouts now!
Breakfast is my favorite meal: The absolute hardest thing for me is going out for breakfast with friends and family and not eating. Maybe this is the O.C.D, way TOO self-controlled part of my life, but I am just a person that once I commit to something, I commit to it and stay as consistent as possible. So, when in a situation where we are out to eat or my husband and I are traveling and he is eating breakfast, I will have coffee and enjoy the company and order a meal to go if I have to. I admit this is challenging but only because of the social pressure and because I love breakfast food. Not because I’m hungry, surprisingly.

The (W)Right Way Of Intermittent Fasting:

So, if you are interesting in exploring what this might look like for you, I encourage you to take the following steps:

START 12-HOURS: Start with a 12-hour window of Intermittent Fasting FIRST. This is my Nutrient Based Timing strategy that will work wonders for you if you have not already been eating in this window of time. Stick with this FIRST for about 6-12 weeks. See if you get desired results and good H.E.C.D. results.
SMALL STEPS: If you have already been eating in a 12-hour window, push back your eating window by 2 or 4 hours at the most. You can decide if you want to push back your first meal of the day, or stop eating earlier in the evening. Pay attention to the clock and adjust it if necessary according to your plans that day (dinner out, etc).
STAY CONSISTENT: I don’t advise doing just one day here or there of intermittent fasting. I think this is how you start to confuse your hormones and metabolism into thinking you are indeed ‘starving’ on certain days. If your body thinks your starving, it will go into shut-down mode and slow your metabolism. No bueno.
SATISFY YOUR BELLY: Eat well and eat enough! For the above reason, you should make sure you are eating enough food! You reasonably can have 3 solid meals and maybe one snack all within that 8-9 hour window. Eating causes a BOOST in your metabolism because you have to burn calories to digest. So a large BOOST followed by an EXTENDED FAST (Fat-Burning) period is why this science works.
STAY TRUE TO YOU: If your H.E.C.D. is all off after trying this, then I don’t think intermittent fasting is for you and your body type. Some people with higher metabolisms will just have a harder time with this because their bodies need more energy more often. This is GREAT to learn and important for you to listen to! I think intermittent fasting works for me because I have a endomorphic/mesomorphic body type. (More on this another time!).

I’d love to hear your thoughts and/or experiences you have encountered with intermittent fasting! Every body is different and I’d like to hear what you like, didn’t like or if you are going to give it try and why!

The Incredible Results of a 7-Day Daniel Fast