fasting is abstaining from all foods, and there’s nothing wrong with partial fasts, but that’s what they are: partial.
suddenly it seems like there’s been an influx of posts of people claiming these multi-week super long “fasts,” just to reveal in the text they still took in calories (juices, broths, milks) so they didn’t actually fast at all. those are restricted diets, or partial fasts.
I guess it really depends on what a fast is, doesn’t it? A fast for Ramadan means nothing passes your lips, not even water. Some people fast, but allow only water. Some people fast and allow minerals and water, some people maintain a fast that doesn’t involve spiking insulin or triggering mTor.
So first you have to define what a fast is, because I might not have the same definition of “fast” as you do.
You seem to be like someone complaining that people aren’t religious because they’re not following “your” religion.
Meh semantics. Some people get all twisted up if you say 16:8 is intermittent fasting and somebody will get all irate and correct them “THATS NOT INTERMITTENT FASTING! THATS TIME RESTRICTED FEEDING” - like who the heck cares what they call it? So long as they’re not writing studies or instructional guides. If it works for them then great- if it doesn’t work for you then don’t do it.
To quote Marcus Aurelius: “place your own well being in your own hands”
People call Ramadan a fast and make a big deal and then it turns out they are often eating food after sun down. In my religion that’s not a fast, just a particular eating habit to have one meal a day.
To each their own - better to not get caught up in semantics.
Story time: Had a date go on a whole thing about fasting and it turned out he was talking about Ramadan and eating every day. He made a big deal about it, so I did too (like damn, I don’t think not eating for a month is good, did you work up to it?). Just to find he was eating every night - I was like, why did you make this a big deal? Some people normally eat like this and don’t even call it fasting. He got pissed because he wanted kudos on his fast, but I had to be like “yo, I’m not Muslim. I’m Jain - this isn’t fasting in my religion.” He wasn’t Muslim either, he was a Catholic from Northern Ireland and just very confusing. So confusing!
Fasting does not necessarily mean abstaining from all food. It means abstaining from something. There are religious observances that fast from eating meat. That is fasting. Bread and water. Another kind of fast. Honey and bitter herbs, but nothing else. Fasting. Gravel and small…..never mind you get my point.
Why do people get so upset or annoyed by how someone else chooses to eat (or not)?
Who gets to decide the official definition?
Is there just one definition possible, or is there room for variation?
If we get to claim all kinds of theoretical human benefits of fasting as fact, can’t we also accept all different variations of fasting as fasting?