Fast Every Night
Detox every day: not only once in the spring.
Detox diets will be in season soon.
Comes early spring, and for a few days or weeks you might give up hot dogs and Twinkie's, indulging instead on super-detox teas and piles of supplements. Organic kale for breakfast, lunch, and supper.
Lots of great people pay lots of money for detox programs they hope will
remove all those sticky and grimy residues from their bodies.
give a vigorous cleansing of their body, heart, mind, and spirit.
show them it’s possible to say “no.”
maybe, who knows, help them pick up some healthy habits.
It’s Not That Simple
I’m not so into detoxes (although if it works for you, that’s awesome!).
Their isn’t much science showing long-term health benefits from short-term dietary changes.
Which isn’t surprising: our daily habits make us into who we are. A fudge-cake-driven metabolism won’t be outsmarted by a few vegetable smoothies, no matter how much chlorophyll they contain.
Unsurprisingly, although detox might feel great for a while, most detoxers will soon find themselves right back where they started.
Temporary acts of health, no matter how dramatic, usually don’t unwire ingrained habits and personality tendencies. Whether we like it or not, our health and wellness hinge on improving those habits and tendencies.
The true core of Eating Well is
eating Real Food,
and not too much of it.
Yet trying to get eating perfect can be overwhelming. That might be why extreme detox plans are so popular: they offer a quick fix that don’t require you to show up for yourself for the rest of your life.
The Healthy Jew Daily Detox
But what’s gonna be with all those terrible toxins?
Here’s the solution:
Do a Healthy Jew Detox: not once a year, but every day.
Let detox become who you are.
The Healthy Jew detox program is simple, effective, and provides health benefits that last a lifetime - or at least as long as you do it.
Here’s how it works:
Eat what you eat, preferably Real Food, over a 12 hour period during the day.
Don’t eat for the next 12 hours of night.
When you let go of all food and drink (water and herbal teas are fine), the many organs of your digestive system - and some others - will relax, rejuvenate, and quietly round up all the terrible toxins for efficient excretion, all by itself.
Even if you’re that fellow who never lets a potato chip cross your lips, the Healthy Jew Daily Detox is still a good idea. Just living on earth and eating her food means your detoxifying organs have lots of work to do. Give them a rest.
Let’s Rebrand: The Healthy Jew Daily Fast
In all honesty, the Healthy Jew Daily Detox isn’t a dramatic detox.
It’s just another feature of balanced living - and balance, as we’ve learned, is the essence of health. Healthy Jews let life come and go, come and go, like waves at the seashore.
Therefore, I suggest we rename our detox.
Biochemistry teaches about two primary stages of metabolism. Here’s the basic idea:
Fed state: In the first few hours after eating, we get energy directly from the food we ate.
Fasting state: After the food is digested, energy comes from the various stores inside the body.
God built our bodies to function both fed and fasting, suggesting that we cycle smoothly between the two modes of living.
During the day, eat nourishing food: actively reach out to God’s world for life.
At night, stop eating, rest and digest: allow the day’s life to spread through your body, settle down, and let go of everything that doesn’t belong.
So how about trying the Healthy Jew Daily Fast?
Fasting implies calmly letting go, not forcing extreme changes.
I didn’t make up the idea of a daily 12-hour fast. There’s some legit science backing this as the simplest (and most sustainable) form of intermittent fasting.
Even simpler, many researchers - and the Rambam (Maimonides)1 - suggest not to eat for around 3 hours before bedtime. So if you get 7-8 hours of sleep (which is a good idea), and wait an hour or so after waking up to eat breakfast (another good idea2), you’ve got a 12 hour fast to balance out the eating action of the day ahead.
How Daily Fasts Can Help You Now
The Jewish people are now in a dreadful state of imbalance. We’re traumatized by October 7, terrified by rising anti-semitism, and anxious about the tragic war in Gaza.
Even in our relatively safe perch in Ramat Beit Shemesh, every distant boom and thud delivers an unsettling message: someone sent a rocket to kill us, and that might have happened if the Iron Dome hadn’t knocked it out of the sky.
Then come the questions. Will the world always to supply Israel with these $40,000 intercepters? What about when they miss?
Healthy Jewish Daily Fasts can help to safely digest such disturbing thoughts. We can proactively choose to ground ourselves in balanced living, reaching beyond the chaos, upwards toward the Source of life itself.
Hilchos Deos 4:5
See Hilchos Deos 4:2