AuburnChick's Adventures

My Daniel Fast officially ended last night.

Although a lot of people might be glad when fasts end, I will tell you that I was not.

I will admit that I struggled during the beginning of the fast.  Some of the food was weird, and my sugar cravings were very hard to overcome.

However, something happened after Day 10 or so.

I started looking forward to dinner time and the preparations I needed to make.

I mentioned before that I was enjoying chopping the vegetables. Salads became tangy when I added chopped apples to them…

Fruits became like dessert.  When you deny yourself regular sugar, your taste buds rejoice at the taste of naturally sweet fruit.

I began trying more recipes and discovering, to my utter surprise, that they tasted good.  Dare I say that I became a decent cook during the last three weeks?

The health benefits from this fast surprised me and were the icing on the cake.  I cannot believe how quickly the flab that was hanging over my belt disappeared.  My thighs, which were getting thicker before, have thinned out.  I have no trouble getting into my pants; the legs are no longer tight.

I used to get headaches regularly.  I think I had one or two at the beginning (probably as a result of my body purging itself of the sugar I’d been regularly depositing).  However, the headaches stopped.

My energy level has gone up.  I no longer come home from school exhausted and brain-dead.  This has been especially important to me because of the classes I am taking.

And sleep…oh sleep.  I am sleeping about seven hours a day, and I wake up feeling great!  I am usually a person who requires ten hours to function decently.

One thing I really enjoyed about the fast was spending time reading a devotion every day.  I usually read devotions with Rooster every school morning, but that’s about all that I have done in that regard.

I’ve actually grown to look forward to my own personal devotion time.

The devotions really gave me food for thought.  Good stuff!!

So, I’ve been giving thought to what I’m going to do now, given all of the physical and spiritual benefits I derived.

I’ve decided to continue the fast….for a while.

My goal is to keep going until I am finished with my certification classes.

That is six months, folks.

I need to function at the highest level possible to get through the workload ahead of me.  I honestly don’t know how I’ll do it if I’m on the roller coaster of sugar/high/low.

I also don’t want to give up my devotion time.

Because the devotions in the book only run through 21 days, I bought this book yesterday…

If you’ve ever tried to find a new devotional, you’ll understand the angst I went through as I looked through the books.

I finally found this one, and it struck a cord with me.  My juniors and seniors are studying the part of English history that Martin Luther impacted so much.  The readings are a little deeper than others I’ve read, which I am thankful for.

The fast taught me that I need to dig into God’s word deeper.

And so I begin the next facet of the fast.  I can’t wait to see what other lessons I am going to learn!

Filed under: Christian | Tagged: Daniel Fast |