Intermittent Fasting was the first tool that I used to start my wellness transformation journey almost 5 years ago.

You see at that moment in my life, I needed something simple yet real. 

Intermittent Fasting brought me to my knees and heal my body.  It was the tool that I could use not only for health benefits but to be intentional with my prayers.

What is Intermittent Fasting?  The simple answer: a pattern of eating that teaches you how to listen to your body’s hunger signals and follow a healthy pattern of eating.

You are following a specific pattern each day, where you only eat during a shorter block of time, fasting for the rest of the day, except for having coffee, tea, and water.

This pattern helps your body to burn food more quickly so that there is more time for burning fat.

One of the health benefits that I saw was the weight loss due to how simple it was to follow Intermittent Fasting.

I spend years doing Yo-yo dieting. But yo-you dieting is not only not conducive to successful weight loss, but it can actually be harmful to your body.

Too many changes in short periods of time can lead to many issues with digestion, weight gain, and abdominal pain, so you want to stick to one method and keep with it.

Again, IF was a reason that I had success because of how simple it is.

One just has to pick one method of intermittent fasting and stick with it, eating healthy and moderately during the eating periods, and fasting during the other hours of the day.

But there is so much more to IF than just losing the weight. It’s also efficient at controlling your blood sugar levels.

Check out Dr. Fung’s work, a doctor who at one time thought IF was stupid until he decided to understand why it was so stupid and to his surprise, he learned it wasn’t so stupid and gave his type 2 diabetes patients amazing results.

One reason how this works so well with type 2 diabetes is that when one is fasting over a prolonged period of time and doing it the right way, one can start decreasing the insulin resistance and balancing the blood glucose levels naturally.

Also, there have been animal studies on intermittent fasting and how it can have a positive effect on your cognitive health, which helps to promote brain and memory health.

You can actually reduce your risk for brain-related illnesses like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease with both a healthy diet and intermittent fasting.

Once again, for myself IF took away the overeating and it required me to be conscious when I ate.

It forced me to eat more nutrient-dense foods during my eating phases, which resulted in better health overall.

Cleaning fasting is where you can lose people to the idea of IF but it is truly the way to go.

You see during a clean fast your body does things that during a fed state can’t:

• Access to your stored body fat more efficiently.
• Start to ketosis and autophagy.
• Burn fat from our bodies.

To do all of this we want insulin to be as low as possible during the fasting time.

Clean Fasting does this since we aren’t consuming anything that spikes our insulin. Yes, even no calories, no sugar creamers will start the process of insulin since it sends a signal to your brain that you are now starting the “fed state” and therefore the building of insulins begins.

This is a great article that explains more about Clean Fasting & Insulin!

But you know the amazing thing about all of this? Something that God created for our bodies is something that will also benefit our soul.

Once I started to be intentional with my fasting hours, I felt this overwhelming peace all the time, even when darkness was surrounding me.

You see that fasting demonstrates humility by acknowledging our dependence on God. Once I finally surrounded by wellness to God, I found it.

As Christians, being intentional matters. This takes our faith to a level unseen. If we take our journey of Intermittent Fasting along with being intentional by adding someone or an personal intention to pray for a certain hour of our, we will draw us nearer to God and rely on Him on deeper levels than before.

But remember that fasting is not “earning” an answer to prayer. God can not be blackmailed by human effort. God wants to answer our prayers and He answers out of grace. Fasting simply prepares us for God’s answer.

Fasting is feasting on the Lord. Looking to Him for comfort, power, strength, guidance, forgiveness, and hope on this journey of wellness through holiness.

Grab yourself a copy of our ebook: A Guide to Intermittent Fasting and Intentional Praying: Benefits for the Body, Mind, and Soul. 

 Find the ebook on our shop.

Prints of Mercy uses all proceeds to order Holy Mass for the Holy Souls with the Marian Fathers of Immaculate Conception. For more information visit prayforsouls.org

I pray that this was encouraging to you.  

With the love of Christ,

Maria Cecilia