Christmas feast, New Year fast

Another year lies before us like a blank page. What shall we write? More of the same or something new?
To write something new, we must first want it. We must want it so much that we are willing to change our sacred habits to get it. We have to reach that ‘tipping point’ where the dubious pleasures of staying in a certain bad habit are overcome by our desire for something else. We must imagine our new goal. Dream it. See it. Pray for it. Ask for it. Believe it. Think about it all the time. Only then will our subconscious get the message and make it appear. We will act in new ways as our subconscious prods us in the direction of our new blueprint.
Our subconscious will also make us notice new opportunities that were always there but to which we were previously blind. One of my goals for the coming year is to improve my health and vitality. With my recent sickness (bronchitis) I had emphatically reached the tipping point that had been building for a while. And whilst browsing a website called The Habit Code I came across Ways to eliminate bad habits and a comment about fasting being helpful in this regard. I already knew something about the ancient time-proven physical and spiritual benefits of fasting but had I not had it in my mind that I wanted to improve my health I probably would never have noticed the comment. Now my subconscious seized upon it, virtually waving it in my face and saying ‘This is what we need’.
So I am starting off the New Year with a fast. Ain’t I the life of the party?

I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency. Plato

Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick, is to feed your sickness. Hippocrates

Fasting is the greatest remedy – the physician within! Paracelsus

To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals. The best of all medicines is rest and fasting. Benjamin Franklin

Fasting is the world's most ancient and natural healing mechanism.
Fasting triggers a truly wondrous cleansing process that reaches right down to each and every cell and tissue in the body. Within 24 hours of curtailing food intake, enzymes stop entering the stomach and travel instead into the intestines and into the bloodstream, where they circulate and gobble up all sorts of waste matter, including dead and damaged cells, unwelcome microbes, metabolic wastes, and pollutants.
All organs and glands get a much-needed and well-deserved rest, during which their tissues are purified and rejuvenated and their functions balanced and regulated. The entire alimentary canal is swept clean. By rebuilding immunity, health is naturally restored and disease disappears.If health and immunity are thereafter conscientiously maintained, the individual is no longer vulnerable to disease and dieting become unnecessary. Surely one of the most overlooked and yet most valuable modes of healing that will be rediscovered in the future of the new medicine is the fast. This is because of the increasing interest in looking to oneself for healing powers. For the fast is an inward process and cannot be entered upon only from an outer approach with any expectation of a lasting benefit. The person must invariably be involved with the overall results. This therapeutic encounter is in direct contrast to the usual non-involvement in the physician-directed, disease-oriented medical practice of today. Evart Loomis M.D.