Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul—A Christian Guide to Fasting

The New York Times bestselling author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute blends science and religion in this thoughtful guide that teaches modern believers how to use the leading wellness trend today—intermittent fasting—as a means of spiritual awakening, adopting the traditions our Christians ancestors practiced for centuries into daily life.

Wellness minded people today are increasingly turning to intermittent fasting to bolster their health. But we aren’t the first people to abstain from eating for a purpose. This Christian fasting routine was a common part of our spiritual ancestors’ lives for 1,500 years.

Jay Richards argues that Christians should recover the fasting lifestyle, not only to improve our bodies, but to bolster our spiritual health as well. In Eat, Fast, Feast, he combines forgotten spiritual wisdom on fasting and feasting with the burgeoning literature on ketogenic diets for improved physical and mental health. Based on his popular series “Fasting, Body and Soul” in The Stream, Eat, Fast, Feast explores what it means to substitute our hunger for God for our hunger for food, and what both modern science and the ancient monastics can teach us about this practice.

Richards argues that our modern diet—heavy in sugar and refined carbohydrates—locks us into a metabolic trap that makes fasting unfruitful and our feasts devoid of meaning. The good news, he reveals, is that we are beginning to resist the tyranny of processed foods, with millions of people pursuing low carb, ketogenic, paleo, and primal diets. This growing body of experts argue that eating natural fat and fasting is not only safe, but far better than how we eat today.

Richards provides a 40-day plan which combines long-term nutritional ketosis with spiritual disciplines. The plan can be used any time of the year or be adapted to a penitential season on the Christian calendar, such as Advent or Lent.

Synthesizing recent science with ancient wisdom, Eat, Fast, Feast brings together the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of this lifestyle to help Christians become metabolically flexible, improve their health, and bring them closer to God.

In this thoughtful and practical guide, you’ll discover how to reclaim this ancient discipline with a plan that delivers:

• A Step-by-Step Guide: Follow a detailed 40-day plan—adaptable for Lent, Advent, or any time of year—that eases you into a sustainable fasting lifestyle.
• Metabolic Flexibility: Break free from the modern diet trap with a clear path to become fat-adapted, making fasting easier and more fruitful than ever before.
• The Science of Ketosis: Understand how eating natural fats and practicing time-restricted eating can improve not just your body, but your mental clarity and spiritual health.
• Deeper Prayer & Discipline: Substitute hunger for God for hunger for food, integrating ancient spiritual disciplines with a renewed focus on prayer and penance.