Holiday Survival Guide: Extra Fasting for Extra Feasting

This year you can feast without guilt by doing some extra fasting before and after extra feasting.

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I thought this would be a good time to write a post about developing a strategy for navigating the holidays. For many of us, our past dieting life was characterized by letting our eating habits run feral from late-November through New Year’s, and then embarking on a new diet plan, usually including a short-lived gym membership, come January 2nd.

But now that we’re fasters, we need to sift through that old way of thinking, tossing out the bad and retaining the good. Is there anything to be redeemed in that pattern? I think there is. But first, let’s isolate the bad.

This “diet” way of gorging in the holidays was broken because it was characterized by guilt. The guilt was only somewhat lessened by saying that atonement would begin on January 2nd. But there was a nagging voice in the background whispering, But what if you don’t actually lose the weight? What if the new diet you try doesn’t work? Are you actually going to stick with it this time?

I mean, given most of our yo-yo dieting history, the voice was not wrong.

A second negative aspect of this yo-yo way of viewing the season is that people tend to eat with the idea that, This is my last chance to eat carbs before I start a low-carb diet. Or, this is my last chance to eat freely without counting points. Or, this is my last chance to eat fatty foods before I begin a low-fat diet.

This casts a melancholy tone over what is meant to be a joyful feast season in the same way that there’s a sadness that accompanies a friend’s moving-away party.

Furthermore, this mentality diminishes the true enjoyment of food by placing it on a pedestal that it was never meant to occupy. The surest way to destroy any pleasure is to exalt it above its proper sphere, and to put too much pressure on it to give you more fulfillment than it was meant to give.

A Christmas cookie is fun because it’s a tradition, enjoyed with loved ones by the light of a Christmas tree, with presents, and jolly music playing, and people dressed in red, and soft white flakes falling from the sky. It makes a very poor life of the party but a fine accent piece.

Trying to cram in too many Christmas cookies before the low-carb diet starts, (or the Mediterranean diet, or Trim Healthy Mama, or the Whole 30, or whatever new thing Oprah’s doing) is setting yourself up for disappointment.

What is the Difference Between Feasting and Binging?

This brings us to the question of what it looks like to rightly celebrate this season of food, warmth, laughter, loved ones, giving gifts, and counting blessings. It’s usually wrong-headed to be reactionary and do the exact opposite. Just because you overindulged in past years doesn’t mean the answer is to be extra strict this season.

So many things in life are more nuanced than that. If you discover that you’re going the wrong way in the woods, it’s not usually the solution to go in the exact opposite direction. There are a number of different directions that could be correct, and your job is to find the right way. Sometimes a slight course correction is all that’s needed.

What if this year you feasted but without the guilt?

Our impulse to feast is a good impulse. Feast days date back to the Bible—in fact, God commanded his people to feast. They were instructed to delight in his abundance.

¹³ “You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress. ¹⁴ You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns. ¹⁵ For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

Furthermore, the Israelites were judged when they refused to delight in his abundance. For example, in Deuteronomy, Moses is instructing the people of Israel what will happen if they fall into disobedience after they inherit the land. But part of the disobedience they are being judged for is the refusal to serve their God with joyfulness and gladness, because of the abundance of all things.

⁴⁵ “All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. ⁴⁶ They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. ⁴⁷ Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things,

Andrew Klavin tells in his spiritual autobiography, The Great Good Thing, how he slowly converted over several decades from an atheist Jew to a Christian. One of the main things that drew him to the beauty of the gospel was watching his friends celebrate Christmas. His longing to enter the joyfulness and gladness of heart because of the abundance of all things during Christmas became for him, his first glimpse and encounter with the Great Good Thing.

So How Does One Feast Rightly?

First, a feast is always done with other people, in contrast to bingeing which is either done in secret, or else your family members may be around, but it’s primarily you raiding the house for bonbons and stuffing them into your face. Details matter.

Second, remember the food isn’t the main thing, it’s just an ornament.

In this way, it’s possible for someone who is required to eat an extremely restrictive diet because of an autoimmune disease, brain issues, migraines, etc, to still enter into the spirit of Christmas while only having cheese and salami on their plate. The difference is that the spirit of the thing must not be restrictive for the sake of being restrictive. We should all enter into it to the extent we can. There are some people who won’t have sugar or even carbs for various reasons, and they can still feast joyfully.

How to do Extra Fasting for Extra Feasting