Fasting

28.9.2014, 6 a.m.

I am losing perhaps one kilo weight every day during the Navratri fast. So in 9 days I will have lost 9 kilos. I am not eating meat, rice, chapati, dal, bread, biscuit, etc and instead eat fruits, baked potatoes, singhara, yoghurt, makhana, and drink milk and fruit juice ( not all at one time ).

I had become overweight, because of eating too much. Now I am again becoming slim and trim, thanks to Navratri.

To lose weight there is only one way, and that is to eat less, particularly fats and carbohydrates. So we should stop eating meat, rice, chapati, bread, biscuit, etc and instead eat fruits, baked or boiled vegetables, yoghurt, singhara, makhana, etc and drink milk and fruit juices. Exercises can contribute only to 10-15% of weight loss.

Commonsense tells us that we should eat only as much as our body requires, but we usually cannot resist cramming our stomachs with food ( pet bhar ke khana ), often far in excess of our requirement. it requires a lot of will power to resist this temptation, and few people have such will power. So we put on weight and become fat and  look ungainly, and invite a host of medical problems.

Our body is made of the food we eat. So to take care of our body we must take care of the food we eat, but do we ? A Yogi at Allahabad whom I knew ( who died at the age of 92 years ), and whom I would meet frequently, told me that sweet things are poison for the body, though they may be very tasty. But how many of us can resist eating sweets ?

To my mind fasts like Navratri, Roza, Lent, etc serve a scientific purpose by reducing the load on our stomachs and thus making us healthier. No doubt one can fast on days other than Navratri, Ramzan, etc but psychologically that is more difficult as few people have the will power to do so.