Food Preparation
You will quickly find that most of the prepared meals you find in grocery stores contain ingredients that are not acceptable for the Daniel Fast. Consequently, you will need to prepare most of your meals from scratch!
Meal preparation can take more time during the Daniel Fast, but you can also adopt some habits to streamline this essential part of your fasting experiences.
Meal Planning - Plan all of your meals for one week. Make sure you have all the ingredients you need along with snack foods!
Set a Cook Day - I frequently use Saturday as the day when I plan all my meals for the coming week and then cook several meals in advance. I make pots of soup, vegetable chili, chapatis and many other dishes. This saves me hours of time and lots of frustration in the coming week, plus it's fun!
Salad Prep - I wash and trim all my salad ingredients as soon as I get home from the grocery store. I then store each item in a container for easy use later in the week. I can make a lovely salad in less than a minute because all the ingredients are already prepared!
Dear Susan,
I made the corn chips from the Daniel Fast Cookbook Version 2 and my husband ate all of the first batch before I could taste them. He said they were great so... I made a double batch yesterday and they are terrific. I've made a batch of salsa to go with them; although I might have to make more chips!
Barb
More liquids, less weight
If you haven't been drinking enough water, your body may have developed a pattern of storing water. This water retention equals extra unwanted weight.
By increasing fluids during the Daniel Fast, you are flushing out toxins and teaching your body that it no longer needs to store water. Drink hot water with lemon slices throughout your day, especially before eating, to help reduce fluid retention. Be sure the water is filtered and free from chemicals.
Love those hunger pangs!
So often when we have hunger pangs, we rush for snacks or something that will make it go away. But some little insights about hunger pangs may have you making a different choice.
I love this one: hunger pangs actually mean that your body is using stored fat in our body. So if you want to lose some weight during the Daniel Fast, then welcome those hunger pangs.
Dehydration aften sends a message that "reads" like hunger. So instead of grabbing a snack . . . go for a tall glass of filtered water!
Finally, hunger pangs often pass after a few minutes. So when you sense hunger . . . wait it out.
READ THE LABELS
I know you are probably really tired of hearing me scream, "READ THE LABEL" when reading through the blog. I started exclaiming the anthem after answering hundreds of questions that required the writer to read the label to find out what ingredients were included in the prepared food they were considering.
So a new habit for those of us on the Daniel Fast is to READ THE LABEL so we can learn the ingredients included in the food inside the box, bag, can or jar. We are not so concerned about the nutritional list. But we are very concerned about the ingredients to make sure there are no sweeteners, dairy products or chemicals included in the food.
Remember, this is a fast!
It's important to keep in mind that we are on a fast, which is restricting food for spiritual purposes. So while we can eat as much food as we want and any time we want . . . we want to keep in mind that we are fasting.
I encourage people to stick with three modest Daniel Fast meals and one or two small Daniel Fast snacks. The average-sized adult should drink about 1/2 gallon of filtered water each day.
