How to Fast

If fasting sounds worth trying after the last post, here’s how I’d actually recommend starting — practically, not heroically.

Start With One Meal

You do not need to attempt a multi-day fast your first time out. Skip one meal — lunch is usually easiest — and use the time you’d normally spend eating to pray or sit with Scripture instead. When hunger shows up, let it function as a physical alarm clock, a reminder to turn your attention to God rather than to food. That’s the whole practice at its simplest.

Fast From Something Besides Food

Food isn’t the only thing you can fast from, and for some seasons of life it isn’t even the wisest choice. Social media, streaming, sugar, shopping — anything you reach for reflexively for comfort or distraction can become a fast. The test isn’t the object itself. It’s whether giving it up for a set time creates space you then intentionally fill with God rather than just white-knuckling an absence.

Pick a Rhythm, Not Just a One-Off

A single fast during a hard week can be meaningful, but the real fruit tends to come from rhythm — the same one meal, the same day, most weeks. Many believers throughout history have set aside a regular day for it. Whatever rhythm you choose, write it down somewhere you’ll actually see it, because a fast you only intend to do is a fast you’ll quietly skip.

Break It Well

How you end a fast matters too. Don’t treat the end of a fast as a green light to overindulge as a reward — that trains your body and soul to associate spiritual discipline with deprivation followed by excess. Break it simply, with gratitude, and let the hunger you just felt sharpen how you receive the meal that follows.