Dear Humans
I am sure you have heard of breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch and all sorts of words dedicated to eating at specific times, but let me break this down for you, it’s made up, you can eat when you like, how you like, how much you like to eat, what to eat, how to eat. They are all perceptions made up by the people who lived before us and we still continue with this everywhere we go. Try it out, eat at a time you wouldn’t usually eat, you will figure out, you were not even hungry to start with or don’t eat when your hungry and the timings of your hunger will change.
The feeding programming is epic, it’s positioned so well into the human being, we are like cattle feeding and snacking at specific times invented by people before us and programming of certain traditions and social norms, that turn into entire ways of life and religious rulings. Come on we even make times to eat with our family friends and people we want to go out and eat with, This enough should be an indication that it’s made up. The real kicker is when you realise that when you focus on if you are hungry or not then the whole charade of eating at a specific time on a daily basis just dies out and you feed when you are hungry.
I will show you the common forms of examples to broaden my point
- Breakfast is the most common and is ascribed to the first meal of the day.
- Lunchtime at 12-1 has to be the top programming on the list as this not only functions as a convenience but also a Midday system to replenish.
- Dinner/tea, various ways of saying you’re going to eat at night or later in the day.
- Have a romantic meal with the significant other at a specific time you dictate.
- Snacking before a gym session, pre-post workout meals as such.
The above mentioned will have no objection to most people because they don’t fall under the guise of religion but if you follow a religion then they will give you guidelines of when to eat and fast accordingly.
The way I see it is If you can choose when to eat then you can choose when to fast too. If you can wake up at 4 am and have a glass of milk or order a late-night pizza, heck has a coffee late at night then you’ve figured it out already.
Another way to look at it is through the business lens. How would restaurants works if there was no need to eat a large meal and share it with your friends and family, how would breakfast places work with there was no need to eat in the morning, it’s a system you ascribe to, but my brothers and sisters you are never forced to eat or fast at any time you do not want or need to and should find out your personal needs to nourish your body.
I’ll give you two striking examples that are overlooked when the benefits of fasting are mentioned and how it applies collectively to the masses as they tend to eat several times a day but doesn’t really work for everyone.
Person A eats food four times a day and Person B eats food one time a day, Do you think prescribing the same fasting method would work for both or would you position it individually for them?
Person A would benefit from cutting out one meal per day to lower calories and lose weight and get benefits because they are not gorging themselves anymore. but let’s apply the same ruling of eating one time a day to person B who already eats one time a day, it will show no benefits at all and would be nothing of value to them.
If you can understand the simple reasoning in this scenario then you will understand the concept of water fasting, ritual fasting, eating habits and religious spins on eating time frames and non-eating time frames.
A personal example is for me eating at night was the best during my time at university due to lectures and now eating in the morning has become a ritual as I have time in the morning to feed and get on with my day. The early mornings give me enough time to eat in the morning and get on in the day but during university, I ended up usually late at night as that seemed to suit me. Some days I enjoy snacking rather than eating a large meal at a specific time, it’s all dependent on your hunger levels and how you want to feed yourself and nourish your body.
I can even go to the extent and state that eating a large meal at night doesn’t make me hungry in the morning and I tend to miss breakfast because of it, but if I sleep on an empty stomach then, without doubt, I have to feast when I wake up in the morning. you can explore this yourself and will be shocked to find out half the time it’s convenient or just mainly habit.
Religions have also their ways of eating, and particular times and all, but useful for those who follow or ascribe to the religion of their choice but let me show you that you can eat any time you want, any day you want to too. , it’s to do so with hunger! And nobody has the same hunger vibes and if we did, we would all be eating at the same time, every single day and at the same time. You can do water fasts, intermittent fasts, Junk food fast, vegetable fasts, even migraine fasts to the extent have an entire month dedicated to fasting once a year. I am just saying if you want to fast then why wait for all the way next year to do it, or next month, you can start tomorrow and do it for as long as you need to, what is really stopping you from eating or not eating beside the act itself, but they are just systems in place, certain fasting rituals and food rituals put and injected into society via religion, its rulings and those who keep promoting the same thing over and over again to keep us bound in yearly, monthly and even our entire families for generations under the scope of ritualising food times and fast times.
One of my favourites to show the concept of fasting/not eating is that everyone fasts every day. When you go to sleep till when you wake up you have completed a fast, every single day of your life you complete a fast, think about that for a while and let that set in before you really understand what fasting actually is and how there are no set regulations at all. Then you wake up and ‘Break your Fast ‘ Hence the term breakfast. In the history of the human species, fasting is not special to any religion or any form of ideology but can be found in various methods around the world, it just has to do with when you want to eat or not to eat and how long you want to wait before you feed your self again.
In the end, you can eat when you like, at whatever time you like to eat at, you are not obliged to follow a social construct of the timing of feeding, it tends to boil down to convenience, social standing and your religious programming that needs to be questioned along with your appetite.
I will leave you with something that has plagued my mind on fasting and eating rituals for a very long time.
“If God Almighty did not dictate a time for you to nourish your body then what makes you think he dedicated a time for you to fast.
Kindly
Afzal: Servant of God Almighty: The Liberator
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-Photo by Nate Johnston on Unsplash
