Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fasting

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This book is a fantastic resource for anyone wishing to fast. The information is varied and thorough, and perfect for a beginning faster. With sections on the history of fasting, spirituality, meditation, health and more, this is a must-have book on fasting. While other fasting books provide interesting information on why fasting is beneficial, this book details exactly how to fast and what to expect when you fast. It also includes modified fast information including juice-fasts, etc.

This book probably spends more time discussing holistic health practices than fasting. There are 5 chapters on "Greater Spritual Awareness." The author is a "holistic" health writer. While there are many fasting facts in the book, wading through all the new-age and religious jargon to find them is challenging. I am disappointed and am searching for a book with more meat in it and less "spiritualism."

If you have never fasted before, and want to learn the basics of how and why, this is a decent book. Unfortunately, you have to wade through a lot of superfluous blather.

Having studied the subject at length, I found the science behind the book to be fairly sound, although there were a number of questionable claims (and a couple that were outright false).

As a Christian, I had some serious problems with the book. The most offensive part was the suggestion that when Jesus was tempted by the Devil after 40 days of fasting in the desert, Jesus was experiencing a fasting-induced hallucination! I started reading the book with the knowledge that there would be a lot of discussion of Eastern religions, meditation, and New Age-ism, so that did not offend me (I still don't buy the whole "chakra" thing, but I won't argue that point here). However, I thought that those relious points of view were disproportionately represented.

Most of basic fasting is common sense. If you really want an in depth, scientific review of fasting, I would recommend Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book, "Fasting and Eating for Health." I'm going to keep his book. However, I will be selling "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fasting." Despite what you have read in this review, would you like to buy my copy?