The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-CureDewey, Edward Hooker
Science
The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
Dewey, Edward Hooker
Fasting; Nutrition
Several missionaries have regained health on these new lines, who have
returned to preach and practise a larger gospel than before. One
returned from the Congo region of Africa with such wreckage of health as
to make any active service impossible. Mr. Haskell met him in New York,
and in time he returned with twenty-four missionaries, all as converts
to the new gospel of health, and to have that sustained health only
possible through a larger obedience to the laws of God "manifest in the
flesh"--obedience that takes into account the moral science, the physics
and the chemistry of digestion.
These and those others who have had their lives redeemed from lingering
death through the simple, easy ways of Nature never suffer their
enthusiasm to wane. Not to volunteer aid when unintentional suicide is
going on seems nothing less than criminal.
As a means to better health the utility of the morning fast is beyond
estimate. In all other modes of health culture there is a great deal of
time consumed in certain exercises that are certain to be given up in
time. What the busy world requires is a mode to gain and maintain the
health that requires neither time nor thought--one that is really
automatic.
We arise in the morning with our brain recharged by sleep, and we go at
once about our business. If we take a walk or go to the gymnasium, we
simply waste that much time, and we also lessen the stored-up energy by
whatever of effort is called out. We can skip the dumb-bells and perform
any other kind of exercise that is good for the health; and always with
the certainty that we shall have more strength for the first half of the
day if none is wasted in this way. As a matter of mere enjoyment, walks
in fresh air are beneficial, but not as an enforced exercise for the
reason of health.
For the highest possibilities for a day of human service there must be a
night of sound sleep; and then one may work with muscle or with mind
much longer without fatigue if no strength is wasted over untimely food
in the stomach, no enforced means to develop health and strength. When
one has worked long enough to become generally tired there should be a
period of rest, in order to regain power to digest what shall be so
eaten as to cause the brain the least waste of its powers through
failure to masticate.
One need not always wait until noon to eat the first meal. Those in good
health have found that they can easily go till noon before breaking the
fast; but in proportion as one is weak or ailing the rule should be to
stop all work as soon as fatigue becomes marked, and then rest until
power to digest is restored. To eat when one is tired is to add a burden
of labor to all the energies of life, and with the certainty that no
wastes will be restored thereby.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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