Let’s be honest, at the end of February the resolutions that were solemnly declared on New Year’s Eve are usually forgotten again. That’s why the author has long since given up trying to get one at all, although he doesn’t want to hide the fact that he counts people among his friends who actually manage to do without alcohol, carbohydrates and fatty meat well into February.
This brings them closer to the magical forty days that Jesus starved in the desert and resisted the visitations of Satan, with which the renunciation of food to cleanse the soul found its way into the occidental canon of values. Ultimately, Jesus only extrapolated the example of Queen Esther of Israel, who fasted with her people for three days and three nights in the Persian diaspora before, having been cleaned in this way, she went to King Xerxes’ apartments to begin the ceremony planned by Grand Vizier Haman to prevent genocide against the Jews.
Fasting also plays a ritual role in other ancient cultures, especially Hindu gurus have the reputation of literally floating above the ground through the most extensive renunciation, but in any case attaining a higher state that takes them directly to nirvana without further reincarnations .Catholics, however, cannot really be said to have followed Jesus’ example faithfully.
Asceticism? Does not have to be!
As Anna Dünnebier and Gert von Paczensky report in “Empty Pots, Full Pots”, their exhaustive “Cultural History of Eating and Drinking” from 1994, which has just been magnificently reprinted in the Other Library, the bishops have over the centuries in Lent between Eating orgies were celebrated on Ash Wednesday and Easter. In contrast, the buttermilk diet, which the co-author and former “Panorama” boss Paczensky underwent every year, appears almost as a high mass of asceticism.
The author, who theoretically appreciates the advantages of detoxification, lacks the necessary self-discipline. For years he tried unsuccessfully at various forms of body cleansing and weight loss and was already reconciling himself to a future as a Marlon Brando-esque flesh mountain – when he one evening attended the appearance of the red-cheeked TV doctor Eckart von Hirschhausen on Markus Lanz.
Hirschhausen, who looked just as thin but far less haggard than his counterpart, excitedly told how he had lost six or eight kilos with almost no effort within a few weeks. “Intermittent fasting” was the magic word that enlightened the author and turned him into a believing disciple on the spot.
No wonder, since it doesn’t take more than skipping breakfast and going without food for sixteen hours between the last meal, or rather the last drink, the night before and the first thing in the afternoon. Tea and water are permitted, and for the remaining eight hours one can eat and drink whatever one desires.
More columns by Gunter Blank
In contrast to longer fasting cures or crash diets, the famous yo-yo effect is avoided, since the metabolism is not throttled and no muscle mass is broken down. Instead, the glucose and fat deposits in the body are broken down. Even if the author never actually managed to lose six kilos, at least he stopped the age-related weight gain, improved the muscle-to-fat ratio, and slowly but surely he managed to lose a pound or two in small increments but sustainably get rid of permanently.
Last summer he was even able to get rid of the three kilos that he had been fed by visiting his family within two weeks. This also required less harshness against oneself than a method popular with celebrity women in particular, the Prosecco diet: few carbohydrates, no beer, no schnapps, no red wine, but one meal a day and a few glasses of Prosecco Dosage Zero.