I don't like the "Daniel Fast!"

    Reading this title might make you think that I don't like the "Daniel Fast" because it's hard and I like my sugary foods, meat and dairy.  That is not what I meant by the title, although it is true.  I love meat and eggs and one week into the "Daniel Fast" I miss them.  However, my dislike of the "Daniel Fast" has nothing to do with it being difficult and being a challenge.  After trying this out for a week, I notice that it really hasn't been a biblical fast for me.  I have done water only fasts quite a few times throughout my Christian experience and they have been powerful times of prayer and mediation; freeing up the time that I had been spending preparing food, eating, and cleaning it up and using that time for prayer, mediation, and biblical study.  Every time I have done a water-fast I have felt like my emotions and my own thoughts get out of the way and I can hear the Lord the most clearly of any time in my life.  However, thus far in the Daniel Fast it has been kind of the opposite... distracting... religious instead of real...

It's Neither Daniel Nor A Fast! Discuss...

    I've been spending so much time trying to make recipes that my family will eat and trying to make vegetable after vegetable palatable that it has greatly increased the time and focus that I spend on food instead of freeing up time for those things mentioned above.  I suppose that my main complaint about the "Daniel Fast" is that it isn't a fast at all.  It feels like a diet mixed with a religious observance that I am constantly trying to get around.  It turns out that unsalted plain Triscuits are ok because they only have three ingredients: whole wheat flour, canola oil, and salt... so if you dip them in a garlicky bean paste that you blend up yourself then you aren't breaking the rules.  According to the internet you can boil down dates to make date honey and replace sugar in dessert-like recipes to legally add sugar to things while still technically doing the "Daniel Fast."  None of this seems like what Daniel actually did.  He denied himself the meat and alcohol that was offered him by his captors and showed that God would sustain Him by eating the way he always had.  He prayed three times a day, and when told that doing so would land him in the lions den, he continued to pray as he always had.  To me, the story of Daniel is about consistency in doing what you know is right, not following observances religiously.  It feels like the "Daniel Fast" is a marketing ploy and is promoted like the Atkins Diet or a Juice Cleanse, when really what we need in our lives is consistency, permanent things that we do and don't do that we know are right.  Much of the food we eat in America is Garbage, but meat and eggs are an important source of protein and essential nutrients as well as satiety.  Since I'm not going to give up meat and eggs at the end of this three weeks and consistently do this diet like I think it is what's right, it feels like the opposite of what Daniel would do.  Daniel would hold to his beliefs instead of just following what people on the internet told him to do.  So perhaps this should be called the "Anti-Daniel Diet" instead of the "Daniel Fast."

Or maybe I'm just really hungry.

What Would A Real Daniel Fast Look Like

    If the government said that you had to only eat Beyond Meat and couldn't have real meat anymore, then a real Daniel Fast would be to continue to eat the way you always had and not follow the government's new rule.  By consistently doing what you know is good and good for you and always has been and not following rules for the sake of rules, you are following the example of the biblical Daniel.