No. Food is part of it, but if you’re only changing your diet, you’re missing the point.
The Church gives us fasting rules about meat and dairy and oil because our bodies matter. We’re not souls trapped in flesh. We’re embodied creatures, and what we do with our bodies shapes our souls. But fasting from a cheeseburger while nursing your anger at your coworker all week? That’s not fasting. That’s just a diet with extra steps.
St. Seraphim of Sarov said fasting is one of the indispensable means for acquiring the Holy Spirit. Notice he didn’t say it was about losing weight or proving how disciplined you are. The goal is union with God. Everything else is just the scaffolding.
What Fasting Actually Includes
When the Church talks about fasting, she means a whole package. Yes, you abstain from certain foods on Wednesdays and Fridays and during the longer fasts like Great Lent. But you’re also supposed to be praying more. Going to services. Giving alms. Forgiving people who’ve hurt you. Going to confession. Reading Scripture instead of scrolling your phone for an hour before bed.
The Triodion, which is the service book we use during Lent, puts it plainly: “As we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. True fasting is to put away all evil, to control the tongue, to forbear from anger, to abstain from lust, slander, falsehood and perjury.”
Control the tongue. If you’ve ever worked a twelve-hour shift at the refinery with someone who won’t stop complaining, you know how hard that is. But that’s the fast too.
Why the Body Matters
Here’s something that might surprise people coming from a Baptist background: Orthodoxy doesn’t see the body as bad or the soul as the only thing that matters. We believe the body and soul work together. When you discipline your body through fasting, you’re training your whole self. You’re learning that you don’t have to give in to every desire the moment it shows up.
Fr. Alexander Elchaninov wrote that fasting “disturbs and disrupts physiological leisure, so that a person becomes receptive to the spiritual world.” When you sit down to dinner and can’t have what you usually have, you remember. Oh right, I’m fasting. Oh right, I’m trying to draw closer to God. That little disruption wakes you up.
It’s the same reason we stand for most of the Liturgy. Your legs get tired and you remember you’re doing something that costs you something.
Fasting From More Than Food
During Great Lent, the Church traditionally asks us to give up secular entertainment. No going out dancing. No parties (except on Saturdays and Sundays when the fast is relaxed). In our time, that might mean less Netflix, less scrolling through Instagram, less whatever it is that numbs you out after work.
I know a guy who fasts from sports radio during Lent. He’s not saying sports radio is evil. But for him, it fills up all the quiet space in his truck on the drive to work, and he realized he needed that space for prayer instead. That’s fasting.
Some people fast from gossip, which in a small town like Beaumont is harder than giving up meat. Some fast from complaining. Some from buying anything that isn’t necessary. The point isn’t to make up your own rules. The point is that the physical fast is supposed to extend into the rest of your life.
The Danger of Getting It Wrong
You can fast perfectly according to the rule and still completely miss it. The Pharisees fasted. They were great at it. Jesus wasn’t impressed.
If you’re fasting but you’re proud of how well you’re fasting, you’ve turned it into another way to feel superior. If you’re fasting but you’re irritable and snapping at your kids because you’re hungry, you’re making everyone around you miserable for no good reason. If you’re fasting but you haven’t forgiven your brother, you’re wasting your time.
The Church isn’t trying to make life harder for you. She’s offering you a tool. Fasting is medicine, not a test you pass or fail.
Start Where You Are
If you’re new to Orthodoxy, don’t try to do everything at once. Talk to your priest. Maybe you start with Wednesdays and Fridays. Maybe you start by just adding ten minutes of prayer on fast days. Maybe you start by turning off the TV during dinner so you can actually talk to your family.
But whatever you do with food, don’t stop there. Fast from something that actually has a hold on you. Fast from the sharp comment you want to make. Fast from checking your phone every five minutes. Fast from holding grudges.
That’s when fasting stops being about rules and starts being about freedom. And freedom is what we’re after. Not freedom to do whatever we want, but freedom from all the things that keep us from God.
