And also how to prepare for it, what to eat and how not to undermine your health.
March 10 2019
Lent lasts until Easter – as many as 48 days. The first seven of them are the most difficult, the body is under stress due to a change in diet. When switching to plant foods, you want to eat more often, especially when it’s cold outside, at first your mood may change. Enter the fast smoothly, choose a few days during the Maslenitsa week and give up meat and fish. Boil porridge in water, not milk, replace cakes and sweets with honey and dried fruits, halva. Think over the menu in advance and purchase the necessary products, look for recipes for desserts without sour cream and eggs.
Fasting is designed to discipline, but at the same time be feasible. You should not starve yourself out of habit; beginners are allowed to eat boiled dishes from the second day. If you have stomach or metabolic disorders, consult your doctor. A strict refusal to eat is also not recommended for children and pregnant women. If you feel weak and dizzy in the first days, make changes to the diet – drink a little kefir, eat eggs, oven-baked potatoes and pumpkin without salt and seasonings.
The body gets valuable protein from meat. To avoid a shortage, rely on cereals, eggplant, mushrooms, peanuts, lentils and other legumes. Instead of coffee, choose herbal tea, fruit drink or compote from berries, they contain many useful microelements. In addition, you can eat pickles without oil and seasonings, seaweed.
The first and last (passionate) weeks of fasting are the most severe. However, a complete refusal to eat is obligatory only for monastics, for the laity there may be indulgences.
In the second week, dry eating alternates, when you can only eat raw foods, and days when you are allowed to eat hot food: soups, casseroles, stews.
In the third week, everything is exactly the same as in the second. Try to diversify your vegetarian menu as much as possible: mushrooms, nuts, algae.
In the fourth week, fasting permits relaxation in honor of the Feast of the Annunciation. On this day, Sunday 7 April, you can even cook fish.
The fifth week is no different from the second and third: we alternate days of dry eating and days with hot food, on weekends you can relax a little.
In the sixth week, it is allowed to deviate a little from strict fast – all in honor of Palm Sunday. On Saturday you can eat caviar, and on Sunday – fish.
The seventh week, pre-Easter, is very strict. No hot food, just dry food. And on Friday – Good Friday – the most convinced are ordered to refuse food altogether. But on Sunday it will already be possible to break the fast.