Read this Before Tisha B’Av!

BS"D

So the atmosphere today is pretty heavy. Jewish people worldwide are getting ready for a 25-hour fast, not for health purposes but for the commemoration of tragedies that happened to the Jewish nation.

Any advice here is not to diminish the magnitude of the day. We are actually meant to feel hunger, thirst, and weakness--a tiny sliver of acknowledgement of what our ancestors went through.

I do know, though, that I've been through meaningful fasts where I felt hungry but totally fine, and others where I was so thirsty I wondered if I'd make it through the fast!

So as not to be repetitive, read my post about tips on fasting that I posted for the 17th of Tammuz three weeks ago.

This fast is longer and more intense--the mourning is complete.

Although fasting is not for our physical benefit (though some would disagree and say occasional fasting is a necessary cleansing, detoxifying and health-promoting idea--and that thought has merit, because anything G-d, or lehavdil, the sages tell us to do is always good for us!), it definitely is for our spiritual good. A time of empathy, compassion, mourning, introspection, and the desire for the world to change. Our physical body is weakened and our spiritual one heightened.

So while we embrace the day, I'm just trying to help you get through it. Everyone knows that before a fast it's important to drink, to hydrate. Just realize that drinking plain water isn’t enough, it will flow right through you. The key is that the water should be accompanied by vitamins and minerals. So watermelon is one delicious choice, as are grapes, cherries, oranges, and drinks like the electrolyte drink with the recipe I posted before.

I'll type it here in short to make life easier for you: Mix ½ cup fresh orange juice, ¼ cup fresh lemon juice, 2 cups water, 2 tbsp organic raw honey or organic maple syrup,

⅛ tsp Himalayan Pink salt and store in mason jars in the fridge.

Another key point is that eating chips, cookies, crackers and other processed foods are manufactured in a way that will preserve them--and one method is there is no liquid at all in the final product--they are dry, dry, dry! These will triply dehydrate you so that a regular amount of drinks won’t compensate for the dehydration they cause.

It's interesting. In an African desert, American tourists asked the natives how much water they drank. While for the Americans no matter how much they drank, it was never enough, and they were always thirsty, the natives surprisingly answered that they drank only 3-4 cups a day. My only logical conclusion as to how that could possibly be true is that their entire diet was hydrating. So the extra 3-4 cups of water was just to supplement that. The fruits and vegetables they chose, and the methods they used to prepare their other foods (and the baobab water or whatever cool desert food they had available) were ones that would deliver water to every cell of their body. I could only imagine the Americans bringing their fare of chips, cookies, popcorn, deli meats, and sugary gatorade--all dehydrating! So drinking gallons of water didn’t help them.

Coffee is in a category of its own. True, in general, it's not the worst beverage in the world. But besides for being dehydrating and addicting, it also messes with the hormones that control blood sugar. So towards the end of the fast, coffee-addicted-then-deprived-people really, really don’t feel good.

Until I got my husband to go off coffee (I know, I'm so mean!) I was on my own the second half of the fasts. I couldn’t blame him. His headache overwhelmed him. He says now that one of the main benefits of going off coffee is that his fasts are vastly different; he feels fine!

I know it's too late to go off coffee now before the fast. To be practical, if you are a coffee-drinker, you probably should have a coffee five minutes before the fast and rest the last few hours to sleep through your headache. But Friday, after the fast, maybe it's time to start talking about weaning off.

May we all fast well, and have a very meaningful, powerful, and prayerful day. And may we merit to not have to suffer anymore and have the geula sheleima speedily in our days.

Take care,

Nechama Dina Smith

P.S. If you want me to be your NTP but you’re worried I will take your beloved coffee away from you, have no fears. Whatever changes you make will come from you. You will do great! Stay tuned for my affordable options to meet with me so that I can help you be the healthiest you! To be announced soon iyH.