I am beginning a modified fast next week. Now before you all get hopped up and tell me it's unnecessary or harmful, you should know that I'm experienced at fasting and it has been part of my lifestyle for the last 10 years. I'm looking for motivating thoughts to meditate on next week. Thank you!

There is a thing I do when I get really uncomfortable and am trying not to think about what is making me uncomfortable (nausea, pain). I close my eyes and focus intently on a black, quiet area. I work to close out all external stimuli and just try to focus on nothing at all. I think that often in our society we are so stimulated by constant sound and visual images that we forget what it is like to just sit and be quiet. It really helps me to refocus from the unpleasant stimulus. This can also work in a reverse way, by picking a favorite place or memory and focus on remembering all the details about it, and why you find it such a good memory. You forget about everything else for a while! Good luck with your fast, and avoid watching the food channel! i'm sorry i don't exactly have 'words of encouragement' for you. anyway, you're situation reminds me of THE HUNGER ARTIST by Franz Kafka :) Is this a religious fast? Since I met my husband I found out that his religion, now mine too since getting married, has fastings every year when it gets near Easter, like now, until after Easter is over but they are Orthodox so Easter doesn't actually end when we think that it does...sometimes it has gone on longer and that's really tough on me, I can never wait to start eating again, the first two years of marriage I was pregnant during fasting holidays (they have more than one period of fasting a year) so I was lucky, I didn't have to stop eating. Now I find it such a challenge every year and unfortunately I just can't fast the whole time....hehe I usually stop over at a fast food place to pick up something on my way to work and on my way from work to home since my husband won't know I've been eating and then I make sure to throw away the fast food bags and drinks when I'm done before I get home, just in case he might need to use the car after I get home so he won't see them and figure I've been eating.