What can fasting eat today. How to eat right during fasting? Strict fasting and not strict - what are their differences

The decision to fast requires special attention to the diet. How to stay within the restrictions and prohibitions of this period and not harm your health?

How to fast correctly? Caring for the health of the spirit should not go to extremes that harm the health of the body, doctors are sure. If we ignore the religious component of fasting, then we, in fact, have something in between a low-protein diet, a raw food diet and pescatarianism - a type vegetarianism permitting the consumption of fish.

Who is allowed such a diet, albeit temporary? How not to turn food during fasting into an unbalanced diet and make it harmonious in terms of incoming nutrients, vitamins and trace elements? We listen to the recommendations of doctors.

How useful is this post

Temporary absence of proteins of animal origin in the diet or their replacement with vegetable "analogues" normalizes the rate of metabolic processes in the body, facilitates the cleansing of the body from toxins - waste products of metabolism. This helps to improve well-being and tone, prolong life.

Especially useful lean "diet" with chronic cholecystitis or pancreatitis - only, of course, in the presence of these diseases, it is better to coordinate your decision to fast with a doctor.

Who can't fast?

Serious restrictions in the usual diet are not recommended:

pregnant and lactating women;
children;
patients with various chronic diseases (peptic ulcer stomach and duodenum, diabetes , chronic gastritis);
To old people;
people with poor health (for example, in postoperative period or after a serious infectious disease).

Lenten menu: what is banned?

Meat, poultry, eggs, dairy products, white flour pastries, coffee, and alcohol are blacklisted for fasting. Vegetable oil, lean fish, caviar and seafood are allowed with restrictions.

The exclusion of animal products from the diet can cause a lack of iron, zinc, calcium, B vitamins, vitamin D, amino acids. This, in turn, is dangerous for the development of beriberi, anemia, decreased immunity, deterioration of hair and nails, general weakness and even depression. How to minimize possible Negative consequences diet changes in fasting?

healthy fasting rules

Fractional nutrition
Strict church fasting rules require one or two meals a day. However, the body will be much more comfortable switching to a new diet if you maintain the usual four or five meals a day.

Beware, raw food!
Cannot be eaten only raw foods, so as not to cause problems with digestion, although fasting imposes a restriction on boiled food. Vegetables can not only be boiled, but also baked, steamed, stewed, salted, fermented, adding variety to your diet.

What can replace animal proteins?
Proteins (proteins) are also found in products of plant origin: soy and its derivatives (for example, soy meat or cottage cheese - tofu), lentils, peas, beans, peanuts, pine nuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews. A lot of proteins in dried porcini mushrooms, boletus. Rye, bran, cereal bread coarse grinding richer in protein and B vitamins than White bread from wheat flour fine grind.
Lenten dishes from vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, grains will help fill the temporary deficiency of animal protein.

What can replace animal fats?
vegetable fats, including vital unsaturated fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6, which are not synthesized by the body and must be supplied with food, are abundant in avocados, cedar and walnuts, sesame, sunflower seeds, various cereals (it is better to cook cereals not from cereals, but from whole grains). In addition to sunflower oil, it is worth including in Lenten menu olive, linseed, mustard, cedar and other types of vegetable oils.

How to fill calcium deficiency?
In your diet during fasting, be sure to include legumes, seeds, nuts, green vegetables and fresh herbs. This means that every day you should have soybeans, beans, sesame seeds, almonds, hazelnuts, basil, parsley, savoy and White cabbage, watercress and other types lettuce. Also a source of calcium drinking water: depending on the degree of its rigidity, it contains from 10% to 30% daily allowance this macronutrient.

How to make up for an iron deficiency?
This trace element is rich in buckwheat, yeast, Rye bread, white and red cabbage, bitter (dark) chocolate.

How to deal with loss of strength?
Fasting days are often not easy for residents of the metropolis. To avoid fatigue, drowsiness, irritability, start the day with a hearty breakfast.
Be sure to include bananas, dates, peanuts, fresh herbs, buckwheat dishes, brown rice, lentils in your diet. These products are rich in iron and contain the amino acid tryptophan, without which the body does not produce serotonin, the hormone of joy.
Complex carbohydrates, which are abundant in cereals, pasta made from unrefined flour, potatoes, germinated wheat grains - good source energy and vitality for the whole day.

Note to sweet tooth
Allowed lean delicacies are marmalade, halva, gozinaki, dark chocolate without fillers, honey, dried fruits, pastries without eggs, milk and butter.

If you decide to fast, consult your doctor, no
Do you have health contraindications? If the doctor approves your
solution, consult with him also, which vitamin-mineral complex
suits you and take it for the recommended period.

Lenten Recipes

Recipes for salads and appetizers

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts Salad with Strawberries

Soup Recipes

Recipes for main dishes and side dishes

Breakfast Recipes

As shopping during Lent days shows, many people are now trying to adhere to the canons of Orthodox cuisine. The lively movement in the departments of cereals, frozen vegetables and canned fruits and berries is a vivid confirmation of this. How to eat in fasting without compromising health and performance? and how to cook them properly? Where to get strength and patience, so as not to go the distance ahead of time? Such questions usually concern beginners, doubters and just curious. Well, let's try to answer how to compose daily ration food in fasting, to spend it not in a burden, but in joy!

What is allowed and what is prohibited in the lean diet

First, it is worth recalling that fasting provides for the rejection of meat, milk, cottage cheese, butter, eggs, fish (except for permitted days), and all other products prepared on their basis. If you think that you can live without meat, then do not forget that you will have to eat porridge, eat without butter, and drink coffee without milk. It seems like little things, but they determine the whole picture of nutrition during fasting, and the principle “we remove the cutlet, leave the pasta” does not work very well. You need to revise your diet completely so that it satisfies daily requirement body in calories and nutrients.

In fact, based lean foods you can cook a lot of delicious and satisfying dishes. The main thing is to prepare properly: collect recipes in advance, purchase products and start creating, i.e. cook. At your service: cereals, as usual - buckwheat, rice, pearl barley, corn grits, oatmeal, peas, lentils, and "overseas" - bulgur, mung bean, couscous, brown and wild rice. Vegetable "basket" - cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, green beans, spinach. Fresh and frozen mushrooms should also not be discounted. The cereal group is represented by pasta (except for egg noodles), wholemeal bread, and a variety of fitness bars. You can pamper yourself with dryers, jam, berries, fruits and dried fruits, honey, nuts, goats, halva, candied fruits.

How to make a daily diet in fasting

In the first days of the transition to such a lean diet, the feeling of hunger may occur faster, because. plant foods are digested faster than protein foods. This should be taken into account when compiling the menu, and combine light vegetable dishes with more nutritious cereals and legumes. After about a week and a half, the body adapts, an incomparable feeling of lightness and pleasure from “simple” food will appear.

I bring to your attention an approximate daily diet during fasting:

breakfast - oatmeal with dried fruits (it is more convenient to use express flakes, which are enough to pour boiling water for 3-5 minutes), natural coffee brewed in a Turk;
lunch - soup-puree from peas and lentils (ready mixes are sold), buckwheat with mushrooms, tea with gozinaki and jam;
afternoon snack - banana or apple, juice;
dinner - pasta with broccoli and bell pepper; tea with dried fruits and nuts in honey.

Here are a few motivating factors to remember when patience is running out:

lean food contains a large amount useful substances and fiber, so necessary for the body;
during the fast, a few extra pounds are guaranteed to be lost;
fasting provides an opportunity to discover completely new dishes;
post- good workout own strength will;
each time it becomes easier to fast, this way of eating becomes a habit.

And remember - any fast ends sooner or later, and then all the food seems unusually tasty! good luck with this and the right thing- standing at your post!

The system of posts has existed in the world for a very long time. On fasting days, a person should take care of his soul, first of all, cleanse himself as if from hardships. meat nutrition, and from bad thoughts, bad feelings and actions.

Of course, the second aspect, from the point of view of true Christianity, is of greater and greater importance. But today I propose to talk about the physical aspect of fasting, namely, about the features of nutrition in fasting. What you can eat in the post, and what - you can’t. Are there any relaxations in the fasting calendar in terms of nutrition? What is the use fast food for a normally eating person?

Let's start with the last one.

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Fasting food - what does it give our health?

What is the significance of the transition from meat to lean food , why is it important for the body in fasting?
Fasting in our understanding is a restriction, a refusal of something. In terms of nutrition, this is, first of all, the rejection of animal products. It is these products that give our taste buds maximum pleasure, but they also make our body work with constant "overload" ...

According to some studies, eating meat protein causes a constant detoxification in the body, a kind of self-poisoning! So when we give up for a while meat dishes, we begin to experience something like "breaking addicts".

At the biologist researcher Frolov Yu.A. . there is even a whole theory about it. In short, the body, drugged by a CONSTANT toxic release, when switching to natural food (in his studies - to raw food, we are talking about a raw food diet) as if “sobering up”. The toxic injection into our blood stops abruptly and the body begins to “depart” gradually from toxic shock... All these are not verbose statements, but the results of a study of blood cells during various types nutrition.

When used a large number high-protein foods, such as meat, milk, cheeses, etc., the body does not have enough enzymes for its complete digestion, as a result of which a process of constant putrefaction occurs in the large intestine. This process not only causes distension (bursting) abdominal pain due to increased gas formation, but also causes the entry of decay products (toxins) into the bloodstream, which is a serious burden for the liver and kidneys, which neutralize these substances.
What to say about bad cholesterol, forming atherosclerotic plaques and deposits in blood vessels, at frequent use fatty animal food.

And due to the fact that we have undoubtedly become more satisfying and richer than our ancestors lived some 100 years ago, in our diet similar products We meet almost every day and more than once a day.
It is from such an impact that our body rests during the days of Great Lent! And it is extremely beneficial for the health of all organs and systems! Therefore, do not deny your body a similar "diet" these days.

On the contrary, set yourself up for cleansing and lightness.

Such an attitude, as well as the realization that you are not “doing nonsense in splendid isolation”, but follow the old Orthodox traditions together with thousands of other people at the same time, will give you the necessary determination and the necessary strength.
During fasting -

cleansing of all body systems
work improves internal organs
improves immunity, improves general well-being

If this type of nutrition is new to you, then your health will not improve immediately, a probable crisis will pass within one to two weeks.

Seven weeks of Lent is quite a long time. If you have never restricted yourself in food, you may not need to fast all these days. As a test, start limiting your menu to Wednesdays and Fridays. Look at the reaction of the body - are there weaknesses and ailments these days?

If you are not feeling very well, return fish or dairy products to your diet. But still try to refuse meat for the entire time of fasting.

If you don't feel better, try to give up one thing - either meat or dairy products.

But, as a rule, one to two weeks is enough for the body to rebuild and your well-being will improve much over time.

Eat serious illness, in which lean nutrition should be introduced with caution, as advised by doctors. For example, diabetes, or stomach problems.

Fasting food and a raw food diet - is it possible to combine?

Sometimes a person is inspired by the idea of a lean diet and decides to switch not just to plant foods, but also to raw foods, without heat treatment. So to speak, get healthier "by full program”, because so much tempting and interesting information now issued about the benefits of a raw food diet ...

Here are the problems with gastrointestinal tract can appear and become aggravated quite unexpectedly.

I write based on my personal experience That's exactly what happened to me a year ago. I decided to combine fasting with the beginning of a raw food diet, and everything was done at once. Yesterday I still ate, relatively speaking, sausages in dough, and today I’m already sitting on apples alone ... Not really, I’ll tell you. After 2 weeks, the stomach began to hurt and "rebel" from such unceremonious treatment. And, before that, I didn’t even know where this very stomach is located!

Therefore, my sincere advice is to do everything gradually and in stages, not to get carried away. You can eat some vegetables and fruits raw (salads, snacks between meals), and some - in the form of cereals, oven-baked vegetables, etc.

Any freshly squeezed juices from any vegetables and fruits are very good - great food and drink in one, no problems with digestion, but only one solid vitamin and mineral benefit for the body!

Raw radish, turnip radish, and mushrooms in any form are heavy food for the stomach.

During fasting, it is better to eat small portions, but more often.

Drink plenty of pure raw water, but try to remove coffee and tea from the diet altogether - they drag along the habit of eating all this candy-cookie-pie, etc.

Why do you need to drink a lot of water? For enhanced removal of toxins, which are inevitable when switching from a conventional meat-eating diet to a vegetarian diet. The body is being cleansed - help it get it all out!

Great drinks other than water vitamin teas with raspberries, wild rose, with herbs.

And a special note -

Easter Holidays Ending Lent

When the fast ends, it is allowed to eat the so-called fast food. In practice, this means that you can eat everything, but it’s also festive, that is, it’s especially tasty, especially rich and “quite officially”. Here a person can seriously suffer if everything is understood literally and one day he sharply attacks such foods as fatty sweet cottage cheese (Easter), hearty muffins (Easter cakes). wine, eggs, etc. Even banal indigestion can be obtained!

Therefore, eat everything, but little by little, as if tasting. Believe me, even after tasting each dish with holiday table just a little bit, you run the risk of overeating for real. Just be careful with yourself and everything will be fine.

Meals during Lent are limited plant food- grains, vegetables, fruits, mushrooms and nuts. These are the permitted foods during fasting.
Eat special days when you can eat fish and even red wine. Eat special days when you can not even use vegetable oil, and on the most severe days - the first and last days Lent is recommended not to eat any food at all.

If you are interested in strict adherence to Orthodox traditional dietary recommendations on every day of fasting, you can use the special Fasting Calendar 2017, it shows all the restrictions and concessions in the daily lean diet.

If you would like to benefit from these fast days and weeks of restrictive nutrition, you need to remove all the "loopholes" in your head about those products that formally can have vegetable origin, but at the same time be extremely harmful. We are talking about various chips, crackers, pies, etc.

They should definitely be removed from the menu.
See how many delicious fruits, nuts, dried fruits you have at your disposal! Take the same dates - a complete set of healthy micro and macro elements, vitamins, tasty glucose and fructose balanced among themselves. They will help you not to become depressed about giving up ordinary sweets, cheer you up and prevent you from depleting the reserves of minerals and substances that are necessary and important for health.

An important rule of any post(and not only fasting!) - do not abuse it! Even the most beneficial and wonderful herbal product can provide Negative influence on health if it is consumed too much!
Treat food not as a source of unlimited pleasure, but as a kind of "fuel" for the body.

List of lean foods

Cereals. Any.
Vegetables and mushrooms. Also any.
Peas and all legumes.
Vegetable fats. It's about about any vegetable oils.
Pickling products. From traditional cabbage to soaked grapes.
Greens in any form (fresh and dried) and any quantity.
Soy and soy products.
Bread and pasta.
Olives and olives.
Desserts are jam and jam, dark chocolate, marmalade, halva and gozinaki.
Any fruit. Both ours and exotic ones, including dried fruits (raisins, candied fruits, etc.)

Orthodox Lent 2017 - Daily Nutrition Calendar

The days of fasting, from the point of view of nutrition, are interpreted in different ways. There are especially strict fasting days - days on which it is not recommended to eat at all. This is the first and penultimate day of the 40-day fast. Below, in another version Lenten calendar For 2018, these days are marked.

Some days it is recommended to eat, literally, “bread and water”. Apparently, this is the most stringent recommendation of all possible. For ordinary person it is quite enough to simply not eat any products containing animal food. The same bread must be made without eggs and butter.

The concept of “dry food” is also introduced - this is the consumption of bread, herbs, vegetables (raw or pickled), fruits and dried fruits, olives, honey, berry or fruit decoctions, kvass, herbal teas.

Here detailed calendar fast days 2018 where every day has its own peculiarities of nutrition. You can follow exactly these recommendations if you want to more accurately reproduce Orthodox Christian traditions during this period.

Questions about individual products in the post

Bread. Often those who fast, especially those belonging to the older generation, completely refuse bread, explaining this by the fact that there is butter and eggs ... Tell me, knowing the modern food industry, you also think that they put bread in your loaf butter and real chicken eggs? However, there is an alternative - now they produce a lot of bread. containing nothing of the kind by definition. They may well replace our usual bread, which, by the way, is not very useful anyway, and many advise us to refuse it altogether, regardless of the calendar ..
Pasta. They contain only flour, water and salt. Should not be included egg powder. For lean nutrition - it's the most. Only here they will have to be flavored not with cream, but with sunflower or other vegetable oil.
Varenniki, lean dumplings. If you like such dishes, it is quite possible to continue eating them in fasting with the appropriate changes: dough without eggs, filling - without butter, meat, cottage cheese. Replace with cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes and similar vegetable fillings.
"Meat" products from soy. The idea itself is not bad. It seems that the rules are observed and the usual piece of sausage can be eaten .. But just think, due to which the usual taste of meat is achieved where the meat has never “spent the night”? Due to dyes, flavor enhancers and flavorings, in short, due to chemistry .. Is it worth it? Decide for yourself.
Mayonnaise. Now they are doing the so-called " lean mayonnaise". Lenten means without eggs, which means they were replaced with something again and it is hardly something natural ...
Lenten pastries and sweets. Yes, now you can find one in our stores or. It probably has a right to exist. But I would rather advise you to replace it with natural sweets - the same, dried fruits, halva, marmalade, gozinaki.

Balancing nutrition while fasting

How to balance your list of products during the fast, so as not to get health problems due to the lack of any substances?

Animal protein is replaced by vegetable protein. On some days you can also fish, but this is already an exception to the rule. The rest of the time - mushrooms, beans, peas, nuts, lentils.

iron deficiency in the absence of meat, it can be replenished with apples, buckwheat, bananas, cocoa.

Vitamins and minerals are perfectly absorbed from freshly prepared fruit and vegetable juices. Make it a rule to drink one glass fresh juice per day, and you will not suffer from beriberi.

Main - the right attitude! Do not take everything too seriously and even tragically. Thousands and even millions of people on the globe for years do not eat meat, do not drink milk, and do not even boil or fry any of their food. To get any harm from such a diet, for example, the same vitamin B12 deficiency that raw foodists and vegans love to scare so much, you need to live on such a diet continuously for more than one year! We are definitely not in danger.

And only cheerfulness, harmony “threatens” us, excellent health and even perhaps getting rid of some diseases.

Are you fasting this year 2017? What are you eating at this time? How do you feel in terms of spirit and health? What do you think of the system in general? Orthodox posts in terms of body health?

The charter of the Church teaches what should be abstained from during fasts - "all piously fasting must strictly observe the charters on the quality of food, that is, abstain from certain brashens [that is, food, food. - Ed.], not as from bad ones (let this not be), but as from indecent fasting and forbidden by the Church. Brasna, from which one must abstain during fasts, are: meat, cheese, cow's butter, milk, eggs, and sometimes fish, depending on the difference in holy fasts.

The rules of abstinence prescribed by the Church during the Nativity Fast are just as strict as the Peter's Fast. In addition, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the Nativity Fast, fish, wine and oil are forbidden by the charter and it is allowed to eat food without oil (dry eating) only after Vespers. On the other days - Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday - it is allowed to eat food with vegetable oil. Fish during the Nativity Fast is allowed on Saturdays and Sundays and great holidays, for example, on the Feast of the Entry into the Temple Holy Mother of God, on temple holidays and on the days of the great saints, if these days fall on a Tuesday or Thursday. If the holidays fall on Wednesday or Friday, then fasting is allowed only for wine and oil.

From December 20 to December 25 (old style), fasting is intensified, and these days, even on Saturday and Sunday, the fish is not blessed. Meanwhile, it is on these days that the celebration of the civil New Year falls, and we, Orthodox Christians, need to be especially collected so that we do not violate the severity of the fast with fun, drinking wine and eating food.

Christmas fast is sometimes called cereal. The mistress of the table at this time is porridge.

Porridge is one of the oldest dishes of mankind. There is an opinion that bread came from porridge - thick, overcooked porridge was the prototype of unleavened cakes. Gradually, the cereals for such a cake began to be crushed, and flour appeared, and with it - unleavened bread.

In Rus', porridge was one of the most important dishes. However, porridge Ancient Rus' they called not only cereal dishes, but in general all dishes cooked from crushed products. Ancient sources mention bread porridge made from crackers, fish porridge and so on.

Porridge was cooked from millet, oats, barley, buckwheat and other cereals. The most revered porridge in Russia was buckwheat.

While fasting bodily, at the same time we need to fast spiritually. "Fasting, brethren, bodily, let us fast also spiritually, let us resolve every union of unrighteousness," commanded the Holy Church.
Bodily fasting, without spiritual fasting, brings nothing for the salvation of the soul, on the contrary, it can be spiritually harmful if a person, abstaining from food, is imbued with the consciousness of his own superiority from the consciousness that he is fasting. True fasting is associated with prayer, repentance, abstinence from passions and vices, eradication of evil deeds, forgiveness of insults, abstinence from married life, with the exclusion of entertainment and entertainment events, watching TV. Fasting is not a goal, but a means - a means to humble your flesh and cleanse yourself from sins. Without prayer and repentance, fasting becomes just a diet.

The essence of fasting is expressed in the following church song: “Fasting from fasts, my soul, and not being cleansed of passions, we console ourselves in vain by non-eating: for if fasting does not bring you correction, then you will be hated by God as false, and become like evil demons, never eat."

Every year everything more people tend to fast not only in connection with their religious beliefs, but also to improve their health. Indeed, as doctors note, people who refuse to eat food of animal origin for some time feel an improvement in their condition. However, it is worth remembering that strict fasting can not be observed by children, the elderly, pregnant women and nursing mothers. Everyone else can follow all the instructions that are recommended to be followed during each type of fast.

How to eat right during Lent?

It should be noted that those who decide to fast for the first time should begin to gradually refuse food of animal origin. The fact is that a sharp restriction can be detrimental to health.

On Clean Monday - on the first day of fasting, it is not recommended to eat, but, as an option, you can eat dry herbal products. Excluded use vegetable oil when preparing meals. On this day religious people must maintain their strength with prayers and holy water. However, such a diet should be maintained during the first, fourth and seventh weeks. In 2, 3, 5 and 6 weeks, the use of boiled food is allowed with. Proper nutrition while fasting implies exclusion from his menu like meat products, as well as fish. During this period, dairy products, eggs, sugar, alcohol should be abandoned. You can only eat plant foods.

Tips on how to eat right in fasting before Easter will help believers make a menu for every day.

On all days of fasting, in addition to strict ones, you can safely eat following products: cereals, legumes, pasta, seaweed, dried fruits, nuts. From cereals, you can cook porridge on the water and side dishes, seasoned sunflower oil. You can add mushrooms and vegetables to them.
Beans can be cooked lean soups making casseroles and tortillas.
You can cook seasoned with sauces made from herbs and spices.

You need to eat as varied as possible. Breakfast should be eaten lean sandwiches. To prepare them, you need a piece of toasted bread. It can be poured with olive oil, put a slice of cucumber, tomato and greens on top. It is recommended to cook porridge not on water, but on juice from berries.

The most important thing during this period is to feel peace of mind and tranquility. People who strictly observe all the prescriptions of the fasts cleanse their souls from sins and draw closer to the Lord.