There are several ways of practicing detached attachment. The purpose is to slowly detach oneself with the attachment in a step-wise manner.

Ways

1. Vruti Sankshep: Limit the number of items eaten in each meal.
2. Rasa Parityag: Give up one taste on a specific day (for example, no sour foods on Friday)
3. Unodar or partial fasting .(eat less, e.g. reduce your intake by 50% in each meal)
4. Chauvihar: Do not take food and water after sunset
5. Upvas: Do a weekly fast for 24-36 hours
6. Athai: Do upvas for 8 days (Navai: 9 days, Solbhathu: 16 days)
7. Maaskhaman: Give up food and water or only food for one month.
8. Varshitap is Upwas: fast for 36 hours, on alternate days for 13 lunar months.
9. Not eating wheat once a week to reduce insulin resistance.
10. Serving an item you like the most to others and restraining yourself from eating it e.g. ice cream.

Fasting promotes autophagy (apoptosis). In the absence of external sources of food, the body begins to eat itself (auto: self, phage: eat), destroying and recycling its own damaged cell bits and proteins, so that new and healthy versions can be built.

Autophagy is “a process of cellular housekeeping” that’s crucial for “cellular quality control,” and that allows for cells to better “adapt to stress.” In 2015, an article was published in the journal Nature article with the title “Eat Thyself, Sustain Thyself.”

On a cellular level and instead of throwing things away, the body burns them and then makes new things out of the “ash.”

Fasting and calorie restriction have traditionally been associated with slower aging and longer lifespan.

The body taking over the oldest, junkiest proteins and burning them for energy happens “in the later stages of a long fast”, somewhere around 20 to 24 hours.

Fasting appears to induce autophagy in most organs (like the liver, muscle, and pancreas), but “not in the brain.”

A 2016 JAMA Oncology study on women with breast cancer found that those who fasted for more than 13 hours a day had lower rates of cancer recurrence.

Dr KK Aggarwal

Padma Shri Awardee

President Confederation of Medical Associations in Asia and Oceania (CMAAO)

Group Editor-in-Chief IJCP Publications

President Heart Care Foundation of India

Past National President IMA