How to break a fast

How do you break a fast? While it's not exactly topical now, a week after the Biggee, our other 25-hour fast is coming up in just over a month.

After such a stretch with no food or liquids, the obvious answer would seem to be: cram it in, everything you can get your hands on!

My friend Yishai taught me long ago to start with a pastry and coffee, and ease into a full meal. Although his choice of pastry is cake, mine is baklawa.

I also make sure to rehydrate with water so the brain will start working ― advice that I first read from champion bicyclist Andy Hampsten sometime around 1991, not about a period of unusual deprivation, but about the fast-breaking involved in waking up each morning. I have followed this advice ever since and have had great health.

Although this advice was given in the context of professional sports, it was confirmed by the guys who made the behind-the-scenes documentary about surviving on a desert island titled S.T.O.P.: Surviving as a Castaway. I'm quoting from memory, but they said that as long as you don't drink water, you get dumber and dumber, slower and slower.

I have experienced this, while not trying to survive on a desert island, as the inability to choose what will be the first thing I am going to eat or drink. Even out on the street on a normal day, if I don't keep hydrated, I get irrational.

I would also recommend a variety of foods to replenish needed nutrients after a fast, although this is just common sense to me, not trained medical advice. This also takes some planning, since the starving brain will probably not want to stop eating something, once it gets started.

I have relatives who immediately sit down to a full Persian meal fit to feed the masses. And while this takes into account the need for nutrition, I believe it's not the ideal plan of attack. It's too easy in a heavy meal not to drink enough fluids, and therein lies madness.

To be fair, it is traditional for Persians to start the break-the-fast with a traditional dish made of grated apples, honey (optional), and rose water (to taste). I can't give any quantities here, and don't even know what it is called, but the consistency is more like a soup than a drink.

Another Persian opinion that I got, when I asked this question to my friends, is to "start of with some chai; then have some watermelon; then dig into whatever your heart desires." (Chai is the Farsi word for tea, although both the words "chai" and "tea" have Chinese origins; it just depends on which culture took the word from which region of China).

I'm not a physician, nor do I play one on T.V. If you have more medically sound advice, please share it.

(Image: toastforbrekkie, "Baklawa and Arabic coffee", licensed under Creative Commons. Thanks, "Toast For Brekkie"!)