This handy reference guide, Seven Basic Steps to Successful Fasting and Prayer, will help make your time with the Lord more spiritually rewarding. I encourage you to keep it with you during your fast and refer to it often because it gives easy-to-follow suggestions on how to begin your fast, what to do while you fast, and how to end your fast properly.
If you find yourself eating that sandwich, and start to beat yourself up, stop. We as humans fail at many things, but God’s love is proven time and time again. Eating on the fast does not make you a failure. To be considered a good hitter in baseball you only need to hit thirty percent of the time at-bat. If you eat something you meant to be fasting, just get back into the fast and finish strong.
For the uninitiated, intermittent fasting is an eating pattern or a diet regimen that cycles between brief periods of fasting (with either no food or significant calorie reduction) and non-fasting over a defined period. There are different types of intermittent fasting such as the 16/8 method, the 5:2 diet, eat-stop-eat -- all of which involve vary in the number of fast days and calorie portions. But if you’re a newbie faster and trying to lose weight or do away with that unhealthy visceral fat using the intermittent fasting, most of them can seem too extreme for you. But fret not, here’s one that’s considered best for beginners - the 12:12 method. Let’s try to figure out what exactly is the 12:12 fasting and how does it help with weight loss. Read - Spinach juice benefits for weight loss: How to lose belly fat in 1 week by adding spinach (palak) to your diet 
In addition to our attitudes towards God and our stance before man, our motives must also be correct. We should fast in order to further the building up of God’s kingdom by seeking to minister to others. The prophet Isaiah received from the Lord the acceptable motives for our fasts: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:6-7).

The Bible gives examples of God’s people occasionally combining fasting with their prayers so as to stir up their zeal and renew their dedication and commitment to Him. King David wrote that he “humbled [him]self with fasting” (Psalms 35:13 Psalms 35:13But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into my own bosom.
In order for a fast for God to be effective, you must also pray. Praying and fasting to God is a powerful weapon against adversity. Joel 1:14 says, "Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord." A fast for God puts your trust in Him as the only one who can help you. During your fast for God, remember that He is faithful and true, willing and able to help you in any way He can. 
Even with these results, one of the concerns with fasting is that people will binge on non-fast days. But the results of two months-long trials, published in 2018 in the journal Food Science & Nutrition, showed that dieters, specifically those following 5:2, didn’t binge. “When you impose a two-day 70 percent calorie restriction, what they do on the natural days is eat about 25 percent less,” says Harvie, one of the authors of the study and a co-developer of the 5:2 diet. “And that is why the diet is so effective.”

In addition to our attitudes towards God and our stance before man, our motives must also be correct. We should fast in order to further the building up of God’s kingdom by seeking to minister to others. The prophet Isaiah received from the Lord the acceptable motives for our fasts: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter -- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:6-7).
“Cycles of fasting can reset and rejuvenate the human body,” said Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California. Periods with no food, he said, help the body eliminate and replace damaged cells with new ones through a process called autophagy (the study of which recently garnered a Nobel Prize). (Longo is a leading fasting researcher but he’s pretty dug in — with a book about fasting, and a company that sells fasting products. He says he donates all the proceeds from the company and the book to health charities.)
In the Bahá'í Faith, fasting is observed from sunrise to sunset during the Bahá'í month of 'Ala' ( 1 or 2 March – 19 or 20 March).[22] Bahá'u'lláh established the guidelines in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. It is the complete abstaining from both food and drink during daylight hours (including abstaining from smoking). Consumption of prescribed medications is not restricted. Observing the fast is an individual obligation and is binding on Bahá'ís between 15 years (considered the age of maturity) and 70 years old.[22] Exceptions to fasting include individuals younger than 15 or older than 70; those suffering illness; women who are pregnant, nursing, or menstruating; travellers who meet specific criteria; individuals whose profession involves heavy labor and those who are very sick, where fasting would be considered dangerous. For those involved in heavy labor, they are advised to eat in private and generally to have simpler or smaller meals than are normal.
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