Please, do not fast for the wrong reasons. I'm tweeting my progress to keep me motivated and help others stick with it. I started my fast because I was so pissed and aggravated about someone stealing my grill off my backporch, that my spirit started screaming at me, and I lost my appetite. As I listen to my soul closely, I knew what needed to be done, and began.

"When you fast do not look sour like the hypocrites, for they put on pretentious faces, in order to shine with their fasting before the people. Truly, I say to you, they have lost their reward, because they fast only out of their self-seeking desire for recognition." ~ TJ 6:23-24

'Moreover, when ye fast, be not of sad countenance, that thou appear not unto man to fast, but unto thy Father, which is in secret, and thy Father shall reward thee openly.'" (Matthew 6:16-18)

"Fasting of the body is food for the soul." - "As bodily food fattens the body, so fasting strengthens the soul. Imparting it an easy flight, it makes it able to ascend on high, to contemplate lofty things, and to put the heavenly higher than the pleasant and pleasurable things of life." Saint John Chrysostom

"Life is slow suicide. Nine humans in ten are suicides." - "To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals." - "The best of all medicines are rest and fasting."--Benjamin Franklin

"A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer." - "A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind and soul. It crucifies the flesh and, to that extent, sets the soul free." - "What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner." - "My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray." - Fasting will bring spiritual rebirth to those of you who cleanse and purify your bodies. The light of the world will illuminate within you when you fast and purify yourself." - "More caution and perhaps more restraint are necessary in breaking a fast than in keeping it." - "Experience has taught me that it was wrong to have dwelt upon the relish of food. One should eat not in order to please the palate, but just to keep the body going. When each organ of sense subserves the body and, through the body, the soul, its special relish disappears, and then alone does it begin to function in the way Nature intended it to do."--Mahatma Gandhi

"I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency."--Plato

Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering sister and brother. This practice needs to be rediscovered and encouraged again in our day." - "It seems abundantly clear that fasting represents an important ascetical practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. - Pope Benedict XVI

Becoming detached from dependence on outer, physical sources of bodily sustenance, the life force sees that it is being supported from within, and wonders how this is so. The mind then says: 'The solids on which the body used to depend are nothing more than gross condensations of energy. You are pure energy, and you are pure consciousness.' Then, whatever command the mind impinges in the consciousness of the life force, it will manifest accordingly."--Paramahansa Yogananda

I don't think any of these spiritual leaders were talking about fitting into a bikini by July or getting a role in a movie. Please fast for the right reasons, or you will regret it later.