If you do searches on fasting there are lots of great sites out there with rafts of information and stories of people fasting for 20, 30 or 50 days.

Which is brilliant and people report all kinds of miracles through fasting – cancer cures, stomach ulcers and depression.

If you’re new to fasting, which I was a year ago, it can all be a little daunting! So take it easy – take it a day at a time – lots of small changes make big ones. By getting to grips with the basics, you can build up over time and take on bigger challenges when the time is right.

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Keep it simple! Start off with a basic juice – try apple, carrot and ginger.

Once you’re in the swing of it, try new things, have fun, experiment!

Oh and try to balance your vegetables with juice too – or it can get a little acidic on your poor stomach.

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One of the most amazing aspects of Fast Monday for me is the impact it has had on the rest of my life. I am amazed at the effect it has had on my overall eating habits. I find I am eating smaller portions and am much less likely to gorge or eat stupid stuff. Although – don’t get me wrong – I am no saint and am as capable as anyone else of having a couple of big slices of chocolate cake and then feeling rotten.

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I started FastMonday as a simple idea with a few friends back in May 2009 and it is something I have been meaning to do for years. I was first inspired to explore the idea of not eating for one day a week when I heard that a famous footballer of my Father’s generation – Stanley Matthews – did just that.

I am a runner and have run the last 12 London Marathons. It is my main passion in life and keeping my weight down and having a great diet has a big effect on the quality of my running. FastMonday has been wildly successful for me and has allowed me to get to my best running weight and I recently posted my best run for over 5 years coming 4th in my age category in a large Half Marathon. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

I have also been reading a great book recently – Younger Next Year – which is making me realise even more what a crazy world we live in with so many people eating themselves into a wretched, idle and sedentary life. There are two authors – one a guinea pig for the methods of the book and the other a doctor. Both are brilliant but let me quote the doctor.

Unique among all the generations of living creatures that have wandered the earth for more than three billion years, we have stepped out of the crucible of evolution. Most of us in the West are not likely to face starvation. We are not hunting or hunted. Life for us is not the razor-thin line between famine and plenty. From the point of view of shaping our species, death by starvation or cold has gone away. It is impossible to overstate the importance of that development or the depth of the change. Almost incomprehensibly, the great problem of our time, in the developed world, is surfeit. And idleness. Our ancestors ran for their lives for hundreds of millions of years, desperately searching for food, storing it up in their bodies against the certainty of drought, ice and starvation. And then, in a twinkling, all that was gone and a fundamental law of creation ceased to apply. This is arguably the most profound shift, ever, in the way that the world works.

Let’s face it guys – if we don’t grab hold of our health and well being – no one else will do it for us. Look around you. The western world is going in one direction very quickly and it is very very shocking. I cannot believe how big some people are.

Do me a favour. If you are reading this blog do one thing right now. Even if it’s not signing up for FastMonday then do something. Join a gym. Enter a race. Throw away the biscuits. Go for a walk. Phone a friend and commit to something. But do something. No action equals no change.

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