I consider myself a devout Catholic, but I do not see myself as a Catholic who puts one's well-being to side. Modern Church practices have Catholics fasting (2 small meals + 1 big meal) and abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and then the same things for every following Wednesday and Friday until Easter Sunday. A good number of Catholics think this is too lax.
More strict fasting goes vegan (Eastern Rite) plus fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. Some Catholics practice Black Fast were abstaining from food all day along until a sunset for one vegan meal. The following picture is that of a "traditional" fasting calendar for the entire liturgical year -
You might as well be vegan if you're going to do this calendar since almost half of the year you're abstaining from meat (March, April, November, December, June, and August). If most Catholics followed this they'd be probably be underweight and suffer from malnutrition. (This calendar was made by A Catholic Life -- a Catholic who's quite gung-ho on the traditional ways of Catholic life but then he's also vegetarian in real life and you know I feel about those types of people.) Say good-bye to endurance sports and things like lifting weights for health. Not to mention that hitting your 2k calories per day during Lent will not be met.
Do Catholics who practice Black Fast for multiple consecutive days, trying to push it to 40 days, have jobs that require them to exert energy let alone get out much, like adult responsibilities like errands and taking care of kids. That's a serious question. It may get you to a spiritual high, but it totally rejects modern - and sound - science, and commons sense, where you need sustenance, and adequate sustenance, to function fully.
I say this with all respect to those who want to take their fasting game to the next level while wanting it to be more prominent in the Catholic world: We're not monks in the desert. I wish that were the case because I'd probably take the extreme form of fasting a little more seriously. I don't mind doing Black Fast as an experiment, but I ain't gonna flex about it if I ever do it for more than a couple of days. Heck, I support bringing back Ember Days.
I've seen myself and my own mother, when deprived of food and only turning to liquids for than five days edge towards going apeshit. The reason being I had a couple of wisdom teeth pulled out a few years ago were I was subjected to only liquids as I abstained from solids for the entire week. By day five my hands were shaking because sipping water and eating yogurt just wasn't enough for my body. Just last year, my dear mother decided to get braces. She was also exercising daily in order to lose and maintain a healthy weight. Due to having braces, the first few weeks of eating was a chore. She was limited to only soft foods, liquids and blending any solids that were too hard for her to chew into a shake. Accompany that with exercising daily she lost weight faster than usual. If this continued her weight would've been dangerously low for her height and age. Thankfully, after a month or so, she gained control of the situation and slowly started to eat solids again. The experience was quite unpleasant for her.
If there's one thing I'll say that's archaic about in my faith -- in a bad way -- it's how Catholics tackle fasting not just during Lent but throughout the entire liturgical year. Western Rite or Eastern Rite? Traditional fasting or modern fasting? There's no true set expectations that I know of besides abstaining and fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent in preparation for Easter Sunday. I'd rather people develop a deep prayer life than admire any extreme form of fasting because "that's what they did in the old day" or "why can't we admire our Orthodox brothers or Eastern Rite Catholics because they're really hardcore about fasting!" Yea, no. Sometimes a thing being old isn't always good, let alone sustainable.
Some take fasting as optional or barely even fast and abstain on Wednesdays or Fridays during Lent. On the other end of the spectrum I've read posts saying they're going to only drink water through the 40 days of Lent as they give a link to some physician or dietitian saying it's totally okay if done "safely." Um, okay.
For those that are looking at Lent and the liturgical calendar to implement a strict fasting practice, do you advocate bringing back social norms like mantillas for women when attending church and suits for men? How about alter rails, no communion via hand, and rood screens? I get the feeling they wouldn't really approve of these resurgences and those advocating for it (for example, me). I wonder the percent who are passionate about strict fasting that prefer the NO or the TLM. It be an interesting survey to unpack.
Without that said, I am actually going to adopt abstaining from meat on Fridays year round. I think that's a very reasonable practice to take-up (plus it aligns with my current diet of abstaining from meat for health reasons outside of my Catholicism).
In the meantime I think concepts like Exodus 90 for Lenten preparation is a great way to follow the instructions of the Church for Lent while building a prayer life, implementing health choices (daily exercise, cutting out alcohol for 40 days, cutting out sweets and eating between meals), abstaining from brainless internet use and entertainment, and controlling unnecessary spending (Amazon, Ebay). This, to me, is more relevant to what plagues men and women today. As I said, we're not monks back in the old day living in the desert where we had the whole day to think about our Lord and where strict fasting was conducive to demands of the lives lived. Things have changed.
