Things I learned during Daniel Fast

In most of the churches I’ve grown up in, there have been church-wide Daniel Fasts ranging from 10 days to 3 weeks, based off of Daniel’s diet in the book of Daniel. It has mainly been done for spiritual benefits, but there are also tremendous health benefits to the Daniel fast as well. I haven’t done any Daniel fasts for the past couple of years, but I decided to do one again on my own this year for 10 days. One of the previous churches I attended would do a modified one, which is what I did this year, and this what the modifications looked like:

For liquids, can only drink water and herbal teas (original Daniel fast is only water)
For protein, can eat tofu
Can eat non-seed oils (original Daniel fast I thiiiiink is no oils whatsoever)
Can eat unleavened bread (I think bread is not allowed at all in the original Daniel fast…)
Can eat popcorn as snack (but only popcorn that is minimally or not seasoned with salt or salt and olive oil)

There weren’t a lot, but here were the things I’ve learned/realized during the Daniel Fast – positive and negative:

I do emotional eating ! I will eat when I’m bored. I would notice the urge to eat, usually sweet things, but I would also notice that my stomach was not actually hungry.
I feel like with caffeine out of the picture, my sleep schedule was better.
Ironically, trying to purchase clean, whole foods is a lot more expensive than eating processed foods. I feel like this has some kind of commentary with regards to our economy.
As a lady, the Daniel fast actually had a negative effect on my hormones, so… I might not try it again in the future. Perhaps I will simply abstain from certain kinds of foods.

Anyways, thanks for reading !