By Paul and Ann Malkmus
Two waves of questions come through our office every winter, and they arrive about a month apart.
The first shows up in the last days of December and the first week of January. Church has announced the fast, the sign-up sheet went around after the service, and the questions are all practical ones. Can I have coffee. Is bread out. What about the oil I cook with. Does peanut butter count.
The second wave comes in February. There are fewer of those and they’re quieter. They don’t ask what’s allowed. They say some version of: I did it, I felt better than I have in years, and now I’m eating the way I did before and I’m not entirely sure how that happened.
We’ve been getting the February note for a long time now, and it’s the reason we wanted to write this one. The first set of questions is easy, and a hundred websites answer them. The second is the one nobody prepares you for.
What Daniel Actually Did
There are two passages, and they’re doing different things.
In the first chapter, Daniel is a young man carried off to Babylon, and the king has arranged for him and the others to be fed from the royal table. Daniel doesn’t want it. He asks the steward for a trial:
“Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink.” — Daniel 1:12
Ten days. Pulse is an old word for things grown from seed — beans, lentils, vegetables. At the end of it, the account says their countenances “appeared fairer and fatter in flesh” than the young men eating the king’s portion, and the steward let them carry on.
The second passage comes much later, when Daniel is an old man.
“I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.” — Daniel 10:3
Three weeks. But look at what’s actually happening there. He’s mourning. He’s waiting on an answer he hasn’t received yet, and he sets aside the good things — the rich food, the meat, the wine, even the oil he’d normally put on his skin — for as long as the waiting lasts. It isn’t a diet. It’s a man in grief, paying attention.
Put the two side by side and you’ll notice something worth saying out loud: nobody in scripture ever did the thing we now call the Daniel Fast. The twenty-one days come from the second passage. The food comes from the first. Somebody put the two together, and it was a good and reverent thing to do — but it’s a synthesis, not a command, and we’d rather tell you that than let you think you’re following a recipe handed down in the text.
We say it because of what it does to the anxiety. If you’ve lain awake wondering whether almond milk breaks the fast, it’s worth remembering that Daniel wasn’t working from a list either. What the two passages have in common isn’t a menu. It’s a posture — a man who set something aside on purpose, for a reason he could name.
Hold onto that and the rest of this gets a lot easier.
What the Fast Looks Like Now
The version most churches hand out is fairly consistent, and it comes largely from two books published around the same time — Susan Gregory’s and Kristen Feola’s. Between them they more or less settled what the modern fast is.
In: fruits and vegetables of every kind, fresh, frozen or dried. Whole grains — brown rice, oats, quinoa, millet. Beans and lentils. Nuts and seeds. Herbs, spices, salt. Water.
Out: meat, dairy and eggs. Sweeteners of any kind, including honey and maple syrup. Leavened bread. White flour, white rice, anything refined. Fried food. Caffeine. Alcohol.
Where the lists disagree is smaller than it looks. Coffee is the main one — nearly every published guide puts it out as caffeine, and nearly every year somebody writes to ask whether it really has to be. Oil is the other. Some lists allow a little olive oil for cooking, others treat it as a refined food and leave it out.
Our advice on both is the same, and it isn’t very spiritual: pick one list and stop reading lists. The difference between the strictest version and the gentlest one is not where the value of these three weeks is going to come from.
What It Isn’t
It isn’t a cleanse. It isn’t a weight-loss plan with a Bible verse on the front. And it is not a twenty-one-day examination of your character that you can pass or fail.
We mention that last one because we’ve watched it happen. Somebody eats a cracker on day nine, decides they’ve ruined it, and quits — not because the cracker mattered but because the scoring did. If that’s you, and it’s been you before, the fix isn’t more discipline. It’s a different frame entirely. You had a cracker on day nine. Day ten is still there.
Replace Before You Eliminate
This is the part we’d most like you to take from this article, and it’s the thing almost no Daniel Fast guide tells you.
Most people approach the twenty-one days as pure subtraction. Everything they know how to cook is gone on the morning of day one, and nothing has arrived to take its place. By Thursday they’re standing over the sink eating raw carrots and wondering what’s wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with them. Nobody sustains a way of eating that they experience as an absence.
We call it “Replace Before You Eliminate,” and it’s the way we teach everything.
So, practically, before day one:
- Set up the salad box. This is the one we’d start with, and it’s a system we’ve taught for years. One afternoon a week, prep all your vegetables at once and store them in separate containers — glass if you have it. Greens in one. Peppers, carrots, cabbage, beets in others. Tomatoes on their own, cut close to when you’ll eat them. Onions on their own, so everything doesn’t taste of onion. What you’ve built is a salad bar in your own refrigerator, and dinner then takes under five minutes to assemble. Systems beat willpower, every time.
- Find three meals you can make without thinking. Not twenty-one. Three. A pot of lentil soup, a grain bowl with something good poured over it, oatmeal with fruit. Make each one once in the week or two before you start, so day one isn’t also the day you’re learning to cook.
- Taper the coffee. Two weeks of half-strength beats one very bad Tuesday. Nobody’s spiritual life has been improved by a caffeine headache.
- Cook once, eat twice. Something already made and sitting in the refrigerator is most of the secret. Willpower at six in the evening is not a real thing.
- Put fruit where the sweet thing used to be. Dates, frozen grapes, a baked apple. The craving is real and it’s easier to answer it than to argue with it.
- Shop before day one, with a list, having eaten.
Add nuts, seeds and a tin of beans to that and the salad stops being a side dish and becomes the meal, which is what it needs to be for three weeks. And if you’re out of the house at lunchtime, build it in a wide-mouth jar instead — dressing in the bottom, then the hearty vegetables, then the beans and nuts, and the greens packed on top where they stay dry. It travels, and it keeps.
We’ve written the whole thing up: the salad box system, start to finish.
None of that is spiritual work. It’s just the difference between three weeks you’ll remember well and three weeks you’ll be glad to see the back of.
What the Research Says, and What It Doesn’t
You’ll see the Daniel Fast studies quoted a lot in January, usually without the caveats, so here they are with them.
A research group at the University of Memphis has looked at this several times. In one study, forty-three people ate this way for twenty-one days and had their bloodwork taken before and after; total cholesterol and LDL came down on average. A later study of thirty-nine people, randomized and placebo-controlled, found similar movement in LDL and fasting glucose — though what was randomized there was a supplement, not the diet. Everyone in it did the fast. A separate project ran a version of the fast through two churches in Philadelphia and followed a hundred and thirty-five people who signed up, sixty-nine of whom finished.
Now the honest part. The samples are small. And in none of this work was the fast itself measured against a group who carried on eating normally, so there’s nothing to weigh the result against. Dietary compliance was self-reported. The windows were three to six weeks. And most of the work comes from a single research group, which isn’t a criticism of them — it’s just how much weight the evidence can carry.
We’d rather you knew the limits than quoted the numbers at somebody.
What the studies suggest is unremarkable: when people eat vegetables, beans, fruit and whole grains for three weeks instead of what they had been eating, their bodies tend to respond. We didn’t need a study to believe that, and we’d be careful about promising anyone their own numbers will do anything in particular. That’s not what these three weeks are for.
Day Twenty-Two
Here’s the part almost nobody writes about.
The fast is built to end. That’s what makes it a fast rather than a way of living. But there’s a difference between the fast ending and the food ending, and most people don’t notice they’ve decided the second thing until it’s already happened.
Which brings us back to February. It’s almost always the same note. Someone finishes twenty-one days, feels better than they have in a long time — sleeping properly, no afternoon collapse, a stomach that stopped complaining somewhere around day eight — and then, over a week or two, everything quietly goes back. Not through a decision. Just through Tuesday.
That isn’t weakness and it isn’t a failure of faith. It’s that nobody planned for day twenty-two. The twenty-one days had a start date, a finish line, a church behind them and probably a group chat. Day twenty-two had none of that. It was just a Wednesday with nothing written on it.
And here’s the thing worth sitting with. If something did shift over those three weeks — people most often mention sleep, digestion, and the afternoon holding together — the fasting didn’t do that on its own. The food had a good deal to do with it. Which would make it less a temporary state you visited than something that tends to go along with eating this way.
That’s the whole of what we teach, and we’ve been at it a long time now. Not twenty-one days of it. Not perfectly. Just that plate, kept — because of where the nourishment was put in the first place:
“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” — Genesis 1:29
If your fast ends and you’d like to keep going, you don’t need another program and you certainly don’t need to start over. Keep two or three of the meals you actually liked. Add one more vegetable next week than you did this week. That’s it — and it’s more than most people ever do.
One Last Thing, and It’s the Main Thing
Daniel wasn’t trying to lower his cholesterol.
He was waiting on God, and he set something aside so that he would notice he was waiting. Every time he sat down and the rich food wasn’t there, he remembered why. That’s what a fast is for. If the twenty-one days turn into a food project with a scoreboard, we’ve traded something valuable for something much smaller.
So plan the meals, taper the coffee, be gentle with yourself about the cracker on day nine. And keep the reason. That part isn’t on any list.
Questions We Hear Most Often
What is the Daniel Fast?
It’s a twenty-one-day partial fast built on the book of Daniel, usually done by churches together in January. For those three weeks you eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds, and you drink water — setting aside meat, dairy, eggs, sweeteners, leavened bread, refined foods, caffeine and alcohol. It’s a fast rather than a diet: the food is the means, not the point.
Is the Daniel Fast ten days or twenty-one days?
The modern fast is twenty-one days, but the two passages behind it are different lengths. Daniel 1 describes a ten-day trial of vegetables and water. Daniel 10 describes three weeks of setting aside rich food, meat and wine while Daniel was mourning. The version practiced today takes the length from one passage and the food from the other, which is a reasonable thing to have done — just not a direct instruction from the text.
What can you eat on the Daniel Fast?
Fruits and vegetables of any kind, fresh, frozen or dried. Whole grains like brown rice, oats, quinoa and millet. Beans and lentils. Nuts and seeds. Herbs, spices and salt. Water to drink. In practice that’s a great deal more food than people expect, and the ones who enjoy the three weeks are the ones who cook rather than the ones who simply subtract.
What is not allowed on the Daniel Fast?
Meat, dairy and eggs. All sweeteners, including honey and maple syrup. Leavened bread. White flour, white rice and refined foods generally. Fried food. Caffeine and alcohol. Published food lists differ slightly at the edges — mainly over coffee and cooking oil — so pick one list and follow it rather than trying to satisfy all of them.
Can you drink coffee on the Daniel Fast?
Nearly every published guide says no, on the grounds that coffee is caffeine. If you drink it daily, taper down over the two weeks beforehand rather than stopping cold on day one — a caffeine headache in the first week is the single most common reason people give up early.
Is the Daniel Fast actually in the Bible?
The passages are, and both are real: Daniel 1:8–16 and Daniel 10:2–3. The twenty-one-day fast as it’s practiced today is a blend of the two rather than something scripture instructs. That’s worth knowing, mostly because it takes the pressure off getting the rules exactly right.
Is the Daniel Fast a weight-loss diet?
No, and treating it as one tends to spoil it. Some people do lose a little weight over three weeks and some don’t. The fast is a spiritual practice with a food component, and the moment it becomes a weight program with a devotional attached, the thing it was for has quietly gone.
Will I be hungry on the Daniel Fast?
Most people find they aren’t, and when they are, it’s usually a sign there isn’t enough food in the house rather than a sign the fast is working. Beans, whole grains, nuts and good-sized portions of vegetables are filling. Hunger isn’t the point — attention is.
What happens when the Daniel Fast ends?
For most people, the old plate comes back within a week or two, usually without any decision being made. It’s worth deciding in advance what you’d like to keep, even if it’s only two meals and one new habit. Whatever you felt during those three weeks came largely from the food, which means it doesn’t have to end when the fast does.
When do most churches start the Daniel Fast?
Early January, very often the first Sunday of the year, which is why it’s sometimes called the New Year Fast. Some congregations run it during Lent instead. If your church is doing it as a body, join them on their dates — doing it alongside other people is worth more than doing it on the ideal week.
I take prescription medication. Can I do the Daniel Fast?
This is the one place we’d tell you to make a phone call first. A three-week change in diet can interact with some prescriptions — blood thinners and diabetes medication in particular — and that’s a conversation for whoever prescribes them, not for us or for a food list. Nothing about the fast requires you to stop or adjust anything you’ve been prescribed.
Where to Start
If you’d like the food list on one page — what’s in, what’s out, the three meals worth knowing before day one, and a plan for day twenty-two — we’ve put it together.
Send me the Daniel Fast food list
And if what you’re really asking is what it would look like to keep eating this way after the twenty-one days are over, we’ve written that out too — a guide to a day on the Hallelujah Diet, start to finish.
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