Here are some guidelines to help make Fast Sunday a lot less painful… and hungry.
1. Know your metabolism. If stuffing your gullet at 11:45 PM on Saturday will help you wake up without an appetite on Sunday morning, go for it. If you’re like me and wake up ravenous even with the benefit of a midnight snack, it doesn’t much matter.
2. Wake up early on Fast Sunday. You might be able to sneak in a quick breakfast whilst the more righteous members of the family are still sleeping. Keep in mind that cereal, though quick and easy, is also quite noisy. Other things to watch for are the ding of the microwave and the toaster. Ideally, you have a few granola bars squirreled away, and are able to snarf them down without detection.
3. If your early morning breakfasting is discovered, smack your forehead and say, “I totally forgot!” You might want to practice an expression of wounded contrition in the mirror. It also helps if you say something like, “And I was totally going to fast that Cousin Jamie would repent of his gayness!” Nothing like a little bigotry to really sell your righteousness.
4. If you have small children, feel free to pop a few of their Cheerios during testimony meeting. Just don’t get caught.
5. Before hitting up the drinking fountain, make sure the coast is clear. Some people actually think that God gets pissed if you drink water on Fast Sundays.
6. “Forget” your scriptures/lesson manual/spare tampon at home. This gives you an opportunity to run home and get it, along with a little sneaky snack. This is actually a good tactic to use every Sunday.
7. Develop some sort of condition. Keep things as vague as possible. “My doctor doesn’t think I should fast,” you say, looking sad and spiritually undernourished. It could be as simple as mysteriously developing a headache every Fast Sunday. You can’t take Advil on an empty stomach, duh. I was able to make both having a gallbladder and not having a gallbladder reasons that I couldn’t fast. If played correctly, the medical inability to fast will actually garner a lot of sympathy, since you are unable to enjoy the blessings of fasting. “You poor thing,” the Relief Society ladies will say, as they dig through their purses for a piece of Werther’s Original. Remember to say thank you for the candy.
8. The fast ends as soon as church ends, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a Pharisee. Or is it a Saducee? Anyway, a holier-than-thou wet blanket. But keeping a sandwich in the car for the ride home makes you look a little overeager. Wait until you actually get home, at which point the gloves come off, and it’s a race to the kitchen to see who can nab the last square of Jell-O. Of course, if you’ve learned anything, you will have already eaten that square of Jell-O this morning, while the rest of the family was still tucked in bed.
