A male friend asked me the familiar Lenten question recently: “What are you giving up?” I replied, half joking but half serious, “Complaining.”
What followed was an unexpectedly thoughtful conversation about fasting, and about how rarely we acknowledge that women’s bodies do not operate on the same physiological rhythms as men’s.
For women, practices like fasting or intermittent fasting can land very differently depending on where we are in our cycle. “Does it matter if you’re single, though?” this same man prodded. I argued that yes, it matters immensely.
