It’s a running joke in most Indian homes during the auspicious ritual of Karva Chauth, generally observed on the fourth day of the month as per the Vikram Samvat, the Hindu calendar. As the custom goes, women fast to add more years to their husbands’ lives, the women fast, the men eat, and by nightfall, both claim to be exhausted.
But if you look closer, something curious, and a little funny, is at play. The same men who skip fasts year after year, claiming they “can’t survive without food till lunch,” are also missing out on what science now calls one of the best ways to stay healthy: intermittent fasting.
Women, meanwhile, have been doing it for generations – not for metabolism or mindfulness, but for karva chauth, ekadashi, shivratri, sankashti, and a dozen other reasons nobody dared question. They’ve been unknowingly following what the world now hails as a billion-dollar wellness trend, while men, proud of their “three proper meals a day,” might just be eating their way out of better health.
Some men do observe fasts on occasions like Navratri, Ekadashi, and Shivratri, but their number is so small that it doesn’t represent a significant portion of the population.
“Interestingly, traditional fasts like Karva Chauth or even weekly vrats echo similar principles. For centuries, Indian women have intuitively practised time-restricted eating through such rituals, aligning cultural discipline with what modern science now recognises as metabolic health,” says Dr Saurabh Arora, Endocrinology, Fortis Hospital Ludhiana.
You could say it’s one of India’s quiet gender ironies: the ones fasting for men’s long lives might be the ones living longer themselves.
THE ACCIDENTAL HEALTH CLUB
The Indian festival calendar is a masterpiece of meal planning disguised as devotion. Monday fast for Shiva. Thursday for prosperity. Saturday to keep Shani calm. Each comes with its own rules: no salt, no grains, no water, or in some cases, just fruits.
Nobody talked about metabolism or detox back then. The word “wellness” didn’t exist. And yet, between sunrise prayers and moonrise meals, women created a pattern of controlled eating that every nutritionist now recommends.
Modern medicine calls it fasting-induced autophagy – the body’s self-cleaning mode that activates when you stop eating for long periods. Back then, it was just upvas. Simple, quiet, and effective.
WHEN TRADITION DID THE SCIENCE FIRST
If you trace it back, there’s a strange sense of design to these old customs. The timing of fasts often followed lunar cycles. Seasons dictated what you could or couldn’t eat. The body got recovery time without anyone ever calling it “gut health.”
Most women didn’t see it as science. It was a habit. But the outcome was real – lighter meals and better digestion.
Today, studies from the National Institute on Aging and Harvard Medical School confirm what these rituals achieved by accident: improved metabolism, insulin balance, and reduced inflammation.
In short, faith had already tested what science is now proving, and passed.
“Men, who traditionally do not fast, may also benefit from incorporating short, structured fasts into their routines. Evidence suggests it can enhance metabolic flexibility, stabilise blood sugar levels, improve energy regulation, and even support better sleep and cardiovascular health, provided fasting is undertaken safely and tailored to individual needs,” adds Arora.
THE MEN WHO SKIPPED THE TREND (AND THE BENEFITS)
Men, of course, stayed out of it. Why fast when someone else is fasting for your wellbeing? That’s the unspoken rule in most households.
And so while women fine-tuned their metabolism unknowingly, men stayed loyal to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with snacks in between for good measure.
They never had to check their glucose levels because they rarely gave their bodies a break long enough to regulate them.
If you ask around, most will say the same thing: “I could never fast, I get headaches.” Ironically, that’s exactly what people say before their first week of intermittent fasting.
The difference? Women just went ahead and did it. They had no fitness tracker or dietician but ritual and rhythm.
WHEN RITUALS DOUBLE AS HEALTH PLANS
There’s a reason traditional fasting never pushed the body too far. You could eat fruits, milk, or sago. It was a soft discipline, nothing extreme, but enough to give the digestive system rest.
Modern experts call this time-restricted eating. Our grandmothers just called it Thursday.
Every few days, they would naturally shift between feast and restraint, balancing their metabolism long before anyone coined the term “metabolic switch.”
And it wasn’t only physical. Fasting days often encouraged mental focus, fewer meals meant less distraction.
The great irony, of course, is that when fasting finally became fashionable, it came back in Western packaging. Books, podcasts, and TED Talks praised the power of skipping meals, as if no one had thought of it before.
And while men debate which protein shake suits their body type, women are still following the same calendar, fasting, feasting, and, by the looks of it, faring better.
FAITH, FOOD, AND THE FINE PRINT
None of this means fasting is a magic cure. It can be risky if done without hydration or guidance. But in moderation, the ancient logic holds, the body needs pauses, just like the mind does.
For women, those pauses were built into life. For men, they were optional, and mostly ignored.
So as another Karva Chauth comes and goes, maybe it’s worth rethinking who’s really benefitting from all this fasting.
Because while men get all the prayers, women seem to get all the health benefits. And if that isn’t the most Indian twist to a wellness story, it’s hard to say what is.
