NOers are supposed to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, that's it. I don't really know any NOers any more, but the ones I knew never fasted or abstained. If they know the law at all, they couldn't care less.

NOers are supposed to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, that's it. I don't really know any NOers any more, but the ones I knew never fasted or abstained. If they know the law at all, they couldn't care less.

This is a common theme in most of the lives of the saints.

If you freely choose to do a more difficult "penance" than what you are compelled to do by a Church precept, you will gain more merit than if you obediently follow a Church precept to do the same work. Your freedom to encuмber yourself to do something more pleasing to God than is required by precept, is what Jesus's moral teaching is all about.

I'm new to Traditional Catholicism and this would be for me, my first Lent after discovering Tradition. As a NO, my family would abstain from meat on all Fridays, not just lent. For Lent we also would fast from something else like soda, coffee, beer/alcohol, desserts, etc. I agree that NO fast guidelines are watered down and for me, pointless. Even secular people who practice intermittent fasting have a stricter fast than the NO fasting guidelines suggest.

Do you know of any tips for fasting as a Traditional Catholic?

They're just being consistent here.  If the V2 papal claimants are legitimate popes, then they have the power to dispense from the fast, and so the SSPX cannot impose upon consciences under pain of mortal sin something which a legitimate pope has said isn't binding under pain of sin.  It all boils down to whether you accept the V2 popes as popes.  Heck, even simple parish priests could dispense individual faithful from fasting depending on their circuмstances.

Unfortunately, if we fast when it's not binding, there's one particular mortification lacking there, which is probably the most important one of all, mortification of the will.  It's commonly reported that even people who love seafood find it difficult to abstain from meat on Fridays.  People who think nothing of just eating one meal a day most of the time somehow find it difficult to fast on the days prescribed.  That's because it's one thing to do it because you feel like it and quite another because you are required to under obedience, and it is the will that is being mortified.

1) If you're a dogmatic sedevacantist, then these would be binding for you under pain of mortal sin.
2) If you're dogmatic R&R, then these would not be binding under pain of mortal sin.
3) If you're in doubt, then a doubtful law does not apply (lex dubia non obligat), so technically speaking you're not bound under pain of mortal sin either.

So it's really only the dogmatic sedevacantists who are bound under pain of mortal sin to keep the Traditional fast.

One would be foolish not to perform the Traditional fast, but only the Church can bind consciences, and that's one of my biggest beefs with some of the dogmatic types who go around excommunicating people.