Brother Simpleton

Well, the fast experiment seems to be over. It took me 4 or 5 days to regain a desire to eat after I broke the fast, and then for a few days I walked hungry all the time, and probably was overeating. Will have to be more careful next time.

I am very, very satisfied that I did it, even though my wife seemed to be downright scared sometimes. It has probably been the most profound experience of my life. I think I understand now why people fast for religious reasons, though I am not going to bother to put it in words.

My decision to continue working through the fast was a misguided one. Both because I was not very efficient, and because fasting seems to be a perfect time to meditate, and to think about other, more important things. Big things, like life, the universe and everything, and small things, like weather, and grass, and air. Next time I will take

The very fact of being able to live without food, and not suffering from it, was a revelation for me. One day a few years ago, I bought the famous Bragg book, “The miracle of fasting”, where he advocates fasting for one day weekly, and decide to follow this approach. The very first day was rather bad; I came home in the evening feeling horribly, broke the fast prematurely, ate a lot, and fell down feeling even worse. Then I came to a conclusion that fasting is for supermen, and my genetic makeup requires me to eat regularly.

Well, this turned out to be simply wrong. Food is just an addiction for the vast majority of modern people. Once you break the addiction, you are free to deal with food on your own terms: fell to choose when to eat and when not to eat when you want, not when your body tells you to. In a sense, fasting is an ultimate spiritual experience: the triumph of the spirit over the body. My own fasting has definitely made me more aware of the power of both my spirit and my body.

On a more mundane level, one interesting result of the fast is that my taste has changed: I guess it became much sharper. I just can’t eat salted, spiced or sugared food anymore. Real, natural food seems good enough these days. I can’t even tolerate much garlic, which is a pity, because it is said to be good for the health, and I used to like it a lot.

Another result was a total loss if interest in tea. I’ve been addicted before, and though I stopped to drink it completely at some point, I reverted back later. Now I just have no interest in any kind of tea, and am quite satisfied with water.

So, the experiment was a success, and I am looking forward for more experiments!

Just for the record keeping, here is graph of my weight for the last month. I was fasting from May 24 till June 1. At the lowest point, my weight was at 130 lb; currently it seems to have stabilized around 135.

Strictly speaking, the experiment is over — I am eating for the forth day now — but it is not really over. I am still trying to adjust to the life with food, and it will definitely take quite some time. For the first two days I was only drinking freshly squeezed tomato juice (just as I planned), and didn’t feel any hunger or desire for it. I’ve probably drunk 3 tomatoes on the first day, and four on the second, and even that was too much. On the third day I decided to switch to more solid food and ate some watermelon, and today I ate more fresh fruits and vegetables, but still very little overall (maybe 300-400 calories if not less). Still no hunger, though the mouth sometimes wants to explore different foods.

The day I broke the fast was the worst throughout the experiment. Very low energy, felt quite lethargic. It is getting better, though. I was loosing weight up until yesterday, but today it went up a little (from 130 to 132 lb). It can probably be explained by the contents of my stomach (I had no bowel movements yet). Oh, and my fingernails started growing again!

I need more time both to return back to the normal eating pattern, and to think over the experiment. There is no doubt in my mind it was a great thing to do, though. I’ll write more later.

Weight: 133 lb * Body Fat: 15.7% * Cycled: 16 km * Ran: 1 km

Yesterday’s energy surge has hardly left any traces. I cycled the kids to the school today on my tandem bike, and got back exhausted. However, my body fat suddenly went down a notch (from 14mm to 12mm pinched skin). It’s a rather important notch, since (according to their chart) it moves me from the “normal” to the “ideal” category. We’ll see if it holds.

Today is the last day of my fast, and it makes me a little sad. It’s obvious that I could have achieved more by fasting more, but I think what I’ve done is quite good for the first time.

Just to complete the record: almost all cracks on fingers disappeared, the pain in the liver (?) area continues intermittently, and I got another bowels movement today.

I feel no hunger at all these days, so tomorrow’s return to food will be a completely conscious decision. Breaking fast is an important and delicate process, since it is so easy to do harm by overfeeding oneself.

I decided to break the fast with juices, just as I entered it. Tomorrow I will be drinking fresh tomato juice, half diluted with water. I am going to start with very small portions (a quarter of a cup every hour) and see how it goes. If it goes well, sometime during the day after tomorrow I’ll switch to undiluted juices, and in two days will probably sample some more solid food.