This morning I realized for the first time, that I am now
truly fasting. I was feeling slightly better on day two, but now I feel
completely empty and this intimidates me a little. I am not afraid, but
definitely curious to see how this fast develops. I think that from now on I can fast without
much desire for food.
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| On a successful fast your body might tell you, that it does not want you to eat this. Not even the cookie on the right ;) |
Food even puts me off. Here goes a small experience/story
showing how strongly 3 days of fasting has turned my desire for food complete
upside down:
I tested myself today
at work. There were cookies lying around that were free for everyone to eat. I
took one and smelled it and seriously tried to evaluate my desire for it as
openly as possible. Kind of like you would consider it as a “normal” person,
not fasting, not being on any special diet. The result really amazed me. There
was not only zero desire for it, I even got slightly nauseated by the thought
of putting this into my mouth and then having to deal with the digestion and
the feeling it gives me. It smelled good though. And I would have enjoyed
eating it at other times. This shows that my fears before the fast, that it
will be a drudgery, requiring all of my
will power, turned out to be ungrounded. It was based on my (and usually everyone’s)
experience of being dependent on the stimulation from food rather than it’s
nourishment.
In my opinion this is
a clear sign my body is sending me. I am sure if my digestive track grew a
voice, saying something like this: “Hey you deaf consciousness up there. Can
you finally hear me? Great, because I want to do some serious house cleaning
down here. I wanted to rebuild your intestines and stomach already for a long
time. But you kept throwing unnecessary stuff in there, so my little workers
couldn’t go to work. Now keep some water coming as I demand it and do not worry
about all else. We have all the raw materials already available.”
It is now clear to me
that I was not able to listen to my body and especially my digestion before. I
had issues with overeating and was clearly not absorbing much from my food.
Sometimes I was craving junk food and also indulged in it and then I was
thinking I already screwed up and ended up eating even more of it. With sweets
I was having a hard time controlling my appetite. With any starchy meal I
develop a huge amount of burping and gas in the stomach. Even with those issues
I regarded them as normal for a long time. Even though I am a smaller size and
often times less active than others I could always eat much more before feeling
satisfied. And that without gaining weight. What some might think is a gift,
was actually deteriorating my health.
With this fasting
experience I want to get to a point again where I can trust my instincts and my
hunger. I guess the signals were screaming at me before, but I was not
listening. I think the fast will reset me in this regard.
Back to what I experienced today:
I feel clean and light. I like how smooth my skin feels. Fasting
can really be enjoyable. I am a little more tired mentally than yesterday. I
slept for 5 hours and could not fall back asleep until half an hour before my
alarm went off. So I was awoken form pretty deep sleep. Which is never a good
start of the day anyways… Next days I will allow myself more rest again. The
sleep felt really refreshing and deep though. No major change in my dreams or
dream-recall.
During work I felt slightly more absorbed in the activity.
But not necessarily in a purely positive way, it also felt like it required
more attention and therefore other things had to fall into the background.
After work though I was glad that I could go back to my home
and relax. I have an electric heating blanket that I use to stay warm. And on
the fast it is the most comfortable thing and I can highly recommend it if you
are fasting in a cold climate. So for the rest of the evening I read and
listened to an audiobook.
I was thinking about taking a laxative for a few days. And
finally I drank half a liter of water with 30g of sodium-sulphate. This cleaned
out my bowels for the following few hours. There was still some food residue
coming out with that, so it might not have been the worst decision.