Water; the elixir of the life force within us. How I’m drawn to the sound of it rippling, cool the feel of it’s movement between my fingers and on my feet. When it’s warm, I’m surrounded, surrendered. When it’s cool, it’s a comforting respite… the pushing and pulling of it’s force against me…the rushing of standing under a waterfall and feeling it barreling down on my skin.
Water; what I’ve gained from the experience of having given up all else.
Nineteen days, that’s my number. I’ve gone 19 days without food—just water. (Take that Bear Grylls!) Distilled, non-chlorinated spring water housed from the source in glass containers. Distilled water is the cleanest water that is available to me. Maybe if I were closer to a glacier I might find some with more purity.
During a fast, I drink between 8-12 glasses of water per day--but no more. My goal that fast was to attain 21 days food free days, but I threw off my electrolytes and had to begin re-feeding. My doctor had to immediate open up an IV bag and have me
s-l-o-w-l-y drink the liquid—it unexpectedly tasted like a combination of Tang and pickle juice.
I have my reasons for doing it. Fasting clears out all of the endogenous waste within the cellular walls of your body. Toxins are stored in your fat--the closer you are to minimal percentages of body fat the healthier you are. Fasting "cleans" you as quickly as possible.
Secondarily, by shutting down one of the body processes (digestion) your body amps up the other processes (i.e. the healing mechanisms). My doctor likens this to having all of the faucets in your house open at one time and less water pressure in all of them. If you shut off one faucet, the pressure works better in the rest of them.
Every time I’ve fasted, the experience has been slightly different. Every time I've ever fasted I've had symptoms of nausea and/or vomiting, and diarrhea. If you're not having any food in your system, you still have bowel evacuations because the lining in your stomach is still dying and cells are turning over. However, your bowel evacuations happen every couple of days.
Without solid food it's mostly water in, water out. The headaches, vomiting etc. are all a result of detoxification going on inside of your body. The worst day for me is always day two through day three—the 48 to 72 hour mark. That's my "I'm starving" day.
Once I pass that, the rest is comparatively easy. Yes, your tongue gets coated from the detoxification in your body and distilled water starts tasting horrible. I don’t usually have headaches, but I do know people that do from the detoxification of things they are allergic to or other foods they are eating like caffeinated products. Rapid heartbeat, and upon standing up everything goes dark for a few seconds, lots of sleep after a week or so, I get really cold...sometimes I've had a "healing crisis" and pain, other times I have not, weakness is part of the process. I’m not going to lie…it's not pleasurable to go through but what I get at the end of it is very much worth it.
The fast gives you back the energy in your body like you're 13 again; you know what real food tastes like. Can you remember being a kid and how intense flavors were? After a fast, the taste of oranges and grapefruit practically ring with intensity and any amount of sugar, salt or processed food (i.e. preservatives) in food is horrible tasting and you'll spit it out.
I had someone ask me if I’ve had the experience of relief from life’s worries or emotions during the “physiological rest”. I’ve never had what they called "more emotional balance" during or after a fast. But interestingly enough I did recently read a book on food addictions since a few weeks ago after I had listening to a psychologist on a podcast talk about people who crave wheat/carbs/sugar have a rarer N1 dopamine receptor in the brain and it basically has them drugged daily. By removing the wheat/carbohydrates/sugar changes their brain chemistry to a place where they are calmer and more emotionally balanced--and that takes 12-18 months of complete abstinence. I don’t know if I could do that. I tried once for about 10 days at which point I began craving foods that I had never eaten before—maybe it was the detoxifying; if I would have stayed the course longer, it would have dissipated.
OK, it would be a lie to say that I couldn’t do it, I just choose not to. I DO love pizza and it's practically impossible for me to give up a sesame bagel with light vegetable cream cheese on a Sunday morning…yummy.
But having said that, it is interesting to think about body types differently for just a moment. My doctor has actually called me "genetically superior" for having the genetics to easily store weight. Think about that. My ancestors went through frozen terrain most of the year...no food to be foraged, little if anything to be killed. Were it not for the fact that my family had enough reserves on their body to get us through the 'lean" times, we would have died out many generations ago. So I've been "blessed" with a body that gains weight easily and has bigger boobs than not (again, enough fat reserves to produce enough milk to feed an infant); is chemically sensitive so (would have stayed away from slightest bits of toxins such as those found in almond skins and garlic), has a naturally slow heartbeat--(burning calories at a slower rate to "conserve" life) and stayed healthy while "lesser" human subjects would have died off under similar circumstances. It's an interesting perspective...
But what I equally get out of fasting is the mastery of having done it. It's an amazing process of really understanding your baser animal self. Things that normally don't bother you as a scent, suddenly do--your sense of smell becomes animal-like because you haven't eaten. You can smell someone breaking lettuce downstairs...the smell of grapes from the next house if your windows are open...and once you begin to eat again food the taste of raw food is as intense as when you were little. It sounds difficult, but, truth be told, all you have to do is to put one foot in front of the other to make it happen. Big deal--two or three weeks without food--it's not all that hard.
Here in America with rare exception don't have the experience of knowing what it's like not to have food, a two week water fast gives you an appreciation outside of yourself for world hunger; what the Jews went through during WWII, famines in Africa, and although I'm not all that much of a tree hugger type, there is a perspective of dietary change positively affecting the world globally. There are even parts of oriental teachings that say that eating less leaves food for someone else who is hungry.
The fasting experience and the intense flavor of natural foods afterward will give you a better appreciation for the food that you do eat and learning that your body is a filter; you will always get out of it what you put into it. Spring is coming and I'm feeling a pull towards a cleansing and rebirth.
Water; what I’ve gained from the experience of having given up all else.
Nineteen days, that’s my number. I’ve gone 19 days without food—just water. (Take that Bear Grylls!) Distilled, non-chlorinated spring water housed from the source in glass containers. Distilled water is the cleanest water that is available to me. Maybe if I were closer to a glacier I might find some with more purity.
During a fast, I drink between 8-12 glasses of water per day--but no more. My goal that fast was to attain 21 days food free days, but I threw off my electrolytes and had to begin re-feeding. My doctor had to immediate open up an IV bag and have me
s-l-o-w-l-y drink the liquid—it unexpectedly tasted like a combination of Tang and pickle juice.
I have my reasons for doing it. Fasting clears out all of the endogenous waste within the cellular walls of your body. Toxins are stored in your fat--the closer you are to minimal percentages of body fat the healthier you are. Fasting "cleans" you as quickly as possible.
Secondarily, by shutting down one of the body processes (digestion) your body amps up the other processes (i.e. the healing mechanisms). My doctor likens this to having all of the faucets in your house open at one time and less water pressure in all of them. If you shut off one faucet, the pressure works better in the rest of them.
Every time I’ve fasted, the experience has been slightly different. Every time I've ever fasted I've had symptoms of nausea and/or vomiting, and diarrhea. If you're not having any food in your system, you still have bowel evacuations because the lining in your stomach is still dying and cells are turning over. However, your bowel evacuations happen every couple of days.
Without solid food it's mostly water in, water out. The headaches, vomiting etc. are all a result of detoxification going on inside of your body. The worst day for me is always day two through day three—the 48 to 72 hour mark. That's my "I'm starving" day.
Once I pass that, the rest is comparatively easy. Yes, your tongue gets coated from the detoxification in your body and distilled water starts tasting horrible. I don’t usually have headaches, but I do know people that do from the detoxification of things they are allergic to or other foods they are eating like caffeinated products. Rapid heartbeat, and upon standing up everything goes dark for a few seconds, lots of sleep after a week or so, I get really cold...sometimes I've had a "healing crisis" and pain, other times I have not, weakness is part of the process. I’m not going to lie…it's not pleasurable to go through but what I get at the end of it is very much worth it.
The fast gives you back the energy in your body like you're 13 again; you know what real food tastes like. Can you remember being a kid and how intense flavors were? After a fast, the taste of oranges and grapefruit practically ring with intensity and any amount of sugar, salt or processed food (i.e. preservatives) in food is horrible tasting and you'll spit it out.
I had someone ask me if I’ve had the experience of relief from life’s worries or emotions during the “physiological rest”. I’ve never had what they called "more emotional balance" during or after a fast. But interestingly enough I did recently read a book on food addictions since a few weeks ago after I had listening to a psychologist on a podcast talk about people who crave wheat/carbs/sugar have a rarer N1 dopamine receptor in the brain and it basically has them drugged daily. By removing the wheat/carbohydrates/sugar changes their brain chemistry to a place where they are calmer and more emotionally balanced--and that takes 12-18 months of complete abstinence. I don’t know if I could do that. I tried once for about 10 days at which point I began craving foods that I had never eaten before—maybe it was the detoxifying; if I would have stayed the course longer, it would have dissipated.
OK, it would be a lie to say that I couldn’t do it, I just choose not to. I DO love pizza and it's practically impossible for me to give up a sesame bagel with light vegetable cream cheese on a Sunday morning…yummy.
But having said that, it is interesting to think about body types differently for just a moment. My doctor has actually called me "genetically superior" for having the genetics to easily store weight. Think about that. My ancestors went through frozen terrain most of the year...no food to be foraged, little if anything to be killed. Were it not for the fact that my family had enough reserves on their body to get us through the 'lean" times, we would have died out many generations ago. So I've been "blessed" with a body that gains weight easily and has bigger boobs than not (again, enough fat reserves to produce enough milk to feed an infant); is chemically sensitive so (would have stayed away from slightest bits of toxins such as those found in almond skins and garlic), has a naturally slow heartbeat--(burning calories at a slower rate to "conserve" life) and stayed healthy while "lesser" human subjects would have died off under similar circumstances. It's an interesting perspective...
But what I equally get out of fasting is the mastery of having done it. It's an amazing process of really understanding your baser animal self. Things that normally don't bother you as a scent, suddenly do--your sense of smell becomes animal-like because you haven't eaten. You can smell someone breaking lettuce downstairs...the smell of grapes from the next house if your windows are open...and once you begin to eat again food the taste of raw food is as intense as when you were little. It sounds difficult, but, truth be told, all you have to do is to put one foot in front of the other to make it happen. Big deal--two or three weeks without food--it's not all that hard.
Here in America with rare exception don't have the experience of knowing what it's like not to have food, a two week water fast gives you an appreciation outside of yourself for world hunger; what the Jews went through during WWII, famines in Africa, and although I'm not all that much of a tree hugger type, there is a perspective of dietary change positively affecting the world globally. There are even parts of oriental teachings that say that eating less leaves food for someone else who is hungry.
The fasting experience and the intense flavor of natural foods afterward will give you a better appreciation for the food that you do eat and learning that your body is a filter; you will always get out of it what you put into it. Spring is coming and I'm feeling a pull towards a cleansing and rebirth.
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