April 28, 2008...2:07 pm
Friendly Fasting
I’ve read a lot about fasting lately and decided it was time that I took the plunge. It’s recommended that you do a juice or raw foods fast before doing a water fast but I tried a fruit fast last week and couldn’t last a day because I was still in the habit of consumption.
Yesterday was day One. It was easy most of the day, until the late evening. I actually had an increase of energy, (could have been from the audition anxiety, too). But by the time I hopped on my plane to commute into Oakland, I was utterly famished. I bought a gallon of water that I took on with me and drank about 3/4s on the plane. I wanted peanuts. I wanted pretzels. I wanted anything I could get my grubby hands on–but I just drank water.
I knew I had airport standby this morning, (an assignment made by our scheduling department that requires I remain in the airport lounge for 5 hours) so I decided to just sleep in the lounge as my report time was 5:30 am. I was really nervous about trying to sleep. A little over a year and a half ago I dropped about 30 lbs and the first month I really cracked down on calories. I would wake up in the middle of the night from severe hunger pangs. It made sleeping difficult and impaired my willpower. I was afraid that I’d suffer all night but instead I rarely felt hungry and slept poorly anyhow -which was expected because I slept in an arm chair.
It’s day Two and I’m SO HUNGRY!!!!!!! Appetite isn’t supposed to diminish for another day or so. I felt hyper a while ago and now I’m fatigued and have done nothing. Toxins have already begun to discard themselves-my mouth feels icky, I feel slightly dazed and somewhat jittery but without the jitters? Hard to explain.
Sometimes people need the 10-day mark or the 30-day mark to succeed with fasting. I’ve also read that ideally after the appetite subsides, once it returns it’s the body’s way of telling you to reintroduce food into your diet. This could happen at anytime. Studies say that the optimal amount of time to fast is beyond 21 days. After 21 days people experience clarity of thought, purification, and it has aided or accomplished the cure of diseases and cancers. Clearly at this point I’m approaching it from a one-day-at-a-time method. Perhaps after I lose my appetite I can create a time structure but right now I don’t want to torture myself!
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