Has Fasting Saved My Life…
On October 22nd, I started a 5-day cleansing. Well, I also never posted a follow up that showed how that went and what I learned. It’s safe to say that fasting saved my life simply because my body was more asleep than I imagined prior to fasting and this brought me back to the awoken state where value on what we put in our bodies was now important again.
If you haven’t already take a glance at the post where I explained my cleansing and what I was going to do. [LINK]
I began on Wednesday and lasted through Monday. Following the fast, I started slow eating minimal meat, drinking tons of juice and focusing on vegetables like rich salads and maintaining that same water diet. This was crucial for a few reasons. The first was that my body didn’t need the shock of 5 days without food and then trying to digest a steak dinner. I don’t really eat steak anyway but had to make a point of both extremes. The second is that parts of your body begin to shut down and metabolism slows. That’s why you’ll lose serious weight in the first 3 days and then start losing less during the fast because your body starts to conserve more energy.
Overall, I lost 18 pounds in 5 full days. Since then, I’ve gained 5 pounds back but since I’ve been running and eating more healthy, I’m confident that this will stay pretty steady. That’s a great sign that my body was able to drop so much weight so quickly.
As far as the effects, I was fine on day one but because of the water and juices and had to pee constantly. Day two was when the hunger pains set in. They kept going until the evening of night two but by that time, I stopped going to the bathroom and the only thing I was doing was peeing. Before bed on day two, I felt great! No headache, no pains, no hunger and the only thing that happened was that I slept for 15 hours that night. Yeah, I’m serious.
Day three, I woke up at 10AM and I felt really good. I was fine all day and only caved in for some food around 6PM when I had a tablespoon of walnuts to chew on and taste. It was really basic and kind of curbed my appetite. Day 3 was easy and fun and the juices kept me very satisfied.
Day 4 and 5 were when things started getting rough. The thing is, it was purely psychological. I was craving food. I wanted candy, coffee, meat and cheese. If someone placed a buttered piece of bread in front of me or piece of tuna I would have caved in. It was just the fact that the taste and texture of food were on my mind.
Nights are the hardest. I’m not a big snacker but it was around 7PM that I craved something hearty. My juices ran out on Saturday night and Sunday was strictly water fasting. This was the day that things went downhill.
Juice fasting was easy because my body got the nutrients it needed to get by. On water, my body was being depleted and it didn’t like that. Still, I wasn’t hungry nor did I have pains but I was tired and feeling lazy. Sunday night I went to bed early with a tweet that said, “i’m so hungry and I want to eat something”.
On Monday morning, I had an egg with fruit, carrot juice and a glass of water. For lunch, I had a fruit salad with carrots and for dinner I had 2 eggs with a piece of bread. The reintroduction of food into my body felt great but I wish I could have gone for 10 days. Yeah, I only lasted 5.
Overall, cleansing is awesome and something I recommend to everyone. If you’re in your mid 20s and live the typical American lifestyle of burgers and beers then yes it’s long overdue. For me, I eat relatively healthy and rarely splurge but it was still an excellent experience just because I was able to control my body and gain independence from food. It made me more conscious about what I put in and careful about food choices. It’s certainly affected my diet and exposed me to just how sweet and fattening a lot of foods that I eat really are.
