My fasting days got all messed up.  Here’s what happened.  I went to Colorado to see a friend and took the train.  Since I was going to be there over a weekend, I didn’t want to be fasting on vacation, and since food prices on the train are outrageous and since I am gluten intolerant and can’t eat half the stuff on the menu anyway, I decided to fast on the train.  So I did.

Saw my friend, ate healthy, no sweets, felt great blah, blah, blah.  Then  getting back on the train to go home, I didn’t want to fast — partly because it hadn’t been a full week, so I ate on the train.  Get home, a week goes by, I don’t want to fast.  My birthday comes, and I sugar up without guilt because it’s my birthday and you’re allowed to eat all the sugar you can on your birthday.  So I did.  Not in the mood to fast, in the mood to have fun.

The next thing I know I’m having another sugar-day.  I just ate sugar and didn’t even think about it.  My fasting days are all messed up.  What’s more, I’m getting depressed.  I’m blaming the depression on the short days and long nights (SAD), which usually seems to occur this time and year and begins to lift after the New Year.  Even though it didn’t seem like I was losing weight when I was fasting one day a week, I can feel my waist expanding — my clothes are tight.  Aye-yi-yie.

There is so much stress going on in my life.  I’m finishing up an MBA, and then we will be moving out of the country.  It’s like finish semester, and then the very next day move.  There’s a lot to do when it comes to moving out of the country, there’s a lot to do when it comes to moving down the street.  And I’m on the last two weeks of my degree program and I don’t feel like finishing it, because the move is all encompassing.  It’s a mess.

And then Thanksgiving, that was another pig-out and eat all the sugar I can stuff in my mouth day until my stomach hurts so bad I can’t move.  The day after, craved sugar the whole day.  The only reason I didn’t eat any was because there’s none in the house and I was too lazy to go buy some.

It’s like my eating is running amok, and I’ve decided to resume fasting one day a week.  See if that calms me down, makes me feel better, and makes it so I can tighten my belt a notch or two.  God, my big, fat stomach is disgusting and it was starting to flatten up.  Oh, and I haven’t been exercising either.  It’s like I was able to stay on track during the vacation, but completely derailed after.

From June-October successfully fasted one day a week without any problems, noticed some benefits but not a lot.  Overall, felt great and happy, full of energy

In November, no fasting, but otherwise ate the same way except for three sugar days.  Started craving sugar, feeling tired, gaining weight, feeling depressed and completely on edge, unmotivated.  This could be from too much sugar, the SAD syndrome, or having stopped fasting.  If I’m feeling really good tomorrow, recharged and re-motivated, then I’m guessing the fasting has been doing a lot more positive things than I thought.

We’ll see.

One my #9 blog, I was so excited because I had so much energy that day and it seemed like the fast day was starting to normalize.  Then, of course, wouldn’t you know, the following week I’m back to being all tired and not feeling so good on the fast.

But week #11 was another one where I had quite a bit of energy.  Around dinner time, I really wanted to eat, and was feeling those uncomfortable hunger sensations.  But I drank water, watched some movies and went to bed early.

Then Sunday woke up full of energy not wanting to stop the fast.  Here’s how it goes.  Sometime during the week, for some inexplicable reason I start looking forward to the fast.  Then on fast day — which is Saturday just because on Saturday I don’t have to do anything and can lay around the house and be miserable and feel sorry for myself because I’m not eating — I don’t want to fast at all.  But I make myself do it, and Saturday happens.  Time seems to slow down while you’re fasting so the day takes forever, and it’s like when is bedtime going to happen so I can just go to sleep and forget about eating and not eating and stuff like that.  Then on Sunday morning, I wake up full of energy and happy I fasted the previous day and don’t want to eat again but I do because I’m sticking to the plan of one day a week and one day a week only for a long time, maybe forever.  We’ll see.  What’s more, on Sunday I look younger than I did on Friday.

Of course, during the week I start eating like crap again.  Okay, I don’t eat total crap — just partial crap —  and try and eat lots of fruits and veggies, and boring seeds, but it’s hard.  So basically I end up eating like crap.  Well, I don’t eat anything fried, and I don’t eat bread, and I only eat sugar except for maybe once a month I’ll have a sugar day.  Then I eat so much sugar I start to get sick and remember some really good reasons not to eat sugar.

And that’s my life, because it really revolves around food, which is why I look like a fat little troll.  And I’m trying really hard to look like a skinny little troll.

Well, I was going to skip a fasting day when I had to go out of town, but read something rather interesting.  It said that if you are an intermittent faster rather than a prolonged faster, as long as you didn’t go beyond 14 days, the benefits of the previous fast would continue.  So, I went ahead and did a short 24 hour fast, rather than the 36+ hour fast I normally do.

The 24-hour fast goes like this.  Notate the time I stopped eating on Friday — like maybe I had a 3pm snack, but didn’t eat anymore after that — and then resume eating 24 hours later.  So on Saturday have dinner at the regular time.

The 36-hour fast goes like this.  Eat dinner as normal Friday night, go to bed, eat nothing on Saturday (drinking water okay) and go to bed hungry.  Resume eating Sunday morning.

Sometimes I do a fast like this which is somewhere in between the 24 and 36 hours fast.  Notate time last ate on Friday be it lunch or a noontime snack, skip dinner, and 24 hours later break the fast with fruit or juice instead of a regular meal.

Normally when I fast, be it 24 or 36 hours, I’m tired and can’t do much of anything all day.  It’s like a wasted day, and I don’t feel so hot either.  But today has been different.  I’ve had all kinds of energy, and I did all sorts of work around the house.  It’s dinnertime now and I’m hungry and my stomach’s growling a little, but I still have plenty of energy.

Here’s something else.  When I was having gallstone problems, which turned out to not be gallstones after all but gluten intolerance, I was working on ways to clean out my liver.  I was willing to do about anything except fast.  I was taking lecithin, apple juice, apple cider vinegar and milk thistle.  Nothing was working, because it was not gallstones but the gluten.  But anyway, my chiropractor told me when my liver cleared my sense of smell would become more acute.  Interesting.

Up until that point, I hadn’t noticed much about my sense of smell, mostly because unless something was rather strong, I wasn’t smelling it.

Lately, I’ve been noticing I smell more things than I did before.  I smelling subtler smells, which is a good thing, I guess.  Sometimes those subtle smells don’t smell so hot.  What’s more, other people I’m with aren’t smelling anything.

Based on the energy of today and the smelling, I’m thinking after two months, the  one-day a week fasting is starting to pay off.

What I have not noticed is any weight loss.  Damn!  You would think the reduction in calories would have an effect — but not that I can tell.  I don’t have any scales, since we moved and it turns out we’re moving again and everything is in storage.

The good news is next weekend I have to go out of town, therefore it will be impractical to fast either Saturday or Sunday, plus a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in years will be in town, so I’m getting a little break from fasting.

Although fasting doesn’t bring much discomfort, it is rather unpleasant, especially the hungry parts.  I become aware of how much I think about food — which is a lot.  But maybe I’m thinking about food more because I’m not eating.  It’s only day and it there is this little child inside of me doing a temper tantrum because it wants to eat something.

Does fasting have any health benefits? Am I losing weight?  I do seem to be losing a few pounds, but that can’t be confirmed since I don’t have scales.  Plus, fasting gives me an excuse to have one dessert during the week which could possibly blow all my calorie savings.

Here’s what I do know, on Sunday morning when I look in the mirror after a day of fasting, I look ten years younger and am re-inspired to continue the weekly fasts.

It was really nasty.

I still have a residual of it today, but at least I’m not throwing up.  Of course, I don’t have anything in my system to throw up. I don’t know if it was food poisoning or some kind of flu.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t e-coli even though the symptoms were similar, but there was no blood in the diarrhea. But then again, I didn’t look because it was way too gross.

So anyway, I fasted due to illness, which is a lot different than fasting for health.  I had a fever too.  That indicates the flu, right?  Some 24 hour bug thing?

When you’re sick you don’t care to eat.  When you’re fasting, it’s like, “I want to eat, I want to eat.”

Oh and later, it felt my liver spasmed.  What it the world was that?  Sometimes I try and massage my liver and remind myself my liver is the real reason I’m fasting, because for some reason the liver likes a little break from processing all the poisons that go into our systems.  Like the poisons in food that don’t actually make you sick — right away that is.  The long-term slow poisoning of the food preservatives, flavor enhancers, food coloring, GMO’s, etc. some that are known carcinogens yet the FDA continues to allow the food manufacturers to put them into products for human consumption — that’s what the liver likes a break from.

Maybe fasting one day a week for a prolonged period of time like forever, is actually better than occasional long fasts because one time I did a three day fast, and I never wanted to fast again after that.  It took years and years to realize that whatever good that one 3-day fast accomplished had disappeared a long, long time ago.

One day a week continues.

This time, I decided to eat Friday night’s dinner, which wasn’t much:  a hamburger without the bun and french fries and some iced tea: not exactly health food fare.  But I decided to start Saturday morning and end Sunday morning because I was ending the fast too early by starting after Friday lunch.  I was having a late afternoon snack around 3 or 4, and ending the fast on Saturday around the same time I had the Friday snack.  24 hours.  Really, I want to go longer than 24.  According to what I’ve read, you’re body doesn’t even go into fast mode until after 24 hours, or it could be 12, or maybe 18:  I guess it varies body to body.

Here’s the deal.  Fasting isn’t any fun.  Yes, this time, I thought a lot less about food, but I don’t have any energy during a fast.  I don’t want to do anything.  Basically an entire day is lost, just laying around resting.  But that’s what you’re supposed to do on the Sabbath, right?  Rest.

So far, fasting one day a week hasn’t had any detrimental side effects.  When I did this before, sometimes I would notice my heart beating, which kind of freaked me out.  So I started CoQ10 and this time, I’m not noticing any heart issues.

I’m not noticing any benefits either.

Okay there’s the benefit of saving money by not having to eat out.  There’s the benefit of saving calories.  But last week I used my fasting as an excuse to eat ice cream.  It was like, “Well, I’m going to be fasting on Saturday so I can afford the extra ice cream calories. ” That is not a good justification!  On the other hand, that ice cream was wonderful.  I loaded it with hot fudge and chocolate bits, too.  I think maybe I had ice cream twice last week.

So if I’m fasting for the main purpose of losing weight, eating ice cream is not going to cut it.  Hmm.

Oh, another two benefits of fasting:  I sleep like a baby, and my sinuses completely clear up for the day until I start eating whatever it is I’m allergic too that affects my sinus — probably the ice cream.

I’m eating more mindfully, meaning I’m remembering to chew my food until it is liquid in my mouth.  That is way good, but may or may not be attributed to fasting.

Sometimes people fast to feel more spiritual.  I’m fasting for weight loss.  When I first started fasting, it did feel more spiritual.  But now it doesn’t feel spiritual at all.  It just feels like a lazy do-nothing day and little bit like having a mild illness that doesn’t make you bedridden, but you feel all that great either.

In my mind people who fast are either religious or self-disciplined eaters who would never touch anything like a donut or french fries or a regular pizza loaded with pepperoni and cheese.  They might have the “other kind of pizza” that isn’t made of meat, flour or cheese.  You know, the kind of pizza that tastes like a frisbee.  Those types.

I’m an ordinary person who is not particularly religious and I really do want to eat healthy, but it’s hard.  I mean it is really hard, especially when you have to eat out all the time like I do.  It’s nearly impossible.  Regardless, I have decided to fast one day a week for health and weight loss purposes, record my experiences for others to decide if it is something they think may be safe to try.

For the record, if you are starving, nursing, or pregnant you should NOT fast.  If you are taking medication, have any type of medical condition, etc., consult with your doctor.  I don’t do doctors, but that’s just me and my lack of health insurance.  I’m sure if I had health insurance, I might on rare occasion go to the doctor, but they are expensive, especially when they want to do those tests.  I’m sure Dr’s make a ton of dough on all those tests.

So the idea of fasting is so I never have to go to the doctor for any reason, and, of course, to stop looking like a fat little troll and like a human being.

I start my fasts sometime on Friday after a hearty lunch — after all, I’m not going to be eating for at least 24 hours or more —  if I can stand it.  So this last Friday,  I went to Home Town Buffet and pigged out.  Not good.  I shouldn’t do that, but I did and even had a little dessert.  The justification being, “Well, I’m not going to be eating for a whole day.”

That evening I didn’t want to fast at all.  I was even willing to take my boyfriend out to dinner and buy.  The problem was he already made alternate eating plans.

When I first started fasting — in April of this year, stopped during a cross country move and resumed now that we are reasonably settled — all he did was gripe about it.  But now,  he kind of enjoys not having to take me out Friday and Saturday for two dinners a lunch.  He is saving a lot of money by not having to feed me.  Now he reminds me that I’ve committed to fasting one day a week for a very long time.

So in spite of myself, I fasted.

As usual there are two benefits of fasting that I immediately notice.  I sleep like a baby and my sinuses clear up.

I don’t want to do much during a fast, and am completely against driving and/or using heavy machinery during a fast.  But today, I drove about a mile and I was getting woozy, and so my boyfriend took over the wheel.  We found this deserted country road and took it until it dead-ended at the river.  No one was around.  It was so quiet.  The sun was so warm and nice, I took off my clothes and my boyfriend was like:  ”Put your clothes on.”

And I’m like, “No, no, there’s no one around and its good for my boobies to get a little sun.  You get naked too.”

Instead, he got back into the car, and I put my clothes and he was happy and then some people came, so I got my clothes on just in time.  He was all grumpy because they could have seen me.  Then when we got back to civilization, it was time to end the fast.  Jamba Juice seemed like a good way to do that, along with a shot of wheatgrass juice.  And I didn’t get sick or anything.

Fast is over, it didn’t even hurt at all.

So let’s get clear.  I’m fasting primarily for health reasons, but there is a spiritual component to fasting.  It slows you down — but doesn’t stop you — and forces you to rest.  There’s a commandment in Torah and the Old Testament to rest on the Sabbath.  Boy, if you fast on Saturday you are doing exactly that.

It turns out Saturday is a day I don’t have to go anywhere, so it is a good time to fast.  I adamantly believe that when one is fasting they should not drive especially in the beginning because the blood sugar may make dramatic dips which could cause fatal driving errors.

People with blood sugar problems those who are either hyper or hypo-glycemic should consult with their health care professionals before undertaking even a short fast.

I only fasted for 24 hours and didn’t experience any real problems, but then I don’t have any serious problems to begin with and do not use any prescription medication.  Because I did fast once a week for a month earlier this year, my body is kind of used to it.  In fact, I decided to start fasting again because my body seemed to be asked for it.

The only immediate positive benefit was that I slept like a baby.  That’s always good.

I ended the fast in a stupid way.  I technically stopped eating after my Friday afternoon snack which was Jamba Juice, and Saturday evening around 7 o’clock was getting really hungry.  It was either eat something and stay with the family or go to bed, so I ended the fast.  I found myself pigging out.  I ate a little organic sauerkraut, and some left over roast chicken that my husband ate during the fast, and then a bowl of amaranth cereal with raisons (the gluten-free answer to raison bran) with almond milk.  Oh, and an orange.  That was kind of a lot of food to end a fast, and I started feeling a little sick about an hour later.  But I didn’t throw-up or anything.

It doesn’t seem to matter what you eat before the fast, but it does seem to matter what you eat when you end the fast.  It’s almost like once starting to eat, I couldn’t stop.

My fasting goal is to begin Friday after lunch with no afternoon snack and end the fast Saturday evening with juice or some soup broth or juice and soup broth, but I didn’t plan very well and just started eating.

Saturday night I slept good too, but not as good as Friday.  Boy going to bed without dinner makes for a good night’s sleep.   I’m wondering if occasionally just skipping dinner would be as beneficial as one-day a week fasts.  Skipping meals flies in the face of most diet plans and even alternate health care professionals will tell you skipping meals — they’re usually talking about breakfast — will mess your blood sugar and end up making you fatter.  So right now, I’ll stick to one day a week of fasting and report how it goes.

The South is famous for their cooking — fried, salted and sugared — so it easier to lose weight there, since being gluten-free I can’t do fried.  Sugared is another matter, I do have a sweet tooth, but managed to not indulge.  Their emphasis is on sweet tea which explains why they have no teeth.  All of what they eat explains their obesity.  This is why the Bible belt is also the obese belt, diabetes belt, and stroke belt.  Maybe they eat that way so that they can die and go to heaven quicker.  Oh, the other thing they do is run red lights with impunity.  Even the cops do it.  There is definitely some kind of suicide wish in the South.

Oh yeah, fasting.  So we’ve somewhat settled in, but not for long because it looks like — maybe, maybe — my fiance will get a position in Europe.  You can’t settle in someplace when you know you might be making another major move (but are not positively sure) in two or three months. We’re in small, cramped temporary housing waiting for an answer.  It’s kind of awful.

Worse, we’re trying not to accumulate anything, and yet we now have more since we first arrived.  How is this stuff coming into our lives? Part of the reason is we need it since its counterpart is in storage still in Huntsville, Alabama waiting for instructions where to ship:  Seattle or Europe.  Geez Louise.

Oh fasting.  The time hasn’t been right for fasting until now.  And my intent is to fast every Saturday through the rest of July and until we know where we’ll be moving.  Today is the first day.

Here’s how I do a one-day fast and it works better than some of the suggestions I’ve seen on the web by people who don’t fast, or by people who fast over three days at a time.  You know, the 7 to 40 day fasters — that’s a lot of fasting. The reason I fast only one day a week, is because I live in the real world and have to do stuff like work, school, errands, and spending time for my fiance, family and friends.  So one day a week works.  I can lay around and rest, not do much of anything on Saturday and still have Sunday to go out and have some fun like eat something really delicious.  But actually it’s not like during a fast you have absolutely no energy, in fact in someways you may have more energy.  It’s just the occasional wooziness means you should avoid driving or over-exerting yourself.  So it’s better to just stay and home and do stuff around the house.  Take it easy.

I start fasting on Friday after my afternoon snack which is supposed to be healthy.  I had Jamba Juice, that’s kind of healthy right?  But I skip the Friday evening meal because it is easier to end a day by skipping a meal than to start a day knowing you’re not going to be eating.  The other benefit of skipping the evening meal is I sleep like a baby.  Usually I’m up once or twice in the night and it usually takes forever to fall back asleep.  But when I skip that evening meal, boy I’m asleep in no time.  I even remember my dreams.

Since I don’t like breakfast anyway, the fast doesn’t start getting hard until lunch.  But if I can go through lunch technically I could end the fast Saturday evening making a total of three complete meals missed.  Rather than ending with an actual meal, I usually have some juice instead, go to bed early again and enjoy another good night’s sleep.  Then on Sunday eat like any ordinary day.

There are some contra-indications of fasting. If you are pregnant or nursing, you should not fast.  If you are on medication or have medical problems you should not fast unless you get your doctor’s a-okay, he won’t give it to you because he doesn’t understand what fasting is and what it does, so you might as well just not fast.

The most important reason to not fast is if you are afraid of going without food, you must not do it.

If you do begin to fast and experience horrible things, then stop immediately.  Seriously, a fast should not be terribly uncomfortable. It won’t feel great, but you shouldn’t be experiencing a lot of problems.  During my fasts I experience:  hunger, thickened tongue, bloating, gas, a bit of a headache, tiredness, and sometimes I can feel my heart beating — which is kind of weird.  These are minor things that pass often just by drinking water.

Fasting seems to slow down time and can be kind of boring.  But it also clears the head and clears my sinus also.  Because there is not a lot written about fasting, I am going to blog about my experiences and detail what happens on one day a week fasts.  This way, if you are thinking about fasting one day a week, you can read the positives and negatives that happened to me and make up your own mind before skipping meals.

There are those who say you shouldn’t care what others think.  Like my boyfriend, he says that.  So sometimes with him I belch out loud and he doesn’t care and he still likes me.  Or least he’s pretending to.  I had a girlfriend who said I should never keep my farts from coming out.  I guess she could tell I was the type to squeeze my sphincter muscle around my you-know-what to keep any noxious odors or sounds from offending anyone in the room.  When she said that, I immediately pictured myself in a business meeting letting out a nasty, loud one.  How would that go over?  What if everybody did that:  that would be one awful business meeting.

Caring about what other people think keeps business meetings and church assemblies and stuff like that smelling nice.  Caring about what other people think makes you worry about other body odors, and how you present yourself.  If you care about what people think and some of those people may come over, then you will clean up your house.  So caring about what other people think makes the world a less smelly place.  Those are good things.

Like in school.  I’m working on my MBA, and I care what other people think, so I have to make A’s.  Because God forbid someone find out, I made a — gasp — B.  Caring about what people think makes me work harder, because I don’t want to be negatively judged.  Regardless, making an A is a good thing, and the main thing that spurs me on toward that A is caring about what other people think.

But like I mentioned earlier, caring about what other people think doesn’t allow me to express my full creativity.  It keeps me afraid to take risks — because if a B is shameful, failing at anything would be disaster.  When I am wandering into new endeavors, this caring about what other people think, keeps me from going too far:  which could keep me from falling off a cliff (good),  but also from rising to the top of the mountain (not so good).  This fear of negative judgement may keep my job, but it also keeps me stuck at my job, when there is so much more I want to do and accomplish.

Maybe like everything else it is about balance.