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Ghandi Fasting

In the last five years, I have gone about forty days without food, mostly just consuming water. Some of these fasts are short, just two sleeps – basically a day of fasting – some of them are long, having gone for as long as eight days.

I started experimenting with fasting when I lived in Bali, because a lot of people do juice fasts there. Bali has a big, healthy-eating culture and I wanted to see what fasting was like. How much can you know about yourself if you have never gone without food? I started experimenting with baby steps. I started with one day, and then  worked up from there.

Recently Ive been doing 36 hour fasts every Monday and I noticed some patterns in the experience. I just want to share with you, if you haven’t done any fasting, what you might expect, or if you have done fasting, what you may have experienced, whether it be similar of different.

I needed less sleep. If I normally sleep eight hours, but while fasting, I wake up feeling refreshed after six and a half hours. I also feel very light.

I save time and become more productive. In the first couple of days into the fast, my mind is generally working really well. If you couple that with not having to take time to eat and brush your teeth, and just all those things you are saving a couple of hours each day, so you end being very productive in the early parts of the fast.

It can feel very fatiguing. Some people say they maintain high energy levels for an entire fast. I experienced that I was very lethargic after three to five days of fasting. I find it really hard to physically move my body and I just felt weaker and this process of your body wherein it is somewhat starting to eat itself off. Autophagy happens, or when your body gets rid of older cells and cleans it out. You really feel amazing after, but, during that process it is a very tiring feeling, at least, for me.

Food starts to smell really good! My kid was eating a rice cracker and I thought it smells amazing! Of course, that first bite of food after a fast is so much more delicious. Like many things, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

My body temperature goes down. I will be wearing sweatshirt and pants because I get the shivers. I think that is because I eat a pretty high-sugar low-glycemic index diet, I have a lot of fuel and my body temperature runs pretty hot, but then when I am fasting, it gets cold.

Working out becomes hard. I tried to do some work outs, runs, frisbee, and dancing, and it is all just really hard. I would expect that maybe, without the lightness that I feel, that sometimes when I run, I feel really good. However, I feel physically willing myself each footstep to happen or if you somehow forget that you are working out, for  few seconds, you quickly remember because your body is just complains. Fasting should be a time of not pushing yourself because it would be harder to recover.

Change in body odor. One really interesting thing that I noticed is that I smell really bad. It’s a totally different smell from my normal body odor and maybe perhaps that is from the autophagy.

It is hard to ramp up eating after fasting. You really have to ease into it and sometimes it takes two full days before you can eat certain complex food. I usually start with a banana or some juice. You can actually feel the food, sitting in there, in your stomach, before your digestive system realizes that there is food.

Losing the anxiety from lack food. Besides doing it for the health benefits, that you can feel good and have clarity and productivity, one of the best things that I have noticed is that just not needing food. I always had a lot of anxiety about not eating. I always had food with me because, what if I get hungry? Now, if I miss a meal, or a day of meal, I know that I am going to be fine. I may be a bit hungry but that is okay because in days that I eat three times a day, I still get hungry. It really just helps provide a little bit more security and safety around food knowing that I can go for a week without food. There is just less pressure to run out and eat the next thing. I think that it has been programmed into us that we should eat as much as possible, that is why we have so much obesity. We are genetically conditioned to try to eat. If you can take away that anxiety around eating, then you can be a little bit more intentional and you can optimize your diet. It all depends upon picking the right lifestyle for you.

I invite you, if you haven’t done any fasting, then do a little bit of reading about it and see if you want to do maybe, a day, without food, or maybe, three days, on a juice fast. Definitely ease into it and don’t do a week-long fast or a multi-week fast right off the bat, because that would be a huge shock to your system. But if you can start to ease into it then maybe you’ll find that something about it is really good for you.