I fasted 23 days this time. The hardest part of going on a long fast is that, unfortunately, you freak out friends, family and the people you work with.

Flying under the radar is impossible.

The first time I tried the cayenne pepper, maple syrup, lemonade fast (Master Cleanse), I was able to go two weeks before an “intervention.” Getting past the first week of not eating isn’t that tough. Week two, week three, easy.

After week one, no more hunger pangs and I had more energy and less mental fog. I still had the munchies.

After ten days, my eyes were clearer and my iris’ seemed to be a slightly lighter brown and more translucent. The detox also gave me noticeably softer skin. Could be my imagination, but I was paying more attention to smells. One Pavillions smelled like rotting meat.

I’m petite. I lost slightly more than ten pounds, down to 98. I gained an hour-and-a-half of my day.

Breaking my fast: Day one, I had a cup of unsweetened apple sauce and a few glasses of fresh orange juice. I’m also taking Bio-k+, a probiotic. It comes in a thick creamy liquid. Has to be refrigerated. It’s packaged like a multipack of yogurt. If you’ve ever baked bread, it tastes like what fresh or activated yeast smells like. On the box it guarantees me at least 50 billion fresh bacteria per serving.

Tomorrow’s menu is Cream of Rice and maybe half a chopped up apple and more oj.

Why? Why not. I believe in doing a seasonal fast. I find myself paying more attention and calming down.

Fall cleaning. Cleaned the car, cleaned the room, detoxed the body. At a certain point during the fast euphoria kicks in. The same nirvana I imagine fans of trepanation are going for.

From Wikipedia:

Medical reasons/benefits for why people fast

People can also fast for medical reasons, which has been an accepted practice for many years. One reason is to prepare for surgery or other procedures that require anesthetic. Because the presence of food in a person’s system can cause complications during anesthesia, medical personnel strongly suggest that their patients fast for several hours (or overnight) before the procedure.

Another reason for medical fasting is for certain medical tests, such as cholesterol testing (lipid panel). People are often asked to fast so that a baseline can be established. In the case of cholesterol, the failure to fast for a full 12 hours (including vitamins) will guarantee an elevated Triglyceride measurement.

A longer fast for health reasons typically lasts a week or longer and includes some food intake, such as fruit or vegetable juices, as part of a detox diet.

Some doctors believe that pure water fasting can not only detoxify cells and rejuvenate organs, but can actually cure ^[2] such diseases and conditions as cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, colitis, psoriasis, lupus and some other autoimmune disorders when combined with a healthy diet. They believe that “Fasting is Nature’s Restorer.”^[3]

Recent studies on mice show that fasting every other day while eating double the normal amount of food on non-fasting days led to improved insulin and blood sugar control, neuronal resistance to injury, and health indicators superior to mice on 40% calorie restricted diets.^[4][5] This may mean that alternate-day fasting is an alternative to caloric restriction for life extension. However, it has not been tested on humans.

People who feel they are near the end of their life sometimes consciously refuse food or water. The term in the medical literature is patient refusal of nutrition and hydration. Contrary to popular impressions, published studies^[6] indicate that “within the context of adequate palliative care, the refusal of food and fluids does not contribute to suffering among the terminally ill”, and might actually contribute to a comfortable passage from life: “At least for some persons, starvation does correlate with reported euphoria.”

In natural medicine, fasting is seen as a way of cleansing the body of toxins, dead or diseased tissues, and giving the gastro-intestinal system a rest. Such fasts are either water-only, or consist of fruit and vegetable juices. Some results have been achieved while including fasting in the treatment of some kinds of cancer,^[7] autoimmune diseases,^[8]and allergies.^[9]

Common terms used in research are: reduced diet therapy (RDT), Fasting Therapy (FT) and caloric restriction. Research tends to originate from Russia, Japan and Germany.

Ayurveda describes fasting therapy as langhana which is an important treatment tool used with other therapeutic methods like heat therapy and oil therapy.

Physical effects of fasting

When food is not eaten, the body looks for other ways to find energy, such as drawing on glucose from the liver’s stored glycogen and fatty acids from stored fat and eventually moving on to vital protein tissues. Body, brain and nerve tissue depend on glucose for metabolism. Once the glucose is significantly used up, the body’s metabolism changes, producing ketone bodies (acetoacetate, hydroxybutyrate, and acetone). Even where this transition to alternative forms of energy has been made, some parts of the brain still require glucose, and protein is still needed to produce it. If body protein loss continues, death will ensue.

Short term fasting causes a starvation response that encourages the body to store fat once eating is resumed. This is one of the pitfalls of Yo-yo dieting. The starvation response is the switching of the body from carb+fat energy generation to amino acid+fat energy generation. The amino acids are synthesised from the breakdown of muscle tissue. Since muscle tissue is always metabolically active and requires energy to function, the reduction of muscle tissue also reduces the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Basal metabolic rate is the absolute minimum energy requirement of your body while at rest. it can be compared to a car’s fuel requirement when idling the engine. One of the effects of fasting is to reduce the body’s energy needs during times of scarcity, analogous to turning the idle lower or replacing a big engine with a small engine. Thus, when the same amount of food is eaten, fewer of the calories are required for basal metabolism, but the rest, a greater percentage than before the fast, are stored as fat.

After approximately three days of fasting, feelings of hunger usually become infrequent or disappear altogether. According to Herbert M. Shelton, N.D., N.D.Litt., D.C., a proponent of Natural Hygiene, whose 45-year-long career of promoting water-only fasts for up to ninety days was punctuated by being repeatedly arrested for practicing medicine without a license, the ‘hunger’ experienced during the first three days of a fast is “gastric irritation”, and not “true hunger.”^[10]