The Dangers of Fasting

Having recently finished a 30 odd day juice feast/fast, followed by a 4 day water fast, there were a couple of things that deeply concerned me.

To be clear, I don't think these are procedural issues - that water or juice fasting are inherently bad - but rather things that, perhaps due to my personality, worried me. I suspect these may also be dangers for others.

Psychological
There is a lot of talk, if you look around, of people being on fasts, feeling clear, light, connected to everything, full of energy and so on.

The problem is - if you don't feel like that, it's very easy to start thinking "Maybe I'm doing something wrong?" This is a very dangerous & slippery road.

After a couple of weeks, I got it in my head that perhaps my digestive track still had too much crap in it, left over from bad diet earlier in life. As per "official recommendations", I was taking cascara sagrada (a low key natural laxative). In addition, I regularly drank psyllium and bentonite shakes (which help detox heavy metals, & generally cleans you out). It didn't help that I would "slip up" and occasionally eat something - this would then spiral into a cycle of "I need to clear that out" and "once it's gone, THEN I'll feel light", etc.

I never did feel that lightness (except when meditating). But the drive to empty my stomach? Isn't that anorexia?

My lifelong habit has been: I eat whatever I want, whenever I want it. I eat until I'm full, and then I stop. I don't stress about eating healthily, but I do make a point of avoiding rubbish as much as possible (excepting a very stressful period in my early 20's where I ate complete junk & generally treated myself & my life badly).

Since going raw, I've learnt a lot more about what is and isn't healthy, so those boundaries are moving (cooked food in general being less healthy than uncooked - whereas before I would eat, say, japanese because rice is more healthy than burgers), but the attitude remains. To eat healthy: think healthy; avoid rubbish; chill out.

I never get sick. I'm fit enough that I run half marathons every decade or so - I'm not a runner, and never run other than the half marathons, it just seems to work out that way (don't ask, I can't explain it. I get spontaneous). I always have tons of energy. These external indicators tell me that while my diet can definitely improve (& has been), generally it's working for me, and my behaviours are reasonably sound.

So, for someone like me to be exhibiting anorexic tendencies? That's VERY scary.

Physical
When I went on the water fast, I knew it would be rough.

Typically a water fast works like this. You eat nothing, but drink lots of water. Your body survives by using up (in order):

1. whatever food is still in your digestive tract
2. your fat cells (which is where you store toxins, so these then get released - this is desirable)
3. your muscles (a 10 day fast you'll lose maybe 0.5->1kg/1-2lb of muscle)
4. tissues from your internal organs, in reverse order of importance

Now, because I'd just been on a juice feast, I didn't have any food in my digestive tract. What little fat I'd had to start with had mostly disappeared. I went straight into hardcore exhaustion. I spent 4 days pretty much unable to get out of bed.

Remember also, I was still doing colonics every week. Now, if my intention in doing these was to empty my digestive tract, I'd be more concerned about this, but what they did do was both help me clear toxins out faster, and also remove long term build up (I won't get into details here). Plus, from a healing perspective I've found them.. surprisingly effective. Suffice to say, I don't think they, in themselves were a bad thing, and they probably saved me a lot of pain. However, the combination of all of these things (fast, colonics, laxatives, internal cleansers) did have side effects.

One of the things that made me realise that I didn't NEED to be fasting was the inimitable Dhrumil. That what I was seeking wouldn't be found "out there" or by chasing some ideal goal of (mental) lightness, (digestive) clarity, or anything. No, this was an internal game, and you only win by letting go.

The other thing that made me decide enough was enough was seeing this in the mirror:

That doesn't look so bad. What's scary is, this is me deliberately relaxing my stomach, and letting it expand out as much as it possibly can.

To give this some perspective. For 20 years, my weight has been between 57kg and 65kg (126-143 lb). This doesn't matter how much, or what I eat. My lifestyle. Whether I exercise once a year, or three times a day. I eat three dinners to try and gain weight, and it's gone in two days. If I hit 65 kg I know it's time to do some exercise. I walk a bit more and I'm back down to 62kg (my longterm average, +/- 1kg) in a week. I'm STABLE. I've given up trying to gain weight, since it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Now, I don't have scales in the house - where's the point? But I did weigh myself at a friends, before I started the water fast, and I was down around 52kg. I only got lighter after that. What really scared me though? Was this (again, this is as far out as I could comfortably push my stomach):

That? That's unhealthy. And damn scary. And that was enough.

Recovering from a Juice Feast

First of all - a disclaimer. I ain't a juice feastin' expert. I can only talk about my own experience.

And so I shall!

Ok, some background - why did I do a juice feast in the first place? Spiritual clarity, essentially. In the process of weeding my emotional garden, I knew that the lighter my food intake, the more detoxing I'd do, the more things would come up, and the more I could heal. Did juice feasting help with this? Definitely.

Yes, I drank this much green juice.

Now, what did I do? I juice feasted - which means drinking at least 4L (4qt) of mainly vegetable juice, every day. I did this for 30 something days. After that, I went straight into a water fast (hey! why not? In for a penny, in for a pound!).

While I was doing the juice feast, I had colonics every week (more on those later) - which helped enormously, btw. Did I manage to just drink juice the entire time? No, I "screwed up" on several occasions. Oh, I also drank psyllium & bentonite shakes several times daily for most of that time. Theoretically that should have helped clean me out. Did I notice anything? Not that I could tell. Between the shakes and sporadic eating, I suspect my digestive system never really got to the super calm, clear state that people talk about - but in terms of healing, ahhh, hehe, yeah, it was plenty intense enough, thankyouverymuch.

So, what have I learned coming off the feast?

1. It's VERY easy to overeat.
Even though I'm not 100% my digestive system ever completely switched off, I find pretty much every time I eat that my stomach is hurting afterwards. I never ate much to start with, but I think I'm going to have to start making half portions - ie, about half the size of a child's meal.

2. It's VERY easy to underdrink.
Normally I drink 4-5L (4-5qt) of water a day. I have a big glass, and I just sip it throughout the day. When juicing, I'd drink maybe 2L of water a day, but 4L of juice. Take the juice away, and it's been hard to remind myself to start upping the water again. This has, of course, messed up my ability to digest food (I've been more clogged up than I would be on water).

3. The "6 day feast breaking" is wayyyyy too short.
I've been off for two weeks now, and my body is still freaking out every time I eat anything. It's not over after 6 days, that's just the beginning of the adjustment.

4. You're going to be drinking juice for much longer than time+6 days.
When I finished, I was all with the "Thank God!! I am SO sick of juice!!". Ahhh, famous last words. It's not just the feast breaking time, but also with a shrunken stomach, so reduced food intake, where will your nutrients come from? Juicing is still the easiest way to get them - without messing up your system. Psychologically this has been realllly tough for me to realise & accept. Must. Keep. Juicing.

5. Hard food is bad.
Even two weeks later, I can feel that my body is not ready for hard to digest food. Eg, I'll juice celery, but I haven't put it in my salads yet. I'll blend (small amounts of soft) nuts, but not eat them raw, and so on.

6. Your tastes will change, drastically.
I just threw out all the toxic stuff in my house. I had a mouthful of something that had stabilizers, emulsifiers etc and instantly felt ill. Now I'm someone with a concrete stomach lining, so this is pretty unusual. Also, things that I used to like are just too sweet for me now. Kale, I can't get enough of (never used to be able to stand it). Wuhhh.. what just happened?

7. The healing hasn't stopped.
Several issues *cough*likethisone*cough* have continued to bubble up as I've been transitioning. I figured everything would just halt, but noooo, still more to go, food-in-my-belly or not

8. Pace yourself!
All those things you've been missing while on the juice? Ahhh, pace yourself. Think, as Kristen points out in terms of a couple of different things a week. Don't do what I did, which was have all those things I'd missed in one day. *OW*. Yeah, it's stupid, I figured that (eventually). I like to learn experientially. Thanks though.

All that said, it's great to be back eating again. I've missed textures. I've missed subtle combinations of flavours (instead of everything-blurred-together-soup). Oh, and I've missed body fat. Holy crap I need some - it's winter here!! What was I thinking?

Food is not Love - but Love is food

Going on a 30 something day juice feast totally kicked my ass.

I admit it. I was miserable pretty much the entire time.

Worse though was afterwards. I decided to finish by going from juice onto a 4 day water fast (which was easier, oddly). That was ok. However, once the transition back to normal food was done (the usual 6+ day gradual dietary speedup), things have gone completely bonkers.

I've eaten more junk than I have in years. Today alone I had four meals, and another meal's worth of snacking. I've eaten until my stomach hurts, and then kept eating (and been doing this for days). To give this a little perspective, I normally eat only one or two small meals a day. I have a fast metabolism, but don't need much food to keep me going.

And this whole time, I've been trying to figure out what's going on. I've thrown all my usual healing tools (EFT, reiki, releasing, etc) at it, to no avail.

The fasting was tough, true. Having my partner out of town on business for the last two months hasn't been easy either (particularly since the previous two years we spent pretty much 24/7 together). But still, this was insane!

What the hell has been happening?

Well, I think I just found out. The inimitable Dhrumil pointed me to a quote from Mama S, of Give It To Me Raw:

Food is not Love

You know what? I read that and immediately burst out crying. I didn't stop for five minutes. In fact, I think I cried more & deeper than the whole time I was fasting - and considering what a wreck I was most of the time, that's saying something. I released/healed a ton of stuff while I was crying, and now? Well, it's odd, but the urge to eat seems to have disappeared.

A lot more things make sense too.

I grew up in a large, not particularly well off family. Mum didn't necessarily have as much time to spend with each of us as if we'd had a smaller family, & we may not have been able to keep up with the Jones (literally, they had a really nice car & a great computer), but we always ate well. It was one key way that Mum expressed her love for us, through food.

I think, at some level, I picked up on that, and solidified it as a core internal belief. A connection.

It maybe also explains why the juicing was so hard for me - if I was denying myself solid food - but interpreting that as denying myself love? Yowser!

and yet, oddly, the reverse IS true:

Love is Food

Love is the deepest nourishment of all. All beings instinctively crave it, from the second they're born. And what is love anyway, but energy? So why the appeal of raw food? It has more energy, more love. At some level, whether we're aware of it or not, our bodies know this, we feel it. The closer the food is to living, the closer it is to loving. It really is that simple.

Or at least, having cried my lungs out half the evening, that's how I feel about it right now.. And that sure beats eating myself into pain.