My Fasting Experience
The Rationalization
A while ago I went on a fast, as dumb as that sounds. I had my reasons. I was taking Lipotor for a few months and it really kicked my ass; so, I stopped taking it. However, the pain didn't stop! I found out that Lipotor has the ability to enter the system quickly and cause damage, yet it is slow to leave the system, and leaves you in considerable discomfort. Lipotor totally bites ass.
The idea behind a fast is to purge the system of impurities. Our digestive system consumes a considerable amount of energy so another idea of a fast is that by shutting down the digestive system energy will be freed up and allow for healing of other parts of the body.
It was with these ideas in mind that I thought it'd be worth a shot to go on a fast. The hope was to purge my body of the Lipotor while allowing my body to heal itself from the damage already done.
I was introduced to the fast by a friend of mine. He's health-conscious, to say the least. He's a triathlon athlete, runs marathons, and a engages in a host of other physical activities. 'Self-discipline' sums it up quite nicely. On the other hand, I've never been very health-conscious, hence the high cholesterol leading to the Lipotor treatment in the first place. 'All-around Schmuck' sums it up quite nicely. I get winded if I jog my memory; so, this fast thing sounded like a good step forward to better health.
The fast I followed is the Ultimate Fast, and is recommended for good prostate health plus its good for a plethora of other benefits. The fast may be found here http://www.prostate90.com/program/ultimate_fast.html. Its root philosophy is, "A clean-walled, parasite-less colon functioning at peak efficiency is the cornerstone of good health." Sounds logical to me. Get the bugs out of your ass. Sign me on!
So, as with any fast, there's no food involved. Sugars for energy are consumed through home-made lemonade, sweetened with maple syrup. Citrus is good for rinsing the body, hence all the grapefruit diets out there, so its a double-wollup of goodness. To get the bugs out of your ass there's some pills you take to gather up the bugs and Pysillium husk seek (key ingredient in Metamucil) and salt-water enemas to ensure they 'leave'. Also, Bentonite clay is used to draw impurities out of your system. Should you tire of the great taste of lemonade, pills, husk seek and clay, you are allowed spring water and herbal teas to supplement your diet.
The fast lasts for 8 days. Following the 8 days, there is an 'ease-in' day or days where you eat light to start up the digestive system's pilot light and get it going again.
I've logged my fast and present it to you below.
Day 1
6:42am
Not too bad, but I don't eat breakfast anyway and although I'm a coffee-drinker, I've gone without coffee
plenty of times and it's never bothered me. Guys are ordering lunch. A roast-beef with horseradish sounds pretty damned good but I'm not
dying for food.
2:41pm
Yep. Getting hungry.
3:37pm
Really hungry. "Just drink lemonade if you're hungry." Bullshit. Looks like I'll be getting really high and playing video games all
night. Keep my mind off of food.
4:51pm
Home. Playing BattleFront II. I keep getting up and looking in the fridge! I've caught myself three times already. I know I'm not
eating, yet I keep going to the fridge. Actually, I only realize I'm going to the fridge when I'm at the fridge. I have no recollection of
ever walking to the fridge.
6:30pm
I could reeeeeeeeeeally use a sandwich. However, I have this piss-warm lemonade. Funny, lemonade doesn't override millions of years of
instinct so its not fooling my stomach one bit. I've drank enough of this lemonade to reflood New Orleans and I'm still hungry.
7:15pm
Just made more lemonade for tomorrow. Fun as hell. I don't have a juicer so my forearms are getting a workout from squeezing all the
lemons. My forearms haven't been this sore since I was learning to 'self-discover' back in highschool. I'd give my left nut for a Big Mac
right now.
Brushed my teeth. I'm so hungry I swallowed the toothpaste.
Day 2
6:52am
Drank my salt-water concoction and that led to a rather unpleasant experience. I'm also tired this morning, but it was a late night last
night; so, I don't believe its to do with this fast. A co-worker has to leave the job (cutbacks) so we're going to a Vietnamese restaurant
as a fond send off. I really like Vietnamese food too, so this will be kind of a drag. Its a big drag seeing him go so the whole thing
should really suck. I think I'll try to catch 20 winks at my desk here.
p.s. Not hungry at all.
9:12am
Mmmmmmmm...what an outstanding flavour! 1 tbsp. of Bentonite clay, add a tsp. of Psyllium husk seed, mix well in 6 oz. of lemonade and
you have...God-awful shit. I have to repeat this 4 more times today. 6 more days of this. The Geneva convention outlaws this type of diet
and I've volunteered for it.
9:23am
Still trying to choke this shit down.
I would've liked to have chugged it to get it over with quickly but there's no way that's humanly possible. For one, the throat closes up immediately. Its like my body knows that pouring wet cement into my gullet isn't a good thing, and it can't tell the difference between wet cement and this cup of shit since they're so similar in texture and taste. I'd rather have rammed this stuff up my ass as a suppository. At least I wouldn't have had to taste it. Four sips left. Two left. Here's a nice joke, it settles at the bottom of the cup. I could see it lumped up there - waiting.
I added more lemonade. I'm back up to about 6 sips left but I had to do it.
Done. Its 9:31. That was traumatic. I'm going to curl up in the fetal position for a while, rock back and forth, and repeat the mantra, "I'm a good boy, a pretty boy...".
9:00pm
OK, long day. Dinner was fun. Tea. A friend stuck it out with me even though he didn't have to which I thought was extremely considerate
and nice -- going way above and beyond. I didn't eat and didn't care. Today I wasn't hungry in the slightest. When everyone's food arrived,
I didn't start drooling all over myself like a baby with its first tooth, and that surprised me.
Also, found out that someone else on this fast and myself, we're like each other's support system (although she's my support system and I'm turning out to be quite useless) have been taking WAY too much of the Bentonite clay. We should be excreting garden statues tomorrow. I can't wait.
Getting really fucking sick and tired of the lemonade.
Day 3
7:00am
Salt-water enema. Yummy! I'm guessing I won't be getting any cancour sores this week either. I have yet to take some of the 'get the
bugs out of your ass' pills. I look forward to that because its kind of like eating solid food.
No hunger. Its quite surprising.
10:17am
After this is over, it'll be a damned cold day in Hell before I have another glass of fucking lemonade.
11:43am
No Bentonite today. Had enough yesterday to last me awhile.
2:10pm
I had a nice change of pace this afternoon. I had an apple & cinnamon (herbal) tea. How quaint! Also, accidentally ate a fly. I
wonder if that'll count against me.
I'm not doing the clay today but I'm still doing that Psyllium. Instead of preparing it in the lemonade, I got lazy and just popped a teaspoon in my mouth and intended to wash it down with my tea. Well, bad idea! Psyllium has a characteristic where it immediately absorbs any moisture present. You're bang on if you imagine eating sawdust. I probably won't be doing that again, because, like everything else on this fast (with the exception of the lemonade, which I've learned to hate anyways), Psyllium tastes like shit.
4:10pm
A thought occurred to me today that pertains to the worst part of fasting. Its not the hunger, there isn't any. Its the social
outcasting. Eating is a very social activity. We've all heard that before but until you're on the outside of the circle, you don't realize
that just about every meal is social. So, that would be the worst thing about this fast. That and this goddamned lemonade.
Day 4
7:00am
Not even half way there and I'm so tired of this its amazing. I'm finding out what the tough part of fasting is: its not the hunger,
which I assumed it would be before starting, its being sick and tired of the few things you do ingest; such as, lemonade, pills, husk seed,
clay and saltwater enemas. Sure it all sounds good, but it does get tiring.
Day 8
Morning
Well, I skipped a few days here. It was busy here at work, then it was the weekend and this log is on my work laptop. On the weekend, I
couldn't be bothered pulling out the work laptop to make any entries and inadvertently remind myself of work (I only had Sunday off anyway
so I didn't slack too much). Not that there was anything to write. Its become the same ol' same ol': I didn't eat, wasn't hungry, have
learned to hate lemonade, took my pills, drank that God-awful clay concoction and salt-water enemas and ate the sawdust 5 times per day.
Other than that, things were pretty normal.
I'm very happy that today is the last day. People do this for 40 days?!? Once again, its not the hunger that'll get you, it certainly hasn't bothered me at all. Its the monotony of the fast routine that grows tiresome. Take this and that 5 times per day, drink salt-water, make and drink that lemonade; that's it. Its funny how meals break up a day. Without meals there aren't milestones and the days tend to drag out longer. Although it never dawned on me before, I believe this is why smoking is so hard to quit; its not the nicotine addiction, its the "What's next? Nothing" that makes it hard.
I may have lost some weight. Maybe. I don't have a scale so its hard to say but the clothes don't fit any looser so I'm guessing that if I did lose any weight, it certainly isn't substantial. That's a little surprising considering that I've not had anything solid in quite awhile. However, I'm guessing the maple syrup, being nature's Snickers bar, may have kept things from burning off.
I'm also VERY much looking forward to tasting something besides the lemonade, or as I've come to call it, Satan's Piss. Tomorrow is 'kick your system back into eating mode' day, so I'm planning on soup for lunch (probably just the broth) and something a bit more substantial for dinner, like oatmeal. The diet calls for something like fish and rice for dinner but I'm not going to kid myself. I'm not going to prepare that because I don't have it and even if I did it'll take longer than a minute and a half in the microwave, and I know after a fairly long work day that I won't feel like going out to a restaurant; so, soup broth for lunch then oatmeal for dinner. Sounds absolutely delicious (and there's no facetiousness in that statement). The only bummer is that I'm out of maple syrup and I really really really wanted to put some on waffles. If you've only had maple flavoured syrups and not had real maple syrup, believe me, its a heavenly world of difference.
One last point. I started this whole thing because I was on Lipotor and it really kicked my ass. I've been off it for 3 months and still, sitting any longer than 10 minutes really stiffens me up and I find I move slower than an old man when I get up, which is humbling to say the least. 'Embarrassing' is a more suitable word. Reports say that Lipotor is slow to leave the system so I started this fast in hopes of purging the Lipotor. It didn't work. Perhaps it purged a good chunk of it and there's still plenty left. Who knows? So, I'm back on my Ibuprofen but I don't regret fasting because it was well worth a shot.
In general, the fast was well worth it. If nothing else, I have another experience in my life that's perfect for story-telling; its entertaining because its out of the ordinary but not so much so that I'll come across as a total nutjob.
10:45am
OK, this day is going to be harder than I thought. Now that I know food is in my near future, I can't stop thinking about it. I've
already decided that I'm doing this to the second. Today, at one minute, 30 seconds to midnight, I am going to put a bowl of chicken noodle
soup into the microwave. Tomorrow, at 12:00:15am, give or take 14 seconds, I'll be eating chicken noodle soup. I may even eat the noodles.
That's only 13 hours and 15 minutes away. I'm giddy.
10:50am
13 hours, 10 minutes to go.
11:03am
12 hours, 57 minutes to go. I wish I could put this out of my head.
7:30pm
I'm now down to counting minutes. 270 of them. Maybe I should be counting seconds. Its harder to do and the extra math may take my mind
off it.
16,200 seconds. The math wasn't that hard and I'm back to thinking about soup.
Day 9
12:30am
Had chicken noodle soup. Absolute Heaven. 1 can of chicken noodle soup has 87% of the daily recommended sodium intake. Unbelievable!
But, since its the only thing I've eaten, I figured that I'm still 13% ahead of the game. I just ate the broth and couldn't help but have a
noodle. Its amazing how good a noodle can taste. I think an angel must've come down and touched the noodle. The angel of Julia Child,
maybe. I had a coffee too. Tomorrow, soup and oatmeal and absolutely NO lemonade.
Going to bed. Its late and I'm happy.
7:50am
At work, having a coffee and feeling pretty normal. Still not having breakfast but feeling pretty good about lunch for the first time in
a week and day.
Me and my buddies on our fasts
Submit Date: 6/11/2006 9:01:52 PM
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