Only water for 7 days.  

Sometimes it feels like I need to do something extreme. Sometimes I feel like I need to forcefully shake my shit up. Sometimes it's like my habits and routines are driving me down, not lifting me up, and I need to wipe the slate clean. Reevaluate, examine, look deep inside, make new choices from a place of deep introspection with a set of rules and boundaries that I typically would not honor.  Fasting has always been a good way for me to do this.  For the past 12 years or so, I've done 10 day juice fasts to accomplish this goal. However, I've abstained from fasting for the last 2 years because I was mentally and physically unfit to take it on.  But finally, I'm ready. and so very ready, for a new fast.  And so I'm taking on a new fast. A water fast. The most extreme of all the fasts. 

Unlike my other fasts, this one intimidates the fuck out of me. Not only will I not be eating, I will be not consuming any nutrients at all, nothing at all besides water, with the goal of leading my body into ketosis- when the body burns fats it usually reserves for extreme circumstances.  It is also considered (see some certain and specific science articles) that this is also where unhealthy products generated from our lives are stored, where bad things may be happening, where icky stuff resides, like the superfund site for our bodies. 

What happens to a body that isn't given any nutrients?  I have no idea. Plenty of people experience true starvation regularly in this world.  I have not. As I experience this for myself- what true hunger feels like and what effects it has upon my body, mind and soul- I will let you know.  It's only 7 days, and in the global experience of hunger, that's nothing really.

As I head into this fast, I think of the many people who have died of hunger, of the many who have fasted for justice and liberty, who have fasted for freedom or resistance.  Those people fasted for reasons much less selfish than my own.  I will be meditating on the strength and determination of those who have come before me, but who were not given a choice. It's a little melodramatic, I know, but I guess at this moment it seems important to me.  I've been preparing for this fast mentally for several weeks, and it comes down to that- meditating on the hunger and fasting experience of human history. In essence its a bit solidarity, a bit selfishness, a lot exploration.  To see what will happen when I only consume water for 7 days. 

OMG.  I can do this.  Hopefully my posts along the way will include a bit of humor and lightheartedness that I usually share. But tonight, the night before I embark, I'm feeling so serious. Stho Stherious!    Follow this blog if you have any interest.  Let's go!