So this guy Jesse encouraged his listeners to do a 7 day water fast with him and so here I am. Call me a sucker. But I was planning to juice fast this summer anyway, so his show intrigued me to take it a step further. We are all in a Slack channel communicating about how it's going and it's been interesting and good to not be alone in the woods on this.
Anyway, if you're into learning about how to improve your brain, check out his podcast. You'll probably really enjoy it.
Ok- onto the fast and how it's going.On the third day, waking up was hard. All of the symptoms had set in, weakness in particular. In the late morning I went to work for a few hours and by 2pm I was feeling really good. Later I went for a hike on the luscious greenbelt (a beautiful trail lining a creek here in Austin) and spent a few hours lying around sunbathing (vitamin D ftw) on a large rock in the middle of a raging creek with my best friend. We both meditated some but interestingly, I had a really hard time staying focused inside my brain with my eyes closed. After about 10 minutes I decided to lie back, open my eyes and just soak in the beautiful world around me- the running creek, the many trees, the sun and the clouds in the blue sky. That was really easy- I think the fast induced heightened alertness has made everything a little prettier.
And stinkier. Sense of smell is always fun during a fast. At the creek I could smell the water and the mud with so much more intensity. I smell restaurants from farther away than usual. I just cleaned out the fridge and found that a friend left a bag of shredded cheese in there. My olfactories tried to convince me that the cheddar-mex blend was the best cheese ever. So aromatic. When was the last time you were really swooned by a bag of shredded cheese?
I'm about 92 hours into my water fast, coming to the close of the 4th 24 hour period. And honestly I'm shocked at how good I feel. The beginning was really hard but mid-day yesterday I got over that hump and I'm feeling energetic. I'm a bit more efficient with my movement- not really excercising, I don't want to lose much lean muscle. I've been doing more reading and writing, taking it a little more easy. But at the end of day 4 I've got to say that I expected to feel weak and shaky and I don't. Mentally I'm a wee bit spacey, but in general I can be this way so it's hard to make a correlation. Otherwise, my mind feels quite clear.
One thing that differentiates the water fast from the juice fast is that I found I miss the ritual preparation of juice twice a day. When you are just drinking water and making tea, there's not much ritual. And I haven't filled that with any new ritual. The closest I come to that is putting a few drops of trace minerals and a pinch of Himalayan salt into each glass of water (mineral supplementation for heart health and other things).
My ketones today are around a 6, down from 8 the other day. The 8 must have been a spike when it started. Since then I've been around a 4-6 regularly. If you want to know more about what this means you can ask, but it basically means my body is eating my fat stores. Kind of boring but it's the point of all this. While I love the mental trip I wouldn't do this if it weren't for a bigger health goal. Well.... never say never.
I weighed myself on day 2 and I was 112. Yesterday I was 113.5 and today I'm 108.7. Probably has to do with when I weigh myself. I'm not a fan of the scale and rarely use it but it provides a data point to help observe the burning of fat in ketosis. I hope I'm cleansing out the bad stuff that the body stores, in hopes of making my it healthier. That's the goal.
Ok kids, that's it for day 4. The rough ride is over and it's pretty smooth sailing. I don't know if I'll make it to 7 days, but right now things are looking pretty good. My tummy is rumbling a little, not gonna lie. But it's easy to ignore.
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