My Fifteen Day Water Fast
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Well this page is my diary of a fifteen day water fast. What is a water fast? Water fast is when you eat nothing, but you can drink water. Is it hard? Yes, but not incredibly hard. Do you get hungry? Not after the first few days, but you feel bad and you crave food. Isn't it unhealthy to not eat for a prolonged period of time? Actually there is a lot of evidence that the opposite is true, but there is hardly a consensus on the issue. In any case many people fast, and it is not really dangerous for an otherwise healthy person to do this.
I personally wanted to fast for three weeks, but I could only hold out for fifteen days. With each day your resolve diminishes, you start justifying to yourself to break the fast, and you become more and more concerned about the negative effects of fasting.
There is a large movement behind fasting called the natural hygiene or something like that. They make many dubious claims about fasting, but they are not really scientists. Still it is worth to look them up. They have a lot of experience on this subject.
There have been some scientific studies about fasting, and most of them show that fasting has positive effects. However such studies are few and are limited in scope. Because of that, there is no agreement in the medical community if fasting is a good or a bad thing.
What are bad things that I experienced in my fast? Well I felt pretty bad a lot of times. I was also low on energy. Time seemed to drag on for ever. I would also become alarmist in my thinking, and worry that every little thing I am feeling. There have been a few strange feelings in my body that made me concerned at that time. In my life I had to hide from, and lie to people about what I was doing. After the end of my fast I was eating out of control and I had painful constipation. To be fair, I used to diet many timed before and I would have many of the same problems that I had while fasting.
There were also many positive things. I lost a lot of fat tissue. My mind was clearer and I was more focused. I had more time on my hands and I got more done. It was exciting to go through this. I slept like a baby! Also it is in some ways easier to fast than it is to diet. In the end the verdict about fasting is mixed. But I would like to try it again next summer if I build some muscles in the mean time.
One last thing, feel free to download and distribute this diary any way you want. I will probably not maintain this page beyond this point. You can read the entire page in about 15 minutes, so there is really not much to maintain.
If you have any questions you can shoot me an email at hamo_bu @ yahoo.com (remove spaces for email to work - I am trying to minimize spam)
Without further ado, here are the links to my dairy entries: