5 days of fasting can change you.

I decided to try fasting after I found this article on Medium — Why I stopped eating for 132 hours and what I learned from it.

Need for notes that I’ve had this experience before, but only for one or three days. I did all the preparations when I did three-days-fasting for the first time. I started slow, by cutting out one meal per day. I replace it with a juice for a week and then I reversed the process after three days of fasting. It was a strong experience and I loved it! But what changed this time and what were my outcomes?

First, I wasn’t ready at all. I just started immediately (on the next day) after reading the article. Second, I didn’t read anything specific to understand how to support my body. I just started to drink a lot of water and fresh squeezed juices with some fiber-combo. Please, don’t do the same!

Anyway, the first day was a disaster. I was starving and couldn’t even think to be close to the kitchen.

I squeezed all fruits and vegetable in the house and still it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t meditate and when I went to sleep, I was hungry. At least my headache was telling me that.

On the second day I felt better. Plus, one thing, which I would like to draw your attention, was missing — my hunger! I couldn’t believe that it was gone. I was able to do my morning exercise and I felt great after that.

The third day was even better. I was full of energy and did all my tasks on the first half of the day. How breathtakingly prescient of my boyfriend was to prepare all juices in advance. It saved my a lot of time! On that day I proved to myself once again that I am eating more than I need. Way more than I need! Another discovery was that food can be an appalling waste of time.

On the fourth day I started to feel different. One hour I was full of energy, another I felt like I will fall asleep right where I was standing. I believe, the reason behind that was because of an intense workshop. I was stupid enough to attend to it before I finished my fasting experience. Anyhow, by the end of that day emotionally I felt wonderful, but physically I was extremely tired.

On the fifth day I just turned off. I slept for almost 14 hours. I deduced that it wasn’t such a good idea to combine my fasting experiment with the intense workshop. By the end of the day I recovered and was ready for my first day with food.

I knew that I need to be careful and slowly go back to three-meals-per-day mode. Still, I eat a lot during the lunch that day and dinner was bigger than I expected. By that moment I finally felt the difference between satiety and gluttony. Yep, sin of gluttony! Who would guess that it can appear so unexpected in your life.

As a conclusion, I want to say that after my little experiment I realized that need to become aware of what and how I eat. Also, I didn’t know what does it actually mean to be hungry! Our brain worked quite well on that, to replace a simple feeling for replenishment by hunger.