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Blog: Lauray's 10-Day Fast
by lauray

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Date: 8/30/2007 10:26:56 AM ( 17 y ) ... viewed 1946 times

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So, I have concluded that I have a phobia-like fear of fasting, some sort of intractable anxiety about fasting, and that I can heal this fear with the help of any technique to deal with irrational fears, and even easier with SUPPORT!

Anti-Anxiety Techniques I know. (1) Ask self: How are you RIGHT now (in the instant.) The answer is always , Fine. Keep asking self this all night and see? You fast all night and are fine. (2)Remember -- my fear being that I am hurting myself by fasting/being thin -- no matter what I do to myself, no matter what happens, even if I die I AM STILL A GOOD PERSON (so I do not have to worry I will not go to heaven, and so I can dare to do something I have fears about but know is safe really) (3) Present worst case scenario (=fear)to self and ask self: OK, so how do you FEEL about that. Focus on the feeling. Like, even for a fear such as that of dying in the night, I have to ask myself, OK, how would I FEEL about that?(4) Remember literature I have read about fasting. E.g. today I read of a schizophrenic boy who fasted and was healed of his schizophrenia and fasted in spite of his fear that he would not survive the fast. .... This reassured me. See? Other people fear fasting, too. And I knew as I read this story that in fact the boy was perfectly safe. I am SO MAD about all the so destructive fears of fasting that circulate. EVERYONE should fast really and be supported to do so. It is so safe. Yes. I have got to keep myself thinking on these lines.

Cognitive Techniques. This is not a fear technique but a technique to stay out of temptation to break fasts. I read about a technique today of just displacing your thoughts when you are experiencing temptaion -- just totally focusing on something else. It takes courage and real letting go to do this. But I am a little bit open to the idea. The trouble I have is that I do not like to abandon my thoughts like this. I want to honor my desires and it feels scary and repressive to switch thoughts abruptly like this. I feel there is some important reason for urges to eat, if they are present. I have this desire to "Do justice to my feelings" and do not have the stoicism to ignore them. But I think I can come to understand that some thoughts really don't deserve attention, that just as I cannot help all people I encounter, some are beyond me, I cannot entertain all thoughts and desires that enter my head -- some are too toxic for me. And it is far better to acknowledge my limitations than try to help a person whom I cannot help, or trying to deal with urges or thoughts that I cannot handle. If I try to take on these things I cannot handle, I hurt myself. Just as an alcoholic is sober from alcohol, I can be sober from certain people and certain food-thoughts or eating-urges. I can refrain from entertaining them. I can use this technique of simply concentrating fully on something else. It may hurt at first, but I will get used to it. I think I will try this.

Besides the fear of death, or perhaps mainly, my resistance to fasting or difficulty taking longer fasts emanates just from my food addiction. .... I can hash out/challenge my thinking about this, I realize as I write right now.

.... What I have been telling myself and others is that I am a food addict and thus impossibly resist making the life choice to get off triggering food, to abstain from all but what I term "green, living" food -- green, leafy, non-starchy, non-tempting, sprouts. Abstaining from all but this kind of food would be a helpful aid to fasting, almost a precondition of fasting; it would support my fasting much better than does continually relapsing into the more triggering food, some of which is even raw but is still triggering -- fruit, nuts . I have been saying that I just do not want to admit -- am too scared or unsupported to admit -- that I cannot handle other kinds of food and have to "Get sober" from them. But this is not true: I can get out of denial and sober.

What I really am ready to let go of is thinking that my food addiction will prevent me from fasting. AND I know if I fast the fast will take away the desire for the triggering foods, all by itself, and I will not have to fight them any more.

What I am really ready to let go of is the idea that I cannot overcome my reluctance to practice this sobriety of fasting, and reach out successfully for support to FAST! I have been experiencing a lack of support, and non-supportive reactions. I theorize that this is due to my not having cultivated a strong enough desire to fast in the first place. You get what you ask for. I have been SCARED really to ask for real support to fast. Besides being neurotically afraid of getting extremely thin, or of having some reaction and dying, I have been telling myself: "I CAN'T FACE fasting (it is so disciplined! it is so sober! it just requires more sobriety than I have!) or "I CAN'T FACE abstaining from all but my 'Green, living' food." Well, I have doubts still about the green living food. I find I want to use fruit still. And to make experimentally the d*mned f*cking raw ice cream... But I do feel a willlignness to fast!

God, it is so not OK with me that people do not support me to get off this stuff!!!!!! And fast!!! people talk about food as if it were a safe high and maybe it is for them but it is so totally toxic to me. I feel so frustrated, invalidated, and rejected as I try to assert that I NEED to get off fruit and all but living green foods -- actually, that any eating at all, in the condition I am in, is inappropriate and hurtful and I need to fast -- and people pooh-pooh this. This is the most horrible nightmare, to be dismissed this way. I guess it seems SO hard to face the pain of actually fasting or actually giving up non-green-living food that I myself pooh-pooh the urgency that I practice these sobrieties (or I feel SO reluctant to give up the "pleasure" of food or trigger food that I dismiss the necessity of giving these things up)... and other people respond to me by participating in my own self-dismissal and denial.

Anyway, a quick note on my reluctance and on my progress toward sobriety: I do have some progress today, using less fruit. I am more functional today. If I use fruit to just a certain extent it bloats me that little bit (not TOO much or I bloat painfully) and takes away the "hunger" pangs or the feeling of being "triggered" after a meal (I still "need" the feeling of being "stuffed.")

I am ready to challenge my thinking about fasting. I am ready to decide that I CAN fast after all. I am ready to jump in and know that fasting, long-term, is safe, healing, and even fun. I am ready to stop thinking of it as suffering. I can envision fasting as pleasurable. I want to immerse myself in projects (I have some now... like the personals, where I am seeking connection) and fast one day, two days, three days, and onward!

Actually, the problem of boredom may be larger than I realize. I have been emphasizing the problem of my irrational fears/panic attacks while fasting that make me break the fast. But boredom... isn't this what usually does me in? I think it is. So I want to affirm that today I have conceived that I COULD tolerate the misesry of doing without food. That I might be able to have fun. That it could be pleasurable, that I could find pleasure, that I could stand it. it is a shameful thing to be governed by, this selfish pleasure-drive, but there it is. Instead I envision myself comfortably and happily fasting. I envision that it could be OK.

So, here is the narrative of what has happened since my last post:

Last night I after managing to fast 12 or 13 hours I broke off my fast -- with only 250 calories, the rest of my allotted 1200 calories for the day, so did not exceed that, that was good -- BUT I am so sick and tired of chickening out and being unable to fast. This has got to stop, I have got to get a real fast going, I am ready, and I want support. I want to stop sacrificing my health and life for a few minutes' distraction or "comfort!"

A note on the breaking of this fast. I broke it for reasons of irrational fear. Coincidentally I felt "hunger" pangs. But it was false, toxic hunger. It was so frustrating to realize this, as I did when I sat down to eat the d*mned 250 calories. As soon as the food touched my mouth the "hunger," which had felt strong, and which had been overwhelming my mind, vanished. I felt instead a distinct consciousness that my whole digestive tract was in a terrible, cleanse-demanding, sleazy state. Eating was a sleazy, dishonest, self-violative act. I had the strong awareness that I should NOT eat, the clear message from my body to fast. But I was unwilling to forgo the "pleasure"/"relief" that I had led myself to believe I was going to get. I could not tear myself away. I was overwhelmed with a whiny, entrenched anger/sadness that refused to consider that I would still be OK if I forwent the food and continued my fast. The thought was : "Ohhh... I can't stand it... I can't stand the emptiness, the loneliness, the boredom, the uncertainty, the lack of foundation in my life, the lack of engagement, the lack of fulfillment, the BOREDOM, the sadness, the sadness, the boredom, the bleakness... it is so bleak." Something like that was the inner monologue. This is typical, the typical feeling that triggers me to eat when it is not OK with me to eat, or break a fast when it is not OK with me.

But one thing that was also fairly strong, as I say, was irrational fear. I was scared. i was seized by exaggerated terrors. I was first of all scared by being sick. Then I was afraid of dying in the night.

I will tell what happened yesterday. The breaking of the fast was at the end of the evening -- 11 pm or midnight. Things had temporarily improved in the afternoon, after I finished my post. I could not make sense of everything that was going on in my life or figure out what to do, but I did know something -- that I needed some pleasure. I have not even any books to read right now. It is awful. I was terrified by being so deprived. But I knew, in a beautifully connected and certain way, that what I basically needed to do was go to a movie. So I went. ... After the movie I got on the phone with the ex-b.f. I was rather devastated since he was seeming to flirt slightly and had not acknowledged the pain I had expressed about how he had broken up with me. I felt so needy. I felt so out of power. I wanted him to ask me to come over for the night and was devastated when he didn't. So after he hung up, I cried so hard, but then I said, I am going to assert myself here. I questioned the wisdom of this since I was basically going to tell him I felt needy, and would he be able to respond to this? And my neediness is my problem in the first place. And I was so distraught, and I felt it was altogether too hard on my to be involved with him in the first place, he was just too rough and inappropriate and uncivilized and not gentle - but I ended up callign him and saying how hurt I felt. Just, I felt hurt and needy when you hung up like that. This is how I felt. Hurt. Needy. And I wanted you to know. And then all about how I had been hurt by his manner of breaking up and then furthermore just calling me 4 days later and not even addressing how hurt I had been. ... Well, it turned out that we had a great conversation, and he explained reasons for breaking up with me, as he had refused to do before, and suddenly I did not feel inferior, out of power and needy any more or at his mercy, always begging for his attention and not getting it. He was right there for me. We talked for a while. After this conversation I feel secure and happy. I do not feel any lack of self-worth for his breaking up with me any more, and that is all that matters. He heard my feelings and it was great. WHAT a happy ending. I do not desire his attention any more and don't feel inferior any more. We are friends. The trouble is wanting someone's attention and not daring to ask for it. He was very caring with me when I did ask.
Nevertheless, I was still in a major panic attack, and with this fear driving me I knew it was inevitable I would break my fast. (... though I should be able to address that cognitive-therapeutically! Nothing is inevitable! I don't have to carry out a decision to go to my drug, food!) After the conversation I lay down but felt still some kind of fear of fasting. I was afraid, because of having a cold (!?) of dying in the night -- of stopping breathing. ... I postponed the breakign of the fast for a while. I lay down and even went to sleep slightly . I developed a huge, huge headache and did not think of the enema cure for this -- only of the food-fix "cure." Oh, how destructive. The headache was so brutal I could hardly move around. I got up and started to set up my eating equipment. I was overcome with pain. WHY, oh, WHY could I not just lie down and sleep, as my body was begging me to do??? My body gave me SUCH a gift of this headache. It ALMOST preserved my fast. God, how brutally I ignored my body's signals. I got in the bath take the headache away. This unfortunately worked. Now I was free to act my compulsion to food-fix. Still in pain, and fighting nausea, I set up the 250 cals. and ate it, having the experience of the sleazy, body-dismissing self-food-forcing I described above (all my "hunger" vanishing as soon as I began eating... and afterward, the sensation of a cold, slimy, infected, infested state in my intestines, almost making me gag)
One good thing. I woke up this a.m. and went about eating 950 cals. to re-start my fast.. and the slight fast I had had seemed to raise my healthy resistance to this overeating, so that I actually did not finish quite all of it. I left several strawberries. This is very good. It is pretty unheard of for me to leave over something sweet. And I did it with a newly gentle willingness to refrain from bloating myself. I could feel that the strawberries were bloating me painfully. I think strawberries are going to be off limits now just like apples -- I hope. I could eliminate fruit gradually this way. I could eliminate first what most bloats me.
I want to be really serious about my fast now. I would like to fast 21 days.

I am reading Allan Cott, MD, which really works for me though his books are too short.

SUPPORT: I need people who are not afraid of fasting and who will give me support to fast. I need people who will take me through the scary parts of the journey and who really know as I do deep down that I am OK and will be OK fasting. I need people who will not react neurotically-fearfully to my thinness. I may need to become quite skinny, even emaciated, to get well, as Isabelle Moser did and as Shelton also knows is safe and perfectly fine -- and this thinness is fine with me. I did react quite fearfully to my reflection in mirrors when I came back to the States from Europe not realizing how thin I had become. I really freaked out, actually. I really hurt myself, stuffing down peanut butter and butter and clogging my colon with that for literally weeks. I think it really got in there and stuck, especially the p.b. ... I realize as I write that my symptoms from this incident -- almost a month ago -- have now finally gone away. Tingling in the hands and feet and itching skin in hands and feet and I am pretty sure the tingling/numbness was from hyperventilation though I never know when I am hyperventilating. Anyway, and also extreme sensitivity to cold in hands. Extreme pain from touching cold things -- and tingling/numbness. Not to mention the p.b. and butter overwhelming my liver, and being such a huge, violent insult to the body. ... What could I have done???? I am admittedly still at a loss as to the solution to this. The problem is: I need a long fast but am thin. Well, I know that Shelton and Moser fasted the emaciated and knew the emaciated needed a fast more than anyone, that fasting for them was not only safe but necessary, and the only way for them to regain health. And I am not and was not even emaciated. So I did not need to slam down the peanut butter etc. abusively: I could simply have fasted, and become well. It did not matter that I was thin. ... Now I look heavier though still thin... a lot of it is edema, I am afraid, but even so I feel more comfortable fasting.
Fasting! I must do this! I must get through the night tonight and really start, a 21-day fast if this is what my body wants. I have got to let go once and for all of this toxic cultural fear of thinness. I have made progress toward letting go but when I get scared at night I am still overwhelmed with the fear. ... i have been living in such a miserable, anxiety-ridden state, and have needed a fast so badly; I am so angry at the waste of my life. I must see fasting as pleasurable and positive.

I talk to the ex-b.f. (now friend) and he is coming from the typical mainstream neurotic fear of fasting though he says he supports me to fast as I wish to. ... I talk to my therapist and she supports my fasting and everything and she is even an MD but she is so detached and weird that I don't have the sense she really apprehends the reality of what I am talking about. My great guilt and fear and self-suspicion is that I am intent on doing something "hurtful to my body" by fasting ... when I talk to the ex, this fear is reinforced cause he doesn't see that fasting is safe and helpful and is so mainstream in his thinking. ... I am imaging myself NOW saying to him next time he calls and asks how I am: "Fine! I am great, because I am at last succeeding in fasting! ... Like, I can be strong in fasting without his approval, and I can SHOW him how GOOD fasting is, and how it heals me totally.

This morning: I bloated slightly painfully but not incapacitatingly, as I did yesterday morning. I am still unwilling to get off fruit, though I think I cut down the proportion of fruit in the beginning -of-fast meal this morning. And principally what I did was choose fruit that was less bloating. I had no apple, for instance. This helped. I just had bananas strawberries figs. AND: as I've said, I actually LEFT OVER some of the strawberries instead of painfully stuffing them down....!!!!!! This is so major. I am MUCH less incapacitated and terrorized and unable to think than I was yesterday. It is nice also that since my life is more secure now (with the restoration of my friendship with b.f. and my asserting myself to him) I am not in the terror-condition of being utterly dislocated and without any foundation, like.

I have to be careful writing this. i am so un-boundaried that just the thought of food right now gives rise to the urge to eat it. So gross. i hate this condition so much. And I observe also of course that I cannot really grasp that having the urge to eat does not mean I have to do it. Another lack of boundary.

Conclusion. I am in touch with some fasters also starting today and have the goal of just getting through tonight. it may be too overwhelming to think of fasting for a long time. I just have to stay in touch with my motivations for fasting and know that I am safe and okay and that it is really important that i fast.