63 hour fast achieved, perhaps 3-day fast next weekend.

Date:   6/17/2008 8:50:00 PM ( 16 y ago)

To anyone reading this, I'd love to get a message. Does anyon want to start a fasting support group in the L.A. area???? I have a venue and support: all need is people!! We could meet as often as 7 times per week, at really no cost: just pass a basket for everyone to put in like $1 -- voluntarily only -- as at an AA meeting...

I think it has been the right thing, generally, to make a commitment to this action of eating only raw foods and also increasing steadily the lengths of my successive approximately-weekly fasts.

I think I am doing much, much better.

I have support. I use AA meetings. I don't self-disclose much. I call myself an addict and say I have for example 55 days sober. But people clap and cheer for that, and that is good (though not without its problems/complications). AA conveys a spirit of commitment to "sobriety." This is a state in which one is not "using." I say, for and to myself, that I am "sober" as long as I am on raw foods only and also increasing the lengths of my fasts. At least, I will increase fast lengths until they reach a length that is therapeutic for me. Then I will enter a maintenance mode -- something like the Bragg annual fasting schedule.
I am focused on self-disclosure now, in groups I go to and in individual therapy.

I have just achieved a 63-hour fast; I have been fasting weekly and steadliy increasing the lengths of my fasts.

Doing this successfully -- increasing fast lengths successfully -- requires me to adjust my eating so as to be more "sober" with food and stop eating for the sense of release or comfort or impact. As far as possible.


It is complicated to try to increase the lengths of fasts.

What has happened to me generally in my life and fasting is that i have some success in lengthening fasts; and as a side effect I get skinny.

Then in the skinniness I get terrified.

I believe my terror is really the effect of the bad bacteria trying to re-assert themselves.


I have been through phases in my raw-foods-only regime.

At first I was allowing "processed raw" foods -- nut butters etc., agave syrup, whatever -- in addition to sprouted, less triggering, fresher, more alive raw foods -- sprouted items. I would conclude every meal horribly compulsed to go ON eating. It was torture. I was eating sprouts that were too starchy -- not letting them get very green or full-grown. It is so tricky to turn OFF the "eating" signal or reflex. You get the "binge" reflex every time you eat just a little, if you are a food addict. Especially if what you are eating is triggering -- i.e., more tempting, processed food. The good thing I was doing during the time of the nut butters and avage syrups was staying off fruit. I had identified fruit as a problem. Also a problem were the processed foods, even the processed raw foods. Fruit was triggering, too, though. But.... I caved in and went back to fruit. To compensate, I stopped all processed raw food. But I am still on fruit. This instead of "green, living" food only, my ideal diet. It is easy to overeat fruit and nuts.

Yesterday I had a bad episode. With fruit and nuts, I hurt myself, eating way too much. it hurt.

I was driven by terror. I was thin from fasting and felt scared that I would never eat again" -- would never be able to tolerate food again.

but I intuitively suspect this terror to be truly a mere resurgence of the bad intestinal bacteria. The bacteria trying to reassert themselves. The bacteria wanted me to binge. They could feel my fasting system killing them off. They could feel that my boy was really changing from the fasting. They wanted to put me back into binge mode. .... What I was operating from was pure ANXIETY. I was SCARED that my body would never tolerate food again. The fasting slowed down my body's desire for food. I was scared to honor this reduced desire for food. I was scared REALLY of a new and sober way of life -- free from bingeing.


I want to comment on the dialogues I have seen lately on the water fasting forum.

Someone commented: " I can't stop eating." Also there was some discussion of how it was painful to eat high-fiber foods. Because of bloating.

What I wish for in life is the ability to HONOR my body's reduced desire for food post-fast, or at any time. My inner self/ my body say: no, do not eat. And yet ai am constantly day after day forcing food down my own throat -- all in an entrenched, panic-driven, meaningless, bogey-man-fearing pattern, that I am terrified to break. I need to blog a lot more right now and really find my way OUT of this pattern.

I try to reduce this behavior. The overeating. I commit to healthy foods -- raw foods. This carries an additional implicit commitment. When you commit to eating raw foods only, you commit to actually stopping overeating, because, depending of course on your pain tolerance, overeating just gets too painful (too IMMEDIATELY painful -- see immediately below).

Less triggering foods are less easy to abuse. Sometimes they just aren't appetizing (it's a clear sign that you don't need to eat, the condition in which only certain, "yummy", i.e., triggering, bacteria-feeding, binge-promoting foods appeal.) Sometimes the less triggering foods cause huge bloating. This is the body's way of resisting the overeating. Fruit and high-fiber foods sometimes cause huge bloating. This is a sign that you need to fast. If the body were in a state in which it could handle food, it would tolerate the fiber. This has been my experience. i think people get anxious when they can't tolerate healthful foods, simpy because they depend emotionally on the act of eating. Also they are neurotically afraid of not eating. They are afraid to fast and give their bodies a break. But most of all they are addicted to eating. So -- it's hard to stay on healthy foods if you are a food addict, because your compulsion to eat takes over, and it is too painful to eat healthy foods, so you go for processed foods. The catch is that the processed foods put you through pain LATER, and they put you through MORE pain. Processed foods seduce and beat up the body, I think, and they interfere with a body's healthy resistance to eating. Non-triggering foods are gentler to the body, and they don't beat up and incapacitat the body's resistance to eating: so when you eat non-triggering food, the body can and does fight back against your eating RIGHT AWAY -- with bloating and other painful symptoms. With triggerign foods you get the pain later, and more intensely -- you get depression and anxiety and overweight, and you get stuck in a pattern of compulsively eating the triggering foods, in greater and greater quantities.

What is really needed is SUPPORT TO REFRAIN FROM EATING if your body cannot handle healthful non-triggering food. This support seems absent from forums. People just want to binge in between fasts. But this defeats the purpose of the fasting -- for me, anyway -- which is to lift the body out of the pattern of bingeing. Fasting, each fast, strengthens the body and strengthens the bosy's resistance to all overeating behavior. Post-fast, if you haven't fasted to completion, you are going to be seized with a reactive urge to binge. This is the hardest thing. The longer your fast, it seems to me, the stronger your healing. The more the body resists the overeating behavior. My 63 hour fast caused me to really have a period in which i could not eat much. About 48 hours afterward. ... I know I am slowly changing the state of my body so that it comes out of the overeating state. My cravings resist this. But each longer fast strengthens my body more and makes my body more resistant to the overeating behavior.


More later. I cannot think or make this clear. I am only clear that I will start a three-day fast on Friday morning( leaving 1 more day in between fasts now that I have reached the 3-day mark) and that for 18 hours post-fast I will have light superlight greencolored foods only and n totally controlled quantities. Like, 10 basil leaves, 1/3 carton clover sprouts, 3 big lettuce leaves, only, every 4 hours. This feel may be a step toward actually preserving the effects of the fast and toward NOT going back into the compulsed-eating mode -- which i have re-entered after each fast. Perhaps less after this most recent fast. I want to get the courage to eat LIGHTLY after the fast until my body is actually ready to eat normally. And what I think will happen is my body will if I eat lightly enough (ideally I would not even break the fast until natural hunger returned, but unfortunately I have to learn to fast that long as a process, and cannot do ti all at once... though I wonder, now whether this might be more possible.) -- if I eat lightly enough, and respectfully enoug, my body will actually stay out of the compulsed, overeating state.


I am in that state now. I am about to go stuff down a dinner I in no way want. Compulsively. My body is telling me NO -- wait to eat untikl tomorrow. But my addiction is driving me. It is as though I feared to miss an opportunity to get high or didn't feel safe not getting high -- losing control.


It's progress, steady progress. I am not "there" yet. The thing for me to really work on right now is having the COURAGE to eat LIGHTLY post-fast and the COURAGE to refrain from bingeing even though I am thin. i am scared I will if I leave enough time between fasts to gain back the weight, not be able to fast as long as I need to -- fall out of the practice of fasting. God, please help me. This is a reason just to try to do a really long fast -- but this is not possible for me. Plus I am thin. \so I am stuck. But I know there is a way out. God, please help me.

One thing has occurred to me: I knew of a man who ate only 4 days per wee. A 3-day fast weekly. He ate jsut normal amounts on the eating days. But I am scared of how skinny I would get doing this. But what should I do??

I seem to need to be patient with my body and let it gradually and at its own pace begin to tolerate food again. This means more time between fasts. Scary! It would be horrible if all the learning-to-fast work I did were to be lost through a lack of practice. It has become a good and tolerable routine (ok, barely tolerable, but still I am DOINT IT! AND it is SO POSITIVE ) to fast thursday to saturday each week. But as the fasts get longer, how can I fast weekly???? Maybe I need to consider it part of the practice of fasting, to refrain from ever violating the body with overeating in between fasts. So I could think of myself as ALWAYS be in a fasting practice, not as existing in 2 states, sometimes fastinga dn sometimes "not fasting --" i.e, bingeing.

...okay, if the fasts get longer, then I will spend the better part of a week fasting, soon. ... So maybe if I follow a really disciplined recovery plan, perhaps even managing to stay out of the overeating/compulsed state, the following fast will be something I can do even though I will have to wait a long time to do it. Because I never will have left the fasting state, in a sense. i have to figure out how to make my eating pattern like this. My first step is to do this 18-hour-post-fast-super-light-eating discipline. Next, 24 hours post fast of super-light eating. And increase with each fast. I will allow 1 more day to elapse between fasts with each fast or so. I have drawn up a plan. ... I hate being seized with terror over my skinniness and compulsed to binge by this terror. I am so scared that I will not be able to fast again soon enough -- I feel I have to force my body to put weight back on quickly so I can fast again. I at one time understood the urgent urge to fast as being really a desire to binge, disguised, because the desire to fast came from the sense that after the fast, one could enjoy a binge better and bounce back from the binge faster. Oh God please help me. I don't know how to conclude. My environment is destructive and I cannot think. I am getting into a better home Friday and it is Tuesday today. I am hanging on. I can't think. I am compulsed to go stuff-eat. I have waited a bit on this compulsion and this has been good, but I shoudl really not eat until like tomorrow, but I am too scared to do that cause it will mean i have to wait longer until my next fast and I am trying to do 3 days! a long time for me. And I will be out of practice in fasting if I wait too long, and if I dont last 3 days, i lose my day count... so... the answer really is to place equal emphasis on light post-fast eating as on fasting itself. And then gradually becoming able to eat normal amounts and gradually getting less skinny and -- horribly, unendurably gradually -- finally being in the body state where i can fast again and not get too skinny. I just don't want to get too skinny. I don't think the thinness is dangerous, I just don't want it. Though I am less afraid of the skinniness nwow and more able to fast in spiteof my skinniness since that is what my body requires for healing and health. I really need to let go of worrying about my thinness. it is so horrible, neurotic and destructive, and it is so mistrustful of the body. If you are skinny, and yet your body is saying to fast, you've got to fast. you've got to trust. you've got to respect yourself. not to do so -- to doubt yourself and your body -- is to fall into this American body-disrespecting body-violating overeating boy-forcing way of life. I don't want it. ... How can I get the firmness to be able to fast at length, with adequate separation betweeen fasts? How can I preserve my skill at and ability of and basic willingness for fasting, when I have to wait a longer time in between fasts, and thus fall out of practice?????? ... I can ask for support in my fasting, I guess... and i can get committed to maintaining discipline at all times, not just when I am fasting... that way there won't be such a shock transition from the eating to the fasting state. EAting won't be a treat or a binge, and I will be able to live without eating mroe easily. ... The first step toward this is the period of super-light eating post-fasts. AND what has to follow that is very restrained eating of more normal foods. A careful refraining from ever overeating. I am really as I write starting to conceive of actually making overeating and sufferign and bloating a thing of the past. I am conceiving of a sober way of life.





 

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