I felt too rushed to really determine seriously to do the fast but now am committed to a seven-day fast for my transition back to the States from Europe

Date:   7/29/2007 9:55:28 AM ( 17 y ago)

am sabotaging myself by not taking enough time to sit with myself. I am starting a meditation program, daily, in a few days' time. I have made a daily schedule for myself. I think this will help my fasting success greatly. "If you meditate, you will get what you want," someone said to me.

In spite of feeling way too vulnerable to post where I am at, and in spite of getting messages that really damaged me, I am going to report to this forum today as I have been doing I think daily for a little while. I have improved in my lengths of time fasting and comfort with fasting and conviction and willlingness to stop getting high on food... but I am on a down day today.

I am really tired. I have stayed up all night. I am really pressured. I am leaving for the States the day after tomorrow. I am in pain with my failure in Europe. I cannot see my time here as a success though I went to language school and really started working in earnest on fasting and food sobriety through internet research and posting to this forum. I am ashamed of myself and have trouble

I will talk about exactly where I am today. I started this 33-hour fast. I overate before the fast. It was within my food plan, as usual, but in one important way I violated one of my cardinal rules. I ate a meal -- the last meal before the fast -- earlier than scheduled. This is simply not ok and something I will never do again. I was justifying this by saying to myself that I would get to start the fast earlier this way and break it at a more convenient time as well. What horsesh*t. This was a self-violation. It s NOT OK. It is VERY DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR FOR ME. ... Also worht noting is the violence with which I overate before ths fast. I think I narrated this trauma in my blog, "Lauray's Ten Day FAst Blog." But anyway. The day before the fast. I did a GREAT thing the night before the day before. I POSTPONED a meal. I was scheduled (in my daily committed food plan) to take an evening meal at 10 pm but my body (colon) was not able to handle this. So I actually got myself to wait until 2 am to eat the meal. My body appreciated this a lot despite that I could not sleep as I anticipated this meal -- this getting-high session, which is what all meals are to me, since I am so toxic. So. The night before the day before, I ate at 2 pm, effecting greater self-respect. But then. I awoke at 6 am. I was compulsed. I had made a plan to eat at 8 30 am (despite my waiting 2 hours per 100 calories I eat rule). This plan became something I was compulsed to do. It often happens that way with my plans to eat. If I give myself permission to get high at a certain time I can rarely postpone that. Anyway. I was compulsed. I ate at 6 am. Then, compulsed again, I ate at 8 30 am. 600 cals. each time, after having had 600 cals at 2 am. My body was obviously not ok with this. Also, with the 6 am meal, I had effectively changed my intended (though not committed, so it was sort of ok) food plan for the day... I added an entire meal of 600 cals.. the day was 1800 cals instead of 1200 cals... I had been running a "calorie defecit" of 600 cals so justified myself in doing this .... but this was not really ok with me either. I have real trouble holding my food intake down to where it should be considering the compromised state of my colon. This is something I really have to work on . I have a lot of irrational fear that comes from the cultural, irrational, neurotic fear of thinness. Recent reading I have done has reassured me about my instinct to fast and taken away really all of my fear of getting what our ignorant society thinks is "too thin." Also it has assured me I had BETTER lower my food intake, and fast... I have made a rule for myself, always wait before eating again 2 hours for every 100 calories I ate last. But I struggle to lower my food intake, I struggle to fast. I need more conviction about the necessity and the safety of being self-respecting, and letting my body regain its health before I subject it to the normal amounts of food. I think really what is at work here is my food addiction: I think it is jsut finding excuses to overeat. It is hard for me to feel "safe" fasting without eating heavily beforehand and without "rectifying any "calorie defecit" I might be running -- i.e., a state in which my average caloric intake per day over the past month or weeks has been less than 1200. I feel I have to stuff myself before a fast to get rid of any defecit ... then after a fast I am seized with terror and want to eat to "make up for" the fast right away. THIS IS ALL HORRIBLY IRRATIONAL DESTRUCTING THINKING AND I AM WRITING ABOUT IT HERE TO BREAK FREE FROM IT!!!! I think really, again, my food addiction is at work here, finding excuses. ... I went through a lovely period last summer where I was totally committed to the 2 hour per 100 cal. rule and even though THAT wasn'T even enough time for my body to process, sometimes, still I felt so great compared to what is usual. So. I need to adhere to this rule and I need to let "calorie defecits" from fasting or from waiting and respecting my body GO! i NEED TO LET THOSE supposed calorie defecits (really there is no such thing ) GO!

OK so the day before this attempt at the 7 day fast: I planned 1800 cals instead of 1200 and i stuffed 1200 of the 1800 for the day down between 6 and 9 am. This after finishing the previous day'S food at 3 am. Ugh. ... Then I started to get sort of eager to begin my fast. Really this was an eagerness to get high on food again. But the idea of starting the seven-day fast was so compelling and I felt like I just couldn'T wait, or I would lose motivation or something... really (or, at least, partly, allowing for the possibility that my enthusiasm to fast was at least partly real) I was just eager for the experience of yet another self-stuffing session, and one so close to the previous 3 self-stuffing sessions. It was a day of being totally stoned. ... I managed to wait until around 3:45 to start the meal which would begin my fast. Now, I was already in a colon-bloated state, my abdomen somewhat balloon-like. Now, so I got all fruit to constitute this meal. I got one (1.35-pound, i.e., huge) mango, one banana, 450 grams (= 1 pound) of blueberries, oh God and 3 good-sized peaches, and I hurt myself SO BADLY. I did what I can only describe as "blowing myself out." Especially with the mango, I engendered such bacterial escalation in my colon (bacteria I guess love the sugar in the fruit) that I was bloated to the point where I could not stand up straight. ... I just wanted to stuff all that stuff down. I felt the effects of this blowout even today, after fasting 33+ hours: I got more bloated than usual after the fast-breaking meal, and I had an echo of the extreme bloating and its pain. The bacteria have really grown to more than they previously were before this episode. It will take some real care to get back even to where I was. ... I want to make something very clear because I can hear in my head the voices of people I call the "screamers --" people who scream at me not to fast, because they are ignorant, because they cannot tolerate any discomfort in themselves (are "affect-intolerant"), and because they are unable to distinguish between their own selves and others, and therefore become extremely controlling of others who are in pain ... these people scream at me when my fasting learning process brings me challenges and pain and I express these. I need TO BE ACCEPTED AND LISTENED TO AND WITNESSED AND NOT DISCOURAGED FROM FASTING AND NOT SCREAMED AT: THIS IS WHAT I NEED. ... What I want to be VERY CLEAR ABOUT is that I POSITIVELY REFUSE; IN THE NAME OF MY OWN LIFE, to blame any of this pain on my making plans to fast. I will never, ever enter into saying that fasting is anything but a lifesaving and vital act, and I welcome ANY determination to fast that I ever conceive. ... even if it is only a false determination and really a desire to overeat. Still the desire to fast is in there somewhere and I am committed to cultivating it unquestioningly. i know that fasting and its result, soriety, ie, refraining from getting high on food, are the answers for me.
... So I really hurt myself. But I stopped before the last of the mango was gone. It was a terrible situation. I was in excruciating physical bloating-pain AND I was in an excruciating emoptional compulsion to eat. But actually I was not totally compulsed and I let go of the idea of starting the fast right on the dot of some deadline. I let it go. I took an enema, which alleviated some of the bloating, bacteria, and pain. ... I am beaten with shame about having spent my evening this way, having a drug attack, basically (food = my drug) and being totally incapacitated by it and being able not to do any work that is productive or helpful to the world -- being only able to seek to mitigate the effects of my self-injury -- all with the purpose of recovering as fast as possible so as to be able to stuff myself with my drug of choice again as fast as possible. ... I am turning it to good use today by publishing for all to read my account of this behavior, and I am confident I am helping others by doing this, but I have got to stop the drug-addicted way of life in the first place. i really need support for this. In the states I am goign to go back to overeaters anonymous meetings and just assert all my beliefs there against their toxic beliefs (their groupthink, horribly ignorantly, pathologizes fasting and pathologizes what I believe is the healthiest impulse a human beign can have, the desire to refrain from eating adn the desire to be thin.... I am radical about this and believe the desire to be thin MUST be totally respected even when the person is "already thin--" that a person's desires for herself and perceptions of herself, when she says she wants to lose weight, are the only valid desires and perceptions ever: I do not believe there is any such thing as "anorexia" and believe as the result of my reading that any desire to refrain from eating is healthy regardless of the weight of the individual... that people really do heal when they restrict their food intake to what their bodies which are very compromised in all these cases even in cases of people labeled "too thin" (too thin for what? the thinness is simply never dangerous initself).. that the real problem afflicting these people labeled too thin is that of COMPULSIVE OVEREATING... these people are getting high on food and damaging themselves that way... there are many ways to overeat without gaining weight... none very sustainable but they do exist... and the compulsive overeating episodes are what I believe kill these people labeled "anorexic" I think this is a tragedy of modern medecine. THe thin people woudl naturally have fear that if they stopped the compulsive overeating and let their bodies heal, their bodies would become able to tolerate too-large amounts of food; but really what happens is they end up with a reduced capacity for food for life... if I get scard of getting fatter than I want to be, i tell myself that God does not want that for me,a nd that also, "All my desires have already been fulfilled." All my desires will be fulfilled. This is the kind of God I believe in -- one who is tender. Who does respect and find a way to fulfill my desires. God finds a way. I am free to get sober from compulsive overeating and it is safe to do so. God finds a way to keep me as thin as I want to be.


I know that all I have to do is get committed to certain rules surrounding the fasting, namely, the rule of letting "calorie defecits" go and adhering to a strict rule of 2 hours per 100 calories and adhering to strict extremely gradual breaking of fasts and to strict abstinence from all but the LEAST triggering foods (clearly sweet fruit is something I have got to let go of))... to fast successfully and healingly.

So I hurt myself, then i rested and took enema, then I eventually finished the mango, and 140 other calories I was "entitled to" for the day, and then, miserable at the prospect of fasting, I started the fast. Oh God. So I did okay on that fast. i did okay. .... i tried -- I made it all through the day yesterday and really made really brilliant efforts all through my sleepless night last night to get positive and committed again to fasting for seven days... but I just felt... lost... and I just wanted the familiarity of short fasts and the getting high on food, again. .... I did great, though. First I got up and had instant coffee with milk. A good fast-keeping tool. Then I felt still like not quite willing to undertake and commit to the seven-day fast. So I had a great idea: I just decided to take bites of some foods in the kitchen and chew them up and spit them out again. So I did that for a while. I have to congratulate myself for being so creative and hard-working for my fast and my sobriety. Then, though, I don't know, I might have waited for a little while after stopping that, but I finally just was taken over by the desire for some pleasure ór something. but wait I remember I DID wait... I think i waited a time until my body was really able to handle the food... or maybe the time during which i was chewing up and spitting out food was the waiting time... btu I RESPECTED MY BODY... this is so hard to do even though it is so painful not to respect the painful colon... My life really lacks pleasure, I think, and I have GOT to address that. i think it has a bit to do with my feeling really ashamed for being a dysfunctional person and so when I thinkk of doing something amateur that is not heading me on a purposeful track directly toward competence and achievement and fame, I cannot find any value in that thing. i think something like "what a waste of time. That won't make me into an acceptable person." or "how unacceptable to do something at less than a world-class level." ... it is so hard to explain without using cliched phrases that have always left me so cold and infuriated me when others used them because I could not understand what they really meant... I connect it to my dad, who conveyed to me the idea that the supreme achievement in life was not love, or such, but to slay the world with some sort of Achievement or Competence of high income. Anyway. Life lacks pleasure.
Now, I broke this fast at like 5:45 am today and ended eating at 6:49 (actually several minutes earlier but that is when I looked at my watch and this strictness is a wonderful little way of building self-esteem for me) and so I am required by the 2-hour per 100 cal. rule to wait until 6:49 pm to eat again today... since the break of fast was 600 cals. I am ignoring the intake of milky coffee earlier in the night. I let myself do this. But it has got to stop. And dairy and all non-raw food have got to stop as well. ... so... because it was really hard not to go back into the horrific and totally unacceptable pattern I have been inlately of slamming large meals right close to one another after a fast, and instead respect my 2 hour rule, I allowed myself "free food" (includes tomatoes... bad...they bloat really badly...and are a fruit and are triggering...) between the 2 meals. Not only did I eat about 1.2 lbs. tomatoes but also I said ok, 6 cups of milky hot-water-sweet-and-low... instant coffee, that is, without the instant coffee, so as to stay out of the caffeine. ... BUT I have had a good victory...

I have had a victory as I have written. I have had 4 of the allowable cups of milky etc. and I was going to get 2 more cups of milky hotwater and sweet & low BUT THIS IS REALLY NOT OK WITH ME AND I AM NOT GOING TO DO IT NOW!!!! I AM GOING TO GET ZERO CALORIE DIET SODA INSTEAD!!!!! Yes. I feel really, really good and successful and feel so much self-respect and self-esteem. And I am empowered. I feel good.

.. and now I have had another victory, that I am not going to get the diet soda, either.

But I REALLY need to express that I DO NOT feel happy about forgoing the diet soda and I jsut feel furious and gypped and totally unhappy and totally unrewarded for my virtue and as though I were really giving up too much and going too fast.

And I really need to say that I am bloated now and "entitled" to eat in only 2 hours and this is NOT enough time for my body to recover and start feeling hungry and I am going to be hurting myself really painfully and I am totally unwilling to wait to eat. #Again, I would just feel so unrewarded and I would feel, what is the point of being sober? What is the point? What is my reward, except mental suffering? ...I must assert these things.

I do not know what my plan is. I do not know whether I should start another fast. Ok, yes, I should start a fast since these 2 days are ideal - very busy and I will be very entertained with necessary tasks, packing and getting out to the airport getting gifts maybe.. go to dentist and many other things God. and it is inspiring to take a fast to make a transition with. To be positive in the transition. So a fast definitely. ,.... But I feel too worn out for it and feel no real excitment. But I have to do it for the transition SO I AM DECIDED!!!!! A FAST!!!! MAYBE OF SEVEN DAYS!!!!! .... But I do not know whether I should determine to take a like 54 hour or 60 hour fast to build on my most recent length of fasting or go with my inspiration and try again for seven days. Last time i tried for a fast of 10 days i fasted longer than I ever have in 3 years so maybe this is the way to succeed, aim high... btu I also have to really comit to breaking the fast SLOWLY...

I just REALLY NEED TO COMMIT TO MY 2 HOUR RULE AND TO RAW ONLY AND NOTHING NOT EVEN FREE FOOD BETWEEN MEALS AND TO REDUCING MY FOOD INTAKE IF NECESSARY AND TO BREAKING A FAST UTTERLY GENTLY SO AS NOT TO REINTOXICATE MYSELF....

I believe that writing about all this here will help me do it. Bt I wish I could really commit to some definite simple things to put up in front of my posts to be clearly accountable for. As some post their weight and measurements I could post whether i stuck to 2 hour rule and greenn-living-only rule and many other rules i need to keep. Maybe I should make a form


ok, I think I have brought you up to date on my getting-high-on-food. i ill not call it my eating since I should be doing no eating at all, I am in such a terrible state.

Now about fasting.

I have been seeing others on this forum undertaking long fasts and I have only been attempting shorter fasts in my life so far and I had the idea of building up to a longer fast and I was pursuing this. I have increased my lengths of time fasting and achieved a three-year personal record a few days ago -- a 51 1/2 hour fast.
But I recently started strongly to want just to attempt a longer fast outright, right away, because I am sure I could physically do it. I am more informed now and more confident as the result of my reading of these forums and other internet material on fasting.

I feel so inspired to do a longer fast and it has made me feel so GOOD to plan a longer fast but I have not been giving myself enough time by myself daily to concentrate on developing these long fasts in my life.

How can I achieve this longer fast, though? What is the strategy I should use? A Just Dot It strategy or a gradual one??? Sometimes the just do it is more inspirind... and i feel lovely when i imagine this transforming fast of seven days starting today...
My purpose is to achieve regular, long fasts, and -- these fasts helping and catalyzing the process through the alkalization of my body -- to achieve permanent, true abstinence from getting high on food.
I feel overwhelmed. I know I am to fast seven days starting tonight but have got to take time to do inner work now to fix myself in this determination and purpose.

Lauray



 

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