I'm fasting for a lot of stuff, not for weight loss. Extended fasting. And it's troubling, infuriating, dismaying and fascinating to hear mbryan's helpful accounts of her long water fast, because EVERY "book" or "web" _selling job on fasting_ always makes INCREDIBLE CLAIMS for extended fasting, particularly water fasting. Of all kinds. If you're not fasting for weight loss, these are the things that really make you feel you HAVE to try this or you will never know what life and reality, let alone health and love, really are. Cosmetically, they claim you are radiant, vibrant, lines gone, look MUCH younger, moles and scars gone, legs straightened, etc. Mentally, they claim you are wildly creative and have immense clarity, memory, and concentration. Spiritually, they claim you can talk with the animals and trees, be in the moment, feel one with the cosmos. They claim you become calm and loving and unruffled with loved one(s). They claim you can smell, hear, see colors, feel textures more sharply. They claim euphoria. They claim that your health problems are repaired and that your whole system is rejuvenated. They claim (ha ha) that you lose addictions and heal emotionally and psychologically as well. They claim that organ damaged is reversed and organ tissue growth takes place. They claim your HGH level boosts and that you have great dreams and meditative states. I'm on day 11 of an extended Water Fast and am fasting for all these non-weight-loss reasons and more and find the absence of reports about these benefits when REAL-LIFE long-fasters like mbryan are checking in to be striking. It would appear that those fasting promises are a LIE, both from their real-life accounts and my own (so-far) real experience. Weight loss is awesome, and cheering, but if I were working so hard on a 5-6 week Water Fast and all the results were weight-loss, I'd consider the experience to have been a bitter, betraying failure.

Any thoughts, anyone?

I am. I Water Fast for health and not weight loss. I'm already skinny naturaly. I don't need to lose weight. I like to Water Fast because it makes the fine lines on my face go away and feel smooth. Sorta like an instant face lift without the knife. It makes my hair grow faster. I can feel my hair growing out of my roots in my head after the 5th day of fasting. It also gives me mental alertness around the 2nd day of breaking my fast. Too bad I can't Water Fast without losing weight. People say to read a book while fasting, but I can't concentrate. But after I am done fasting and around the second day of breaking my water fast with fruit, I can read a 1000 page college book and practically memorize it. That is how clear the fast made my mind. If I can figure out how to get my bowel's moving naturally(exercise or breathing or something like that - no enema or drinks.), then I will be able to go longer than 7 days.