I am so sad and discouraged and I don't really want to post and I am keeping myself awake and pushing myself too hard in sitting here posting and I do not know what to do.
I ended up eating last night. I ate at 2 a.m., only 35 hours after beginning a fast that I really wanted to have continue for several dys. This has been my pattern, to break fasts like this.

The reason I broke this fast was because I was scared by my detox symptoms. But I want to believe I did not need to be. I could, I think, have controlled the symptoms simply with breathing exercises. I think the word for what happened was "panic attack." I was feeling not too bad but starting to get detox symtoms -- tiredness, hot skin, only mild symptoms. I am struck by how easily I panic and I am so frustrated. The thing that frightened me into violating my fast was that I started to get tingling in my hands and I started to get slightly dizzy. ... I want to believe this was all merely from hyperventilation... I stayed on line too long... with 2 hands on a keyboard I cannot do the left-nostril-only yogic breathing that calms and stops the hyperventilation -- it may be as simple as that. But I was so lonely. I WAS AFRAID TO GO TO BED AND GO TO SLEEP. At some point while on line I started to get what I would like to believe is a panic-attack-generated fear, the fear that I would die in my sleep. ... I am exhausted from having a new b.f. and am NOT taking care of my needs with him -- with spending time with him... I have to stop spending time with him yet I am so lonely I cannot make myself stop What am I supposed to do??? I MUST make fasting my ONLY priority since without fasting I HAVE NOTHING. I am totally dysfunctional and sick if I cannot fast, and my life is a misery. Right now I have not gotten sleep in about a week. Far less than enough. I am so sad and I am so lonely. I thought the b.f. would be a fasting support but I realize he is just too needy and -- what is it? Do I need someone who will really listen??? ... I am scared to assert my fasting need though he is very positive about it ... he can be harsh sometimes about some things and he is generally the kind of person I fear to assert my vulnerable needs to... not a good person to have as a b.f., I guess
How am I going to succeed in fasting? I am exhausted. He is supposed to call at 11 am - the b.f. I am so devastated. I am exhausted. I have been crying. After slamming down the 680 calories of break of fast meal (all raw but still should not have had at ALL -- WHY can't I fast 7 days like I need to???? please do not answer)... at 2 am, depriving myself of sleep, I got up 8:30 am, totally exhausted and slammed 700 more calories, this a TOTAL self-rape... I was sitting there plotting as follows: OK, I eat myself silly today and restart my fast this afternoon... now, this just makes the fast harder and I am getting more willing to eat lightly before a fast but still this is not happening and there is the problem of being frightened by my thinness... when I eat gently and according to my body's actual ability to tolerate food, I get thin and get scared. And I have an even harder time fasting.
I just have a bad plan. I need a better plan and better behavior and also better support.

I guess I am feeling pretty OK about restarting my fast at 3 pm today... I guess from 2-3 pm I will eat the final meal before the fast... of 700 calories... I am eaating 1400 cals a day now and not 1200 and I really need to return to 1200, my body liked that so much better and with the increased food I am just in such chaos and suffering. But beign a food addict I have a hard time cutting down. Maybe I just need to commit to that.

I have to commit to my sprouting too. it is all just too much. I have to commit to meditating. i have to commit to sleeping enough. I have to sommit to 1200 cals a day and even to waiting 2 hours after eating to eat again for each 100 cals I eat. i need to brave the skinniness that occurs with this plan and I need to fast in spite of the skinniness knowing that my body is safe and would never tell me to do something hurtful.
The sprouts diet gets monotonous or I get the need for variety just so as not to get toxic with eating the same sprouts constantly. I take the lazy easy way out and I deny problems until BANG I am in the processed food again. I ate processed fodo before this fast. i stuffed myself. i ate as a final meal before this fast an entire quart of nonfat ricotta cheese and several corn tortillas and probably 3 and1/2 tablespoons of whipped butter. IT HURT. It made me dysfunctional for several hours in the day. I do not want to live this way. How can I stop? please do not answer.
The other problem with sprouts is they are starchy and not properly grown or green (chlorophyll-developed) since I lack proper equipment. I kept my commitment to order fasting books and now I have to order some proper sprouters. ... To do this I have to ask my dad maybe. I have to email him and say look amazon .com gives you $30 off if you pay with their credit card but I do not qualify -- bad credit -- so would you buy these please???? I guess I can email him after I get off this post

So I am in a bad old pattern today... I need to restart my fast but lack the patience to do this properly. I am trying to restart my fast but without any real solid determination or conviction to do it I feel sort of motivated and sort of like I could be committed but I feel a sneaking justification-of-not-fasting. The justification is based on the (I wish to believe) neurotic fear of thinness. The justification is based on my internalization of the hysterical fearful reaction of people to anyone's missing even one meal. I labor under these incredibly toxic notions of its being "dangerous" to ... to go without food. To fast frequently. To ... take in less than x Number of Calories per day.. I think I must have been severely terrorized about this. Yeah, I can remember my mom being psychotic about it. She herself is a fodo addict. God, I wish I could just let these fears go... my food addiction finds them so congenial.... I hate how last night it HURT to eat and I could feel it hurting me and yet I persisted in stuffing that food down because I am so entrenched in finding comfort in the act of chewing. .. the act of setting up the meal was so compelling, the detox symptoms vanished before I even started eating... I was on the point of stopping myself and continuing the fast... why didn't I? .. and now as I reflect on it I feel as though if I had continued the fast I would now be feeling I had been too hard on myself. But I must believe and tell myslef that this is FALSE!! that FASTING is the gentlest thing I coudl ever do for myslef.

so... this is all confused and I ought to sleep I still cannot REALLY assert myself in this forum. i need to work on that. ... it is complicated. I am afraid to reveal the extremeness of my experience or feelings... I need to get over that shame... asserting myself ALWAYS delivers me from the state in which I am compulsed to get high on food.

but... what I need to do is make a plan. Or I need to just report on what I am willy nilly and out of control doing, by compulsion. It seems now I am planning to restart my fast. The food addiction wants a neat self-stuff ending at 3 pm today
hey, I could start my fast now -- effectively when I last finished eating. I could let go of the fear of "undereating." I could change my pattern. I could have mercy on myself and not put myself through that trauma of stuffing myself as a way of inaugurating a fast. I could begin my fast again now.


I do not like to and I think it is wrong to think out loud this way and make decisions this way instead of thinking in private and making my decisions in private. But I think I am just going to commit to restarting my fast right now anyway. This feels more gentle than having a day of just anticipating the 2 to 3 pm last hurrah and then suffering the devastating Depression that comes along with that -- with the emptiness of life after this addictive self-stuffing. I am glad that I am staying out of this pain. I want to let go of the conpulsion to stuff down an arbitrary, too-much-for-my-body, number of calories per day. Since my body is in need of a FAST, any number of calories is actually too many. So... I am staying away from the ... or, I am today stopping, I am NOW stopping the behavior of stuffing myself to the max before a fast. I am just beginning the fast.

Well, I want to be inspired. i want to look forward to the benefits of fasting at length. I want to last through the -- hah . whom do I think I am kidding. I need to be honest. i feel no enthusiasm. I feel only doubt that i will fast. i feel bitter and angry and I feel afraid that my body will force me to sit here sort-of fasting at length but not really letting me do it. I need to fast at length in order to give myself that experience fo empowerment. No comments, please. I want to believe that this is a legitimate need and should be honored. I want to believe that my desire for this empowerment experience -- the long fast -- is a LEGITIMATE reason for taking the long fast. i do not want to sit here at the mercy of "what my body wants." I fear that what my body would dictate would be little short fasts and a little eating in between. But Really this would be what my DISEASE wanted, wouldn't it? please do not answer. I am really just being controlled by the toxic bacteria in my colon, which crave the foods (pretty much any food at all at this toxic point in my journey) that keep them alive and virulent... it isn't what my BODY wants at all, is it? please do not answer. ... and isn't a long fast SO MUCH MORE HEALING than a process which interrupts the long-term detox with eating??? Yes??? please do not answer. God, how can I break through to the long-term fast???? ...


I have the b.f as a weak fasting support. If I begin the fast (let us make the goal 5 days, ok) at let's see, it must have been before 10 am today so let us say 10 am: then tomorrow morning I will be in day 2. I think I will maybe spend tonight with b.f. and I am pretty sure about tomorrow night too. Then I will be in day 3. ... I think maybe what really helps me is to be with someone in the nighttime because the nighttime is when I get scared and panic and break the fast. THe only trouble is feeling so overburdened by b.f.'s needs and failing to assert myself so much that ... when we part company I just head straight for the food as a relief. .... so I have to assert myself.... how? by having other support.... going to 12 step meetings... feeling he is not the only thing there for me... now I am frustrated since I can meditate as much if I go to meetings... I am confused and scared and do not know what is going to bring me into a place of sucessful fasting

The thing is to visualize it, I know this. I cant really visualize this fast. It is good I am asserting this. It is good I am not trying to pretend I feel committed. I need to conceive some commitment here.

I CAN commit to at least starting the fast today -- to having already started it. What time did it actually begin???? I want to know, for some reason. I want to affirm that I feel relieved and my body feels relieved that I will not be eating further today. But it is possible I will just feel relieved for a while and then actually be "hungry" (I know food is not appropriate when I am so diseased so I want to refrain from validating it as hunger)... later and then jsut sadly go for the final hurrah of 700 calories BUT I see this as being so sad and I don't see it as being so necessary now! So I can commit to not doing it... but I fear backlash tomorrow ... I also fear being shamed and castigated by the b.f. for starting and stopping and stuffing myself and not being able to achieve my goal of a long fast and ending up in self-stuffing eating patterns that I justify drunkenly.... I fear backlash tomorow in the form of "Oh, I was so good, stopping the self-stuff-before-restarting-fast behavior... I deserve... processed food!"

So that is my fear .... For today I can commit though to actually restarting the fast at... let me look. The exact time was: let us call it 9:45 am. At 9:45 i re-began my fast. I want to fast 5 days. I want to plan for being with others somehow for -- it may have to be every one of the 5 nights. ... I am so scared. i am so uncommitted, I can barely even think about teh 5 successive nights.


so -- the hands tingling. ... Ok, I have had this trouble before -- something similar -- and it seemed to be triggered by viscous fatty substances. The worst ever was for soem reason avocado which i have not eatn at all since it twice in a row brought on a full carpal-pedal attack (tinglyng numbness and immobilization and clenching up of hands arms feet, frightening, harmless and caused by hyperventilation and controllable but-- frightening) ... now, before this fast I got whipped butter. I though for some reason this woudl be better than peanut butter. But I think with the tingling I felt in this fast, I have to acknowledge the butter is upto no good, either. So... I have to commit to a new food rule, nothing fatty-and-viscous. Ok, fine.
But God, I want to be free of this hands-tingling. I find out about a new living situation soon or I am supposed to and when I do I can go get a colonic without financial fears and maybe that will get the peanut butter out of my large intestine and help with the tingling. But the real solution to it is to FAST. and I can just feel that if I just fast past the first 3 days I will get relief.

so... I am committing doubtfully to a 5-day fast. It will be from 9:45 am today, Friday, until 9:45 am WEdnesday. How will I support it?

Today I have therapy at 1:20 pm. It is over at 2:10 pm. B.f. works from 5 pm to 10 pm. Therapy is near b.f. But I do not want to spend time in that area. Should ask b.f. to just come over after work. But then I get no sleep. I am too tired to plan. I do not know what to do.

What do I need to do in a day. i need to do work. I need to do my meditation. TODAY I need to sleep. RIGHT NOW I need to sleep. I cannot figure it out.

I am clear on 2 things. One. Sleep now. Answer phone when b.f. calls???? ... yes. Make plans. WHAT plans, to support the fast???? OK. Sleep now using self-confronting therapuetic 12-step-type writing as sleep aid. Speak to b.f. I am totally committed to beginning 5-day fast or at least attempt as of 9:45 this morning, and eating no further for the rest of the day. So. Sleep. Quick phone call. Therapy 1:20 pm. At 2:10 pm:what? See b.f. and try to assert myself. Try to tell him about the pattern of stuffing self and trying and failing to fast and pray he doesn't abandon me. But waht to do that is fun. What activity. 5 p.m. go home go to bed??? go to AA???? ... 10 pm have b.f. over??? it all jsut is SO WRONG!!! What am I going to do????? please do not answer

The next day Saturday. Sleep. a.m. meditation. 9 45 am sat. begins day 2. Beach plans with b.f. Night with b.f. Wake up Sunday and I am into Day 3. DAy and night with b.f. again? is he going to tolerate this??? I forgot: OA sat. 5 pm. overeaters anonymous. .... I am desperate. How am I going to fast? It so depends on support. It so depends on my being able to actually spend every, difficult night WITH someone. ... So maybe NO b.f. in the afternoon and jsut see him nights??? Is this unhealthy???? please do not answer
I am hurt and depressed as my roommate has jsut rudely asked am i almost done witht he computer and I have said yes tho this is not true and I have not asserted myself and I jsut feel like s***.

so I am goign to reattempt the 5 day fast and try to get positive about it and support for it and I am changing my approach to it already by not stuffing so ... god I wish i could succeed