Re: surgeon advised to go on a water fast DAY 10

Hi resurgem. The sugars in fruits are not to be feared! This is a big problem in today's world. Most of westerners are happy to feed themselves and their kids soft drinks and cordials but shy at juice because it is too naturally sweet! The Sugar in fruit is Sugar exactly the way it was intended for our body. It is also part of a whole food which is perfectly designed for our body's, or we are perfectly designed for it however you would like to put that.

How much weight you put back on, though I am no expert on this part, depends on how much food you eat when you start refeeding. That applies to fruit more so maybe, not because of it's sugars but because raw foods in general are packed with nutrients. Our body's after fasting require nourishment. Not protein on it's own, not sugars on their own, but complete foods with a wide range of nutrients. If the body has been depleted of certain nutrients during the fast due to our imperfect eating beforehand it will try to remedy that problem post fast and start building stores again in better balance than before. It can only do this properly if we feed it whole foods with the balance of nutrients already in them. If we start second guessing what the body needs I have little doubt that we will not be successful. Nature has already provided for us.

The longer we fast the longer the digestion system goes unused obviously. It isn't stagnating in there but performing other tasks. It is dealing with toxins and also creating 'food' for our body out of the stores in our system, synthesising in some cases things that it normally wouldn't need to while we are eating if we are eating well. So it is not inactive, but as far as doing it's 'normal' work it may as well be. So after a rest much of the system will be shrunken and not prepared for the meals that we would normally feed it, particularly cooked and processed foods- dried foods! The food that we feed it first needs to take into account the emptiness of the digestion system and it's need for time to change back to digesting instead of it's other chores. The two key words here are soft and naturally water rich foods. The foods need to be soft so as not to damage the shrunken and 'unused' tissues on the way through, and water rich- naturally!- so as to clean out old sludge loosened during the fast on it's way through the system. This is physically the kind of food that is needed to pass through a body that has been fasting for any number of days. Fruit fits that description perfectly in all ways.

Whatever we eat at the end of the fast will be absorbed into the body more perfectly than ever before. This means that you will gain weight quicker, especially if you eat whole raw foods which are just full of all the nutrients we need. If we break our fast with overly cooked or processed foods, not only are we risking immediate damage to the digestive system from eating foods harder and less naturally water rich but also any and all toxins created from the cooking or processing will be absorbed just as well into the eagerly awaiting body as the nutrients will be. Again this can be dangerous, but at worst it is still reinfesting the body with toxins that we have put so much effort into removing.

Your stores are just as important as the flesh around them. We just call them fat deposits and they have just as bad a reputation as sugars do today. Our stores are what will protect us when we really need them, during periods of injury and illness, and also natural (and man-made) disasters. Eating poorly creates poor stores, probably lacking in some nutrient or other. Eating well will create good quality stores which will serve us well at times when we do need to fast. And when we fast we are not only removing unwanted weight but replacing it at the end with the good quality stores that our body's need for our potential future protection.

If you are fasting to lose weight this needs to be taken into account, as you will need to fast beyond your goal weight and then refeed up to it to complete the fast. Don't be afraid of eating the right foods, you may just have to relearn how much nutrient rich raw foods our body's require compared to the processed nutrient poor replacements we are so proud of creating for ourselves.

I know very little about starvation diets. All I do know is that the starving body should not ever be confused with the healthy fasting body. If you wish to eat nutrient poor foods after a fast then you are no longer using fasting, you are refeeding on a starvation diet lacking in the fuel necessary for us to live on. I have been fasting 6 weeks out of the last 12 weeks. I have lost over 30kgs, and probably have another 30kgs to lose to be the healthy weight I would like to be again. In the other 6 weeks I have been eating mostly raw foods and so along with my fast I am eating the healthiest diet I ever have. Even if I knew I could lose twice as much weight in the same amount of time by starving my body I would not do it. My aim is health not a number on a scale.

Good luck continuing your fast Jeremy. :)

Andrew. Tweet