Fasting Plan: yaaaaaaaaaay

I mentioned in my last post I was making a definite fasting plan... so here it is, and I am going to report each week on my experiences carrying it out! I like that I am going to have reports that I and others can anticipate ... I fast to try to finally eradicate my food cravings and urges to overeat. Like cleaning the addiction finally out of my body -- and cleaning all its ugly consequences out, too, the neurological effects of anxiety, fatigue, depression. I have always just needed to get that little bit more spiritually committed to my "food sobriety" and fasting, so that I could achieve this full healing, which is still incomplete though I can maintain the loss of weight.

Here's my plan:

Purpose: to build up to some fasts of some length, to bring to myself peace, (inner and outer) security, freedom from depression, (thus) financial independence, freedom from anxiety, and freedom from the perceived need or craving to use food for comfort or overeat. Also healing from fatigue and brain fog.

Context: diet of raw foods only, 2 meals a day maximum, one at 7 am the other at 6 pm and eating less at the first meal if it is later in the day than 7 am. Each meal about 500 calories maximum. I will be getting on a diet that is not only raw only but LIVING only, -- (non-starchy) sprouted items only -- very shortly, within a few weeks, too. In my next post I will write out my plan for achieving this all-living/non-starchy diet. I get this living-diet Science from one Gabriel Cousens MD and from my own experience. The all-living diet should actually not take too long to achieve and not be too hard, but I really do want to post it up here, because it is a major achievement for me in my life, and I want to share it; and because posting it increases my (already strong, but still good to have supported) commitment to the diet. So that plan is forthcoming, too.

Fasting schedule:

2011:
Week 1: 31-hour fast, 11 am fri aug 26 to 6 pm sat aug 27
Week 2: 37-hour fast, 10 am fri sept 2 to 11 pm sat sept 3
Week 3: 43-hour fast, 10 am fri sept 9 to 5 am sun sept 11
Week 4: 49-hour fast, 10 am fri sept 16 to 11 am sun sept 18
Week 5: 55-hour fast, 10 am fri sept 23 to 5 pm sun sept 25
Week 6: 61-hour fast, 10 am fri sept 30 to 11 pm sun oct 2
Week 7: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri oct 7 to 4 pm sat oct 8
Week 8: 67-hour fast, 10 am fri oct 14 to 5 am mon oct 19
Week 9: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri oct 21 to 4 pm sat oct 22
Week 10: 73-hour fast, 10 am fri oct 28 to 11 am mon oct 31
Week 11: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri nov 4 to 4 pm sat nov 5
Week 12: 78-hour fast, 10 am fri nov 11 to 4 pm mon nov 14
Week 13: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri nov 18 to 4 pm sat nov 19
Week 14: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri nov 25 to 4 pm sat nov 26
Week 15: 84-hour fast, 10 am fri dec 2 to 10 pm mon dec 4
Week 16: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri dec 9 to 4 pm sat dec 10
Week 17: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri dec 16 to 4 pm sat dec 17
Week 18: 90-hour fast, 10 am fri dec 23 to 4 pm sat dec 24
2012:
Week 19: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri dec 30 to 4 am tues jan 3
Week 20: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri jan 6 to 4 pm sat jan 7
Week 21: 96-hour fast, 10 am fri jan 13 to 10 am tues jan 17
Week 22: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri jan 20 to 4 pm sat jan 21
Week 23: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri jan 27 to 4 pm sat jan 28
Week 24: 120-hour fast, 10 am fri feb 3 to 10 am weds feb 8
Week 25: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri feb 10 to 4 pm sat feb 11
Week 26: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri feb 17 to 4 pm sat feb 18
Week 27: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri feb 24 to 4 m sat feb 25
Week 28: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri mar 2 to 4 pm sat mar 3
Week 29: 144-hour fast,10 am fri mar 9 to 10 am thurs mar 15
Week 30: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri mar 16 to 4 pm sat mar 17
Week 31: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri mar 23 to 4 pm sat mar 24
*probably another maybe 3 weeks of only 30-hour fasts inserted here in the sequence*
Week 32: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri mar 30 to 4 pm sat mar 31
Week 33: 168-hour fast, 10 am fri apr 6 to 10 am fri apr 13
Week 34: 30-hour fast, 1 am sat apr 14 to 7 am sun apr 15
Week 35: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri apr 20 to 4 pm sat apr 21
Week 36: 30-hour fast, 10 am fri apr 27 to 4 pm sat apr 28

Week 37: 40-hour fast, 5 pm fri may 4 to 9 am sun may 6
Week 38: 40-hour fast, 5 pm fri may 11 to 9 am sun may 13
Week 39: 40-hour fast, 5 pm fri may 18 to 9 am sun may 20
Week 40: 72-hour fast, 10 am fri may 25 to 9 am mon may 28
Week 41: 40-hour fast, 5 pm fri june 1 to 9 am sun june 3
Week 42: 40-hour fast, 5 pm fri june 8 to 9 am sun june 10
Week 43: 40-hour fast, 10 am fri june 15 to 9 am sun june 17
Week 44: 72-hour fast, 10 am fri june 22 to 9 am sun june 24
Week 45: 40-hour fast, 10 am fri june 29 to 9 am sun july 1
Week 46: 40-hour fast, 10 am fri july 6 to 9 am sun july 8
Week 47: 40-hour fast, 5 pm fri july 13 to 9 am sun july 15
Week 48: 192 hours = 8 days,10a fri jul 20 to 10a sat jul 28

From here permanently follow fasting pattern of weeks 37 to 48 and develop a few longer deep healing fasts of 20 to 30 days each, preparing as appropriate.

I will post my progress and my keeping to this schedule or perhaps spontaneously at some point fasting longer or starting the full Bragg program sooner.

I'll report on the first fast in this series (31 hours) after successfully completing it this Saturday, August 27th, at 6 pm. The fast will be 31 hours, from 11 am Friday, Aug. 26th to 6 pm Saturday, Aug. 27th. It may seem funny to keep track of such short fasts, but that is actually a primary technique for keeping my commitment to the fasting, besides posting my plan publicly. If I post it/write it down/make it part of my life just to stick with this commitment, I will feel at the beginning of longer fasts much easier in my mind and much more decided to keep the fast. My huge problem and obstacle has been my abandoning fasts prematurely. Due to emotional desire for a food fix. Within that emotionality there was always a thought or sense that keeping the fast somehow "wasn't worth it," that there was no long-term plan into which my brief efforts, made willy-nilly, fit into; that my succeeding at any given fast was not part of a thought-out process that I would stick to and by which I would eventually really succeed in improving my health and changing my life. i felt always doomed to flounder and fail and never make progress. Now here at last I have made a plan in which I believe and to which I feel committed, so each of these fasts is a very serious and important undertaking. I'm also probably, given how important each phase in this fasting plan is, as I am going to treat it, I'm probably going to actually really plan my life to accommodate and "first-prioritize" my fasting! Gonna rest, and gonna not try to do too much, and gonna just plan really respectfully and carefully... Making my fasting the most important thing, since it means my health , and my health is the most important thing. ....99, no, 100 percent of my fasting is dependent for its success on my mentality about it. I really need to be committed. And I do feel that way about this plan. I've tried hard enough and long enough to learn to fast, and now I'm going to succeed.

I especially reach out to people who may read these forums who have been in the same pattern as I have -- always trying to fast and never quite getting there, or having a terrible struggle to do it and also struggling with bingeing before or after attempts at fasting. I've committed to this new way of life FINALLY, and am now going to get healthy. Please, anyone experiencing similar patterns, let me know if you would like to be in touch, maybe share your plan with me. Fasting to me seems to be very individual and to the extent each person has to persuade him- or herself to do it, it seems each person has quite a unique way of being self-persuasive. For me, each length of fast and hour to begin and end has been carefully thought about and means something to me. And the progression and pace of achieving longer fasts had to "feel right." Maybe there are identifiable types of people or patterns. I would really like to go into the whole psychology of my fasting because I want to understand how I myself achieved it and because I think others would benefit too, maybe, given that I frequently meet people who struggle as I have. .. Maybe I am finally getting a sense of reward from fasting, and feeling willing to fast, because I have finally tentatively discovered something I might be able to do professionally in life that is creative and I will be totally unable to do it unless I stop bingeing and achieve health through these fasts.

Anyway, until Saturday, or probably before then, since I will definitely firm up my exact plan as regards achieving the living -only diet by tonight or tomorrow (Thursday). Again, hope to hear from any fellow-strugglers. Lauray