Progress toward fasting: DAY ONE! 500 calories a day Raw Foods

Tomorrow Friday May 17th will be my first day of doing a therapeutic low calorie diet. I will have no more than 500 calories a day, raw food only. This i will stick to until I have gotten some healing. It is sort of like a fast. I hope the diet phases into some fasting.

I always feel much better when I do low calories. I look forward to feeling better. Really my body would like to fast but my food addiction is intense and my emotions as an addict prevent me from totally abstaining from food for a sustained period... and after brief fasts I sort of binge... I don't like this, so , the whole art of fasting and breaking a fast SLOWLY has to be learned... I WILL learn to do this but have to achieve it in stages. The low calories are similar to a fast so the benefits though not as great as with fasting are nevertheless present.

To really make fasting a regular part of my life , and to facilitate breaking fasts slowly and with SMALL quantities of food , I feel I have to be committed, pretty much for life, to abstinence from overeating-triggering/addictive foods. I MIGHT not HAVE to be so committed but i feel I would like to choose this life-choice if possible since it feels most secure. I have to achieve this in stages and the first stage is raw food only. I have about 10 days all raw now, having struggled to re-achieve the raw diet after keeping it 2 yrs May 2008 to May 2010 and then losing it repeatedly May 2010 to May 2013, 3 years of processed food relapsong. My raw sobriety date is May 6, 2013, I think. yeah, i think day 1 all raw was weds may 7th.

For my body's current, very ill condition (a liver issue of some kind), I need to keep my food intake way down now... unfortunately I am not immediately able to commit to giving up, forever, the many "raw binge foods" that do exist , for me. If I could "clean up" this way, -- and I want the cleanup to be permanent, .. I just ... want that... -- if I could "clean up," staying under 500 calories a day, or even fasting, would be rather easier. But I have to be honest with myself if I want eventually to succeed in establishing this necessary "food sobriety." The truth is that at this moment, as unfortunate as this is, I am not strong or supported enough to make the permanent decision to stop all "raw binge foods" forever as I do need to. I am committed to raw and that is great and I do feel better and I have already committed as of tomorrow to no caffeine which means no more raw cacao; and I've committed to not adding any salt to my food. I still have many categories of food/individual foods to give up before my diet is really "sober." It's raw right now but as I say it still could be a lot "cleaner." ... i lack the strength right now to make this change as a PERMANENT change. I WANT it to be PERMANENT. it is hard to explain why but I know clearly I want this permanence. It MIGHT be a way of avoiding taking action I need to take, but I have to work with myself where I am right now. I wish I understood better my desire for this permanence in clean diet. I just have this mind which will obsess over binge foods. If I am allowed them AT ALL, I want them ALL THE TIME. The only solution for me is to find a supported basis for committing to NEVER having them in my life. This phenomenon of wanting-it-all-the-time is ALWAYS being played out with WHATEVER the worst food I am allowed to have is. Right now, it is being played out with a certain raw vegan sorbet-type frozen dessert. I want it pretty much all the time. It is made out of coconut/raw honey/water/raw cacao. I can, and am willing to, and do, make it at home, I have that much self-preserving positivity and discipline; so the direct (though not the "indirect") financial damage it does is slightly under control. BUT. ENORMOUS effort is required for me to figure out ways to control my consumption of it. CLEARLY, this is a food/object/substance/drug that has GOT. TO. LEAVE. MY. LIFE. Its constituent parts are all simply too binge-triggering. Stopping it and its components PERMANENTLY, as an alcoholic in AA stops alcohol, is the only solution for the situation with this food and all foods to which i react like this ...But how can I stop??? ... Well... a commitment to regular self-examination and general self-honesty... that's for maintenance actually ... to make the initial decision to stop, what is required is: ... an act of asking myself what I really want in life, and making an occasion of making a decision based on my answer; and then emplacing support and accountability to keep to that decision. I pretty much intend to use this forum for accountability (via daily check-ins as markers of my progress toward fasting) for my 500 cal a day plan and for my increasing food sobriety ... As far as the first things I have to transition out of -- the sorbet and its ingredients -- are concerned, I have taken a first step and become willing to stop having cacao/any caffeine. Since writing this here makes me feel too pressured about that decision, I am just going to say, I have a lot of it on hand right now and even if I didn't I just do not feel right now that I am at the absolute point of stopping forever. Eating it is so painful, I wish I were at the true stopping point NOW, but I just am not and I have a great (perhaps unwarranted???) fear when I pressure myself. The upshot is, I can DE CLARE my clarity that this food HURTS and i really want to live free of it... further than that, despite what I said earlier, i just cannot go right this moment.


Anyway, I am glad that writing this has helped me validate my intuition to stop bad foods PERMANENTLY not just temporarily for a fast or healing period. I feel good about all that now. I feel it is clear that MY personality is miserable when any triggering food is allowed at all, so the valid solution for me is to get permanently sober from any such food. Yes! Getting ready to do this, and maintaining the decision, are further problems, but that is fine. The initial piece of conviction of the validity of my strict-sobriety-impulse is in place.


I know what I have to do. I have taken part of this action: going all raw. Now I have to maneuver myself into taking the rest of the action: a permanent cleanup of my already-raw diet. ...The result of this cleanup will be my ability to fast and therefore heal. When my diet is free of foods that force me to think about food and eating all the time, and crave them all the time, I will be able to fast. I need to fast to heal from what ails me. This is the reason behind posting all these diet issues on a fasting forum.


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Staying on 500 cal a day will be hard, or it feels so. To facilitate this I will also require myself to take care of various life-needs BEFORE doing ANY eating in any given day. This way a portion of the day will be over before i dive into the eating which is my habitual way of hiding from life and trying to make the day go by. Doing all these tasks FIRST will leave much less of the day to "get through" on the 500 calories. ....I will have to work on my art , among many other things, before doing any eating , in any given day. This will prevent me from seeking to use food to meet my life- needs (falsely). It will engage me in life.

...I may not always complete every required activity daily. maybe I will complete none. BUT. One thing I will ALWAYS do and that is wait 5 hours after waking up, to eat anything.

I will keep a day count of all this here. that is, a count of the number of days I stay under 500 calories and also succeed in getting myself to complete my checklist of what-to-do to address my life-needs BEFORE doing any eating in the given day. ...and I will note my progress toward converting myself to a committed "most sober" raw diet, without "raw binge foods."


It is hard to stay on 500 cal a day and also have certain bad foods still in my diet. I want to binge on them. It is hard enough to keep my calories below 1200/1300/1400/1500 a day when I have these raw binge foods present in my diet. But I will do the 500 a day thing because I am suffering badly and this will really help. it is hard to figure out how I am going to clean up my diet -- a large act of long-term discipline -- a series of huge life-decisions -- and at the same time keep another unaccustomed discipline -- the 500 calorie daily limit. I can't not do the 500 a day thing. But will it be impossible as long as I have binge foods allowed still?? But I don't feel really ready to stop the binge foods permanently. I do not know what to do.

My conclusion is to sincerely try the 500 a day, post here about it, and keep focused on figuring out a way to clean up my diet content permanently WHILE keeping to 500 a day. Is ths possible? I fear it may not be. The impulse/temptation is to make a farewell binge or large large serving of whatever I am trying permanently to stop. This isn't really possible when the daily limit is 500 calories. If I gave something up having it for the last time in a very small limited quantity I would feel too cheated to stick to the decision. I need a solution so I will just start the 500 cal a day, trust that I can find ways to keep to 500 calories even with binge foods included; and keep concentrating on bringing myself to the point of permanently cleaning my diet.

I might have the following plan: do 500 a day for one week starting tomorrow. Then take a week of 1200 to 1500 a day in which I give up permanently a few problem foods. I could have them in "satisfying" final quantities if my daily calorie limit were 1200 to 1500. Then after making the cleanup commitments I felt I could really stick to, in that week of 1200-1500 calories, I would again do a week of 500 a day. Then repeat.


It takes a lot to give up something permanently but I must do this with many and various foods. I pray I can keep the urgency of the matter right before my awareness and .... use the excitement of finally getting healthy , by finally achieving fasting, (fasting will become possible when my diet is committedly clean) , use that excitement to self-motivate, and make THIS the time in my life when I FINALLY get food-sober FOR GOOD, and achieve fasting, strength, and health at last. I have been trying at this for a long time and I am allowed to succeed now. I always was allowed. My tool is this forum to keep accountable and record my journey into my ideal "fasting way of life." Tweet