Day Four 6:32 AM

Another day presents itself. It's early and we'll see how the day goes, but I am extraordinarily introspective this morning. I don't know if I have more RAM available in my frontal lobe because I am not thinking about what I am going to eat or regretting what I just ate, but it seems like it is easier for me to sink into nice, calm reflection sessions with myself while I am fasting.

I have been thinking about how much we are trapped by our habits. How much we do without thinking, just reflexively because we have developed these "habits" of lifestyle behaviors. Some of them can be better defined as addictions but the word "habit" is easier to accept in order to move ahead with this particular reflection.

Unfortunately, most of our habitual behaviors have short-term purposes without any connection to long-term outcomes. I say "most" because there are some habits that are specifically initiated in order to achieve desired long-term outcomes. The habit of studying, for example, has the long-term benefit of achieving some sort of desired academic outcome. Another one would be exercise which would bring about the desired long-term outcome of improved health.

But there are many, many other habits that we allow to occupy big swaths of our lives that have invented and inserted themselves into our routines with NO positive long-term outcome. We have allowed these almost-invisible demons to invade, occupy and, many times, direct our lives in undesireable ways. One huge example of this would be watching television. It induces a comatose effect on our intelligence. Another huge example of this would be eating, which has resulted in an obesity epidemic around the world. These things are the result of unplanned and unwanted habitual behaviors that cause unplanned and unwanted long-term outcomes.

So why am I saying all of this? Because I am demonstrating to myself the ease with which I can control my habits by this fasting experiment. I am out-of-the-habit of eating every time I get a twinge to eat. I have broken the cycle of eating right before I go to bed and because I have now developed this behavior into a "habit", it's easy.

We are such creatures of habit that it isn't even funny. Habits drive our lives and if we allow habits to become addictions (this is another blog subject in and of itself) then we become lost, victims of unwanted and unplanned outcomes. Our self-esteem plummets and our feelings of helplessness and depression increase. We grow quickly to believe that we have no control over our waistlines, our appearances, our health and our lives and just "give up" on trying to control them anymore.

My tiny example of one, completely unspectacular and boringly normal, man's ability to completely stop eating solid food for a not-insignificant period of time is noteworthy evidence that we have absolute control over our short and long-term outcomes.

Please believe me when I say that "if I can do it, anyone can". It doesn't take much more than a sincere desire and a day-at-a-time strategy.

Day Two 9:09 AM

I don't have a lot to say to myself today. It's day two and it's my birthday. I told Tere to make me an ice cake since I'm fasting and can only drink water. I am really funny, aren't I?

A New Fast - Monday March 31 5:42 AM

I have decided to begin another fast. The benefits of the last one were lasting enough to encourage me to try another one. Plus the tantalizing lure of taste has tightened its grip on my tongue and I find myself slipping back into my old ways of eating which were very poor (to say the least). So I am interrupting my slide down this slippery slope of gluttony.

My timing is probably quite poor since tomorrow (April 1st) I turn 57. I guess we'll just have a water toast to my having stayed alive for so many years but I will get a sense of satisfaction for having weathered a stoic social stigma that has never done anything for me anyway.

Plus I have a retreat this weekend where food, and the collective consumption of food, is a fulcrum of social sharing. I guess the best way of handling this is to forget about it until it happens. I can only do this fasting thing one day at a time and that problem is not within my current sights. I'll get to it when it comes up. I have a problem of trying to over think my life and I get so far ahead of what is actually happening that I trip over my own psychological feet. I trip myself up constantly. So, what I've learned is that I have to keep things simple and just worry about what is in front of me (as pertains to over thinking) and keep trudging along.

The End

My fast ended last night about ten with a bowl of wild rice.

The reason it ended was more self-imposed social pressure and upcoming obligations to eat in social settings that made it more logical to break my fast with a bowl of rice rather than sausage and eggs first thing in the morning.

Overall, I gained more than I lost.

I gained a renewed self confidence in my ability to control my actions, including my deeply ingrained instinctual actions and reactions.

I gained a deeper insight into how unnecessary the vast majority of my oral consumption was including the rituals, impulsive behaviors and drive for oral gratification.

I gained a lot of time to do other things as alternatives to planning, thinking about or engaging in eating activities.

I lost a few pounds. That's it. So my gains far outweigh my losses.

I'll be cranking up another fast shortly so I'm going to keep this blog alive until then so I can just continue it. I may pick up a cause to fast for next time.

Day Eleven 6:27 AM

I made it through yesterday although I did feel kind of weak. My extremities (hands/feet) get cold quickly but otherwise I felt pretty normal.

I am convinced that this whole issue of food is psychological. It's all in the mind. Completely.

I have not suffered at all and I have not had food in my mouth or stomach for ten complete days and eleven counting today. How could it be so simple for me not to eat while everyone in this culture freaks out if they miss lunch (myself included)? Are we so driven by our instincts that we can't recognize them for what they are?

Forty days and forty nights might be an ordeal. That's different. Maybe the days get tougher incrementally as the times rachets up, I don't know. But I know I could go twenty days from having done this ten, almost eleven days.

I feel no ill effect whatsoever and from the two books that I have read, there are nothing but beneficial effects from this exercise. Nowhere but in the United States are fasts looked down upon with such distain and I am mystified as to why this is. When I lived in Italy, as a small example, fasting was a normal rite of Catholic religious dogma. Maybe it's because it interrupts our comfort. We are a very comfort oriented culture and perhaps anything that challenges our comfort and obscene abundance is categorized as unacceptable.

Anyway, enough of my mental diarrea. Today I face day eleven. We'll see . . .

Day Nine 6:39 AM

Well I didn't wake up so great today.

Last night my feet and hand got chilled and I could not warm them up. It was probably because I volunteered to stand on a corner with a Peace sign for an hour in the rain. That kind of kicked off the being chilled part, but afterwards I could not warm up.

I am weak this morning and a little disoriented. My chest hurts for some unknown reason and I still have the shooting pains down the back side of my right arm from the nerve problem I encountered last week.

I am in the process of deciding if I can go the day today and my declaration for this blog is yes, I am going to go the day.

I have no philosophies this morning. I am a step up from flat-lining. I'll see if I come up with enough to write later on . . .

Day Eight 6:19 AM

I never would have believed that I would go eight days when I started this thing. I never do. That's why the power of doing it a day at a time is so effective. Each morning I wake up I just make a decision on whether I can go the entire day without food and the answer, so far, has been yes. Then my goal is to make it through one single day, each day, and that's not tough for me to do.

Had I begun this whole process with a two week or eight day goal in mind, I would have buried a burger in my pie hole on day two.

So today I fell just like yesterday. I don't feel particularly weak or low on energy or anything in particular. Just normal. We'll see how the day proceeds but I suspect it will be just like yesterday.

I tell nobody about this. The Bible tells us that fasting is between us and God and not for our own glorification on earth (although I don't know how being labeled as a "nut" can be considered glorification), so I am keeping this stuff to myslef. Nobody reads this blog but me so there's no danger there and even if someone would read it, they would not know who I am. I am more putting the idea out into cyberspace that this can be done with relative ease and minor discomfort rather than exemplifying myself as an extraordinary human being.

I feel like I am doing a phenominal favor to my body. It processes the water I put into it quickly because it's not burdened down with a lot of other functions that I have demanded of it. I am not losing a great deal of weight, believe it or not, but I definitely feel that I am detoxifying elements that I've been walking around with for a long time.

So I will be walking around today, mixing and interacting with my fellow citizens of Arlington Heights, and I will not have put food in my mouth for eight days. Everyone else is thinking, in the back of their minds, of the next meal . . . or snack. Just like I was eight days ago. But today, I am free of that instinctual overshadow.

It feels incredible.