My prolonged Dry Fast - Day #1

Thursday – Dry Fast Day #1

2:30 PM – 15hrs

I think I stopped to drink water at around 11:00 PM last night, but as far as food I had my big dinner earlier at 7:00 PM or so; I would say it’s about 15 hours of no drinking and no eating.

I feel normal so far, after all it’s just few hours; I had no hunger at all today, just one episode of growling stomach during a meeting and that’s all; but in my defense I can say that the meeting was  extremely boring, maybe that’s why!

I went for a walk during lunch time, to get distracted, to move a bit my fat legs; it was ok, every time I stand up from my chair I feel so heavy. I’m wondering when the headache will start, maybe tomorrow. My mouth is not dry but I begin on feeling that awful taste I have when I’m not drinking, not that goes completely away during the Water Fast, but it gets better, especially if I drink hot lemon water.

This time around I was thinking avoiding the lemon in the water or any tea, better if I drink only pure water – SMART water most likely, my favourite. I want to reset completely my taste buds this time around, since I’m planning on taking a long Fast to resolve all my issues. I might introduce salt and other supplements going forward during my long journey.

Failing to begin a Fast - I'm trying again

The beginning of a fast is always the hardest one, and personally I usually fail the first couple of attempts before reaching Ketosis. Once I am in a good Ketogenic state, nothing can tempt me really, but this happens after approximately 7/8 days into a Fast.
I know I said I would start my new Fast on November 1^st, but after 18hrs of Dry Fasting I gave up and had something to drink, in the evening I had a big supper, but overall only one big meal for the day. It’s so easy for my mind to convince me that one more day won’t make any difference and indulge in food and sugar; I am very weak.
Today I feel more motivated though. Since yesterday I started to check my weight again; I have to admit I cried when I saw the number on the scale, never been so fat and the amount of time I would need to lose all this weight is beyond my estimations.
On the Internet I found various blogs talking about personal Fasting experiences; the number of days of the length of a Fast it usually different for everyone, it can go from few hours up to 100 days. I was reading yesterday about someone completing 92 days fast, impressive, and definitely not common to find online these numbers. It requires lots of patience I can imagine, and fat storage enough to support the body for 3 months. But one thing I learnt from this story, after 3 weeks or so into the fast I should start to take Sodium, Potassium and other supplements for my electrolytes or I will feel too weak to continue over 30 days. This time around I’m aiming for 40/50 days, let’s see how it goes, I will listen to my body….but the number 92 is always in my mind!
I can’t wait for these first few days to go by quickly, because I know that I will feel better once I’m over this period, not that I feel hungry or thirsty but soon I will feel sleepy, I’ll have a headache, I’ll be grumpy, stomach growling, sugar cravings (well those ones never go away!), and my focus on things will be definitely impacted negatively. And I’m only 12hrs into the Dry Fast!
But really, I cannot continue like this, I hate myself everyday a bit more, and not that I care on how I look, I just don’t feel good, I don’t even want people to see me; if I could I will stay home in my bed for 2 weeks….but I have to come to work and deal with everyone here and with my cravings. I hope I’ll be fine this time around; a long journey is in front of me, I pray the Lord to give all the strengths I need to not give up this time.

Disadvantages of being FAT

Recently I gained a lot of weight; and I can certainly say that I never been so overweight in my entire life. I keep on saying this thing since I reach new highs after every attempt to meet my goal weight; maybe I should learn something from that.
For me being overweight is not only about the fat on my body or my wardrobe not fitting anymore; it’s about so many daily struggles.
I’ve been experiencing some body issues; and my apologies if this post is a bit too detailed – but I share my experiences, good and bad. Recently I developed – where the fat is concentrated on my body, like belly area and under my breasts, some sort of skin reaction; I never had something like that before. It’s not itchy or anything, just uncomfortable. I try to wash the areas often and using talc or Aloe Vera gel to help with the skin reaction, but I’m not having success – I know a Dry Fast would resolve this problem in no time!
Another issue that my fat is causing to my body is my heavy breathing problem; I literally have hard time to talk normally sometimes, I hate it! But realistically, I don’t know what to do.
Some time I also wonder: how can I live as a fat woman? I really don’t fit in this body! I feel awful doing simple things, walking, sitting, talking. My legs are all swollen at the end of each day; I have hard time doing daily things in the bathroom, due to my new size. I have skin breakouts every other day; itchy feelings here and there; always feeling hot and easy sweating – like I’m reaching menopause! My hair get oily and dirty in 2 days (while fasting I can go as long as 5 days without washing it).
Nothing fits me anymore, I bought larger size clothes but I still feel uncomfortable in it; I can’t move around in the same way; I can’t even cross my legs while I’m sitting! I feel I’m losing more hair now than when I fast. My hair are ok when I’m fasting, never had any issue.
I look much older than my age with this extra fat on me; and no matter how difficult can be to accept or not, I get treated very differently from everyone when I’m so fat. I repeated this thing many times in my blog: people treat me nicer when I’m skinnier; people notice me when I’m not fat; they talk to me, they smile at me…now is like I don’t exist and I tend to hide as consequence.

I failed again!

I might sound like a broken clock by now but, here I am again, telling about another failure of post-fast maintenance.
In defense of what happened though I can say that, every fast experience, teaches me something about my body and how things work for me and my weight management.
What I realized is that after a prolonged fast my body goes into a famine-mode for about 3 weeks, after that food does not have the same appeal as the first three weeks. I guess it’s just a normal reaction after so many days abstaining from food. Makes sense though.
In 30 days of combined Dry and Water Fast I did not lose much, in terms of weight, but I was definitely feeling better than when I started. Chances were that when October started my mind just got hit with the fact that my parents were leaving the country to go back to Italy, leaving me here alone again. I didn’t handle the reality very well, I must admit; so I recall spending 3 days in bed crying and eating junk food. They say food is comfort but I wasn’t feeling better though….quite the opposite; my shrunk stomach was hurting me so much when I was eating those huge meals, and the excessive amount of sugar. In any case I kept on eating, and crying, and eating, till my stomach was not shrunk anymore and started to dilating… disproportionately!
To add more reasons to me giving up on controlling the amount of food eating, was an awful experience I went through during a long-weekend trip with a….ex-friend. Well we went out of town and let’s just say I came back home taking a coach-bus, what a jerk – you never know people till you travel together; that’s why I love solo-vacation! Anyhow, the whole situation really impacted my feelings, I felt hurt by his rude manners and words, and although he was clearly a moron, I could not deny myself of more food-comfort to relief some of the stress caused by this negative experience. And my weight and inches skyrocketed!
These past couple of months were not great for me, lots of stress combined with my ex breaking up with me, my parents moving out, their trip, long weekend nightmares, boring working days, lack of money, loneliness; well this combined to my famine-state after Fast made me gain back and more whatever I lost during the 30 days of my combined Dry/Water Fast.
What can I do? I tried to do a self-analysis of what happened, but does it really matter? Will I learn from my mistakes and don’t do it again? Most probably not….so I gave up on this too.
I do have the intention on starting soon a new Combined Dry / Water Fast, I’m aiming for tomorrow, which is November 1^st, 2017 – I got some chocolates today since is Halloween.
I have to say that lately I’m not craving food much as my usual, I think the past 30-Day Water Fast was great in terms of healing. The first 3 weeks after breaking a Fast are very critical, the body really craves for food like crazy, so imposing an extremely rigid maintenance protocol is crucial in those days, after 3 weeks or so, things get better….well at least this is what I experienced.
One thing I’m looking forward from the Fast is, not only my general well-being and the weight loss, but the reduced amount of sleep hours needed. I know that it was a concern for me initially, but now I’m enjoying watching TV in bed and working on my loom, so I usually fall asleep at midnight and in the morning I have hard time to wake up; I know it does sound as a contradiction but it is not!
Keeping a journal while fasting is very important, either on an online blog, YouTube videos, on paper, whatever works for you is ok, but those words will help you in the future; share your motivations, your feelings, how you reached your goal, how you felt when the Ketosis was fading away all the food cravings, leaving only the so desired mental clarity; all those words would help you in the future if you ever need it again. They did for me.

Combined Dry and Water Fast - 30 days completed!

So I successfully completed 30 days of my combined Dry/Water Fast; who knew I could go so many days without eating, not so much for the absence of food rather than the willpower of staying away from food itself. Oh well, time passes after all and at the end of the journey looking back does not seem that difficult, if done once in a while.
Today I planned on refeeding with Bone Broth, I’m now sipping on my Mason jar with 1/3 of Bone Broth and some boiling water; I must to say it taste awful, I added too much water and the end result is not great at all. I’ll do better with the next jar I hope.
Last night I had hard time sleeping, as often happens, but this time my mouth was extremely dry, as I never felt before, I was trying to drink water during the night, but it wasn’t helping. I was wondering if it was a sort of sign that I should break my fast, but I didn’t feel hungry at all, just thirsty. Well this morning I was very weak, I could not walk to come to work, I took the streetcar for most of the way here and walked with lots of challenges the rest of the way, thinking that I could faint any time. Most probably it was just my mind making up this scenario, but I didn’t like how I was feeling and I was ok with the idea of refeeding on Bone Broth today, I need to have a normal life and functioning properly, otherwise I cannot continue any fast whatsoever.
My eyelids are still twitching often, a sign that I have some nutritional deficiencies for sure, but I hope once I start to eat again things will be better. I cannot wait to eat a hearty salad from my favourite restaurants. Now that I’m drinking I feel really tired, the refeeding process, let’s face it, it sucks; eating after a prolonged fast takes so much energy from the body that basically shuts me down while I’m digesting, and I’m just sipping on a little bit of Bone Broth with tons of water at the moment!
I still have lots of weight to lose unfortunately, the rate on which I was losing weight was not that fast so I would’ve needed another two weeks to reach my ideal target weight, but I could not handle another 2 weeks of Water Fast, I’m getting tired of not eating; I hope with good food and exercise I can reach my goal, and maybe I’ll do short Water Fast here and there to stabilize my weight and lose another couple of Kg. The important thing is that I don’t gain any weight and I maintain wherever I am now, or less of course. Wish me luck!

Combined Dry and Water Fast - Day #27

I’m almost at the end of another week, on Day #27; so far I’m ok but I’m definitely feeling the side effects of so many days of Fasting. I cannot do long walks, well at least not today, sometimes one day can be totally different from another. My arms are still very weak; I don’t have much strength to do heavy lifting or things like that. Yesterday I had to change the system inside the toilet that control the water tank with the lever and so on; well it was a real challenge for me removing the old pump and unscrew the various pieces! I thought I could not do it at some point, that I had to call a plumber; fortunately I managed to find some strengths and I was able to change and fix everything, I was proud of myself at the end; not only for my handy-man skills but because it was tough on my body the overall process.

My mother is becoming a bit worried about me not eating since so many days and she keeps on asking me when I’m going to end my Fast; but I told her that I planned on refeeding by the end of next week, if everything goes well; at the end I listen to my body and how I feel day by day, and really the days pass, once into a Water Fast you don’t realize how time can be so erratic and it goes, no matter what you do, you just need to have some patience, let things go, let your mind being distracted by the bigger picture not the challenges of the moment, it won’t work easily if we engage in analyzing too much how we feel now, rather than how we would feel if we give up.

For today I was thinking on doing another enema, I don’t feel constipated or uncomfortable, but I had feelings that I could have still some residual food sitting in my GI tract that would need to be removed, so not to poison my body. I was also wondering if I would ever see any parasites coming out of my body; not that it is something that I’m looking forward to, but lots of people doing Water Fasts are reporting of getting rid of parasites and worms and nasty things like that; which is a good thing to know that they are leaving the body anyway; I personally cannot say that I ever got rid of any of those things, who knows if they are hard to go or just I didn’t notice and I actually did removed parasites in my previous fasts.

My weight loss is still very very slow unfortunately, but there is not much I can do I guess, I was hoping I would be at 57Kg by the end of this week, but clearly is not going to happen, I’m still in the 59Kg and it’s already Thursday today. I hope at least by Monday I will be able to see the 57Kg somehow. If I am in the 56/57 Kg by the begin of the next week I was thinking on switching my Water Fast to a Bone Broth Fast, always drinking water on the side but starting to add some proteins and vitamins from the broth. I already know that I won’t be able to handle too much Bone Broth for too many days without being sick of it, so I might have it only here and there during the day and for the rest my usual water intake. But I’m not sure yet, since much would depends on what my weight will be by begin of next week.

Combined Dry and Water Fast - Day #26

Days are passing after all, it’s been 26 days that I am not eating any solid food; never been so long without eating – I reached a new personal record! I’m still far away from my weight goal though; unfortunately I had lots of fat to shed so lots of days are needed.
So far I’m ok, morning walks are becoming a bit of a challenge, but not crazy really, I can still manage to come to the office and back home without major issues. What’s a bit harder for me is using my arms muscles; drying my hair mostly, using the hair dryer is tough and I need to take breaks every few seconds; I’m wondering if exercise can help me with that.
What I don’t like are my sleepless nights, I can’t sleep continuously during the night and in the morning I don’t want to wake up at all, maybe also because I’m getting bored at work – as usual. Apart from that I guess I’m ok, my tongue is not that white-coated, just a little; I’m not particularly hungry but I like to watch a lot of YouTube videos of Raw Vegan recipes; I also try to prepare something for my dad so I can satisfy my desire of cooking, and I keep my mind busy from the food restriction. I have to say, even while I’m cooking something delicious, I have no cravings to try or taste whatever I’m cooking, I feel fine really.
I noticed that during a Water Fast I bruise easily, and it takes time to go away the bruise; this is apparently a common thing for fasters. Today I have a bit of lower back pain, maybe I need an enema, I didn’t do in the past few days, but I don’t feel the need to at the moment. My weight is going down very slowly, as I was expecting; I estimated another 2 weeks for me to reach my weight goal, but I’ll see how the next days will go, I’m just afraid my weakness can get worst and it will become harder for me to do my daily activities.
I still don’t fit in lots of my dresses, even though I lost some weight in these 26 days, I still have a lot of fat on me, this is something that really bothers me, because 26 days is a long time to stay without food, and although there are people doing Water Fasts for 40 days, it is still a big number for me! I know I should be stronger and think that days will pass and eventually I’ll get there, where I want to be, in happiness with my body, with my cravings, sure that I killed some parasites and got rid of lots of my addictions for certain type of junk food.