Fasting

I am on the last evening of my fourth eighty four hour fast in four weeks. I am thinking about toasted sandwiches, a cup of tea with milk, I popped my height and weight into a website that said that I’m on the cusp of overweight and normal. But that wasn’t the reason I did this, I swim every day, eat healthily, learned a long time ago that exercise was a better mistress than the health care system, however people I care for have been getting ill and whilst figuring out what might be done to help them get better, I keep coming across fasting as a solution.

I couldn’t however start evangelising something I hadn’t tried on myself, so I decided to enter into a run of fasting for the first eighty four hours of each week, for four weeks.

But let’s rewind a little. I visited an old buddy who has cancer who was rather more cheery than I expected. He was cheery because he had the company of a rather wonderful young lady, who was showing him what might be seen now as some rather old fashioned empathy and care. She left early to pick up her children from school, but on my way home I bumped into her and she told me about how a good friend of hers, Tim, had recovered from rather a nasty type of cancer having gone through a rather strict fasting regime.

Tim’s fast was a cup and a bit of water, with a whole organic, unwaxed lemon blitzed into it, with 2 tablespoons of warmed coconut oil so it doesn’t go hard and lumpy in the drink plus a few drops of stevia oil to sweeten it.

Tim had that three times a day as sustenance, because it’s important to have fats as that’s how hormones travel in the body. This was for 7 days.

Tim also said that you need to go on a low carb diet, then no carbs, ahead of a fast, taking about 2-3 weeks to get rid of inflammation-causing carbs before doing the fast to get into ketosis first. He maintains a low carb diet now.

Beyond Tim’s experience I keep hearing about how fasting is good for us, it’s one of the building blocks for many religious practices, so there is something about giving up food for a given period that seems to have some good effect on us. But having fasted regularly for the last four weeks I can see what else is beneficial too.

During my fasting period I felt so good that I started feeling as if I have lived my life in between meals, just as smokers live their lives in between cigarettes. Eating is more enjoyable and certainly more beneficial than cigarettes, but it’s amazing how we don’t consider that having a break might do us some good.

At this moment I am 73 hours into fast number 4, I feel clear headed, positive, more plugged into whatever entity it is that we live within and could carry on for more days if I wished to.

I have gone through a process though. On my first two fasts I felt very positive, I was on a mission and I do like being on a mission, however this subsided on the last two fasts meaning I had a little gloominess on the Monday and Tuesday. This was a good time to reflect on things and I quickly find ways to cheer up.

I also had a mild headache a few times, but each time any negative feelings cleared totally by the last day, as if my body had cleansed itself and was now ready for something, something else.

What I did start to feel was a connection to the more idealistic side of my nature; whilst sitting meditating, It was as if I was able to travel within my healthy body, amongst the waves that are the vehicles for my thoughts. I feel strength, I was able to swim in the sea everyday as usual, but the water felt like an extension of my body rather than some salty substance. I am lucky enough to live a minutes walk from where I swim every day, so I can swim just as the sun rises, moving in the water to exercise muscles that are harder to keep flexible upon dry land. Every swim is the invention of my own form of aquatic yoga, moving in three dimensions, touching the bottom of the harbour, springing to the surface to take a breath.

Food seems like a material substance that’s fun to consume, but in the last four weeks it has taken on a different meaning. Food was useful to help build the materialistic form that holds the thing that I am, yet separating myself from food has allowed me to feel that I’m not that materialistic form.

If I am not that materialistic form, what am I? And what else am I plugged into. life itself?

The other thing is that whilst we are engaging in the more materialistic sides of our nature, we are not engaged in the idealistic self and perhaps that is where we create life. It’s where hope lives and with faith and hope combined, we can create anything we want.

So I would say to my friend, with conviction now, thanks to Tim who revealed a path and Nada who showed how life affirming empathy is.

There is hope.