On fasting

(NOTE: I found this text hidden away on my Phoenix Lenovo's desktop today, Saturday 17 2011, though it was written the Thursday after the weekend with Jaymes... that means on or around the.. ummm.. October 7th, 2010. Not two weeks before the accident)

After spending an enjoyable weekend with a farmer friend in Butler County, listening to his holistic viewpoint on diet and body processes, I decided to take upon a complete fast during this week. I was encouraged not only by my friend's own experiences, but also from recounts of remarkable people in history, like Jesus and Gandhi.

According to my friend, we absorb many harmful substances daily, such as pesticides and hormones from treated food, and gaseous waste from vehicles. These substances are commonly called toxins. The human body accumulates these toxins outside of the bloodstream, inside unmoving layers such as fat, thus protecting the rest of the body from harm. As we constantly feed our body day to day, several times a day, the excretory system of the body is constantly occupied with the business of expelling waste materials from the recent ingests, which also further contribute to the toxins already present in the body. These new substances are stored in the same body areas removed from the bloodstream, so that in a common person's life, the amount of accumulated toxins in his body never diminishes, and is a cause for chronic diseases later on, such as tumors and a general reduction in the effectiveness of the body's internal processes.

Today is thursday morning, 9:30AM. I began my fast on Monday at midnight, so I am now in the beginning of my fourth day of fasting. I think this is the longest I have ever fasted completely (if I exclude the initial seven days after my birth when I vomited everything I ate because my pylorum was blocked). I have not eaten any food or drunk any water during this time. However, I've known from several people and web pages that a fasting person should minimally drink water. Some say the body should remain hydrated, and some say that water is necessary to wash the toxins in the body away. So now I am considering drinking some water in order to further this experience's effectiveness.

I'd like to tell how has my experience of fasting been so far. I decided from the beginning that I would refrain from strenous activities, so as to reduce the exertion on my body as much as possible. I have been doing some things. I have walked in the neighborhood and taken pictures of the beautiful Autumn scenery here in Oakland, I have ridden my bicycle to the CMU campus at least three times to ensure that the Coke delivery and loading processes take place correctly, and I have walked outside to Craig Street for various reasons. Otherwise, my activities are very light, and include sleeping, meditating, web browsing, practicing the piano, disposing of the house trash, brushing my teeth, taking showers, and urinating. I've also cut off most of my social activity by not logging into any instant messaging applications and answering very few phone calls, in the hope of thus reducing my activities and social obligations.

So far, I feel quite healthy. The first day went by without any discomfort at all. The second day was very similar, differed only by some difficulty falling asleep at the end of the day. After waking up after 4 hours of sleep at 1AM and failing to continue sleeping, I woke up and completed some useful tasks on my computer and phone, such as installing Alcohol 52% and DOSBox, finding some old games like Dune 2, Quest for Glory and DWI, researching iPhone jailbreaking tutorials and following one of them (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHoXtQW5bwg) with limera1n.exe, installing and testing jailbreak applications, listening to looping music from another jailbreak tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuZo59TjFXE), and finally falling back asleep at about 10 in the morning. I slept three to four more hours, then spent my afternoon on miscellaneous activities before meeting Julian at 6pm in his office and then Min at 8 for a tutorial on reloading the coke machine.

But I digress. I slept seven hours last night and I feel quite lucid and refreshed, albeit my stomach has been intermittingly producing rumbling sounds, I think caused by my own thoughts on my diet. I do not feel energetic, but my mind does seem better focused on the lesser amount of tasks it conceives. I plan to accomplish a few minor tasks today, such as calling Coca-Cola, giving organic eggs from the farm to Julian, and practicing the piano. But beside those, I have scheduled my body for no further activities.

In these few days of fasting, I've empirically proved a simple and very powerful fact: experience depends tremendously upon expectancy. I have often had days when I have a generous breakfast of oatmeal, milk, cereal, and eggs at 10AM, and then after a few hours of light walking and office tasks, I crave something else and feel hungry again by 2 or 3 after noon, and can think of little else but of finding some food. But now 3 complete days have gone by without eating or drinking, and I still don't feel hungry or thirsty.

In the former case, however, I allowed myself to indulge in whatever food I desired, assured in the knowledge that I had the right to as much food as was required to satisfy my cravings and hunger. On the contrary, I started this week with the mindset of fasting completely for seven days, and my stomach and cravings have complied accordingly. I have been easily able to dismiss any thoughts of eating, and actual desires have as yet not appeared.