Water Fasting – Healing Journey Day 3

Journal:
Well, after being so tired yesterday, I expected to be as tired today. I didn’t go to sleep until after midnight, so I set four alarms to  make sure I got up this morning. Sadly to say, for whatever reason, I woke up wide awake at 4:00 a.m. Of all the things that could happen, I wake up at 4:00. I didn’t wake up starving nor dying of thirst, but completely was wide awake. It makes no sense to me.

So what did I do at 4:00 in the morning? I decided it was time to consume some water. Sadly, it didn’t come with the fireworks I was expecting. It was good, but I honestly think of could have done dry fasting for another day. However, since I work with students, I don’t want to take the risk of being completely active all day long and not have my body running on anything. So breaking into my water fast is the process I’ve begun.

So what did it actually feel like to drink water again? It puts me in a hesitant state. I’m not sure my body is fully accepting it to be honest. I feel like there is a possibility of running to the washroom at some point and also a possibility of vomiting the water back up. It’s unsettling for sure. My energy is not where I want it to be; it’s not as good as last night, but not as bad as yesterday morning so I began praying early to survive the day.

Thankfully, I did survive the day with only one person commenting on how tired I looked. I also was yawning a lot when she said it, so that was a clue.

I couldn’t drink very much in the morning. In fact, though I had imagined I would be guzzling water throughout the day, I really don’t think my body was ready for too much water. It almost “hurt” my stomach without actually being painful. But around midday, water began to go down easier (6 hours past the initial sip). The feeling in my stomach is gone for the most part though food does sound good. It was a test to go through two snack times and a lunch period sitting with my students while all of them are eating. The smells are what got to me the most. But somehow, I still found it fairly easy to bypass the food they were eating and the emergency stash I have by my desk.

Following school, I had a meeting with a parent. It was a positive meeting and the mother was so wonderful, she even brought me a bag of tomatoes from her garden. Oh, how I would LOVE to eat those tomatoes. But since it will be quite awhile until I will be eating tomatoes, I am looking at options of either buying a dehydrator to dehydrate them or perhaps finding a method of canning. I am sticking with this journey 100% and not willing to skip stages. I’m holding out well.

Once the meeting was over, I came home and took a nap. It felt so good to take a nap though I freaked out when I woke up thinking it was 7:30 in the morning and I was going to be late for work. It took a few minutes to sink in that it was only 7:30 at night and that everything was going to be ok.

It took awhile for me to get up because I was very cold. I am finding that my body is reacting more extremely to temperatures. For example, when my heater is on, even on the lowest setting, I am pretty warm, almost too warm for blankets. But when the heater is off and the basement gets the cool feeling again, I start freezing so much I cannot even fathom getting out from the blankets. I’m having a hard time finding a happy medium at the moment and I’m hoping this will sort itself out.

I did go to the gym today though I was heavily debating whether I should or not, especially after feeling so tired all day. However, I’ve been working out for years, so I figured that I cannot completely stop now. Aside from cardiovascular benefits, I considered the fact that exercise might actually help me feel warm again after feeling cold for awhile. It worked, and I actually was stronger than I though I would by cycling on a stationary bike. My pace was much slower than normal, but I wasn’t about to make this an all-out sweating session, but rather just a health activity.

So now it is the end of the day and I’m in bed, about to go to sleep. I am so looking forward to only two more days of water fasting and finally getting to drink fruit juice on Thursday. I’m hoping that the lemon slices I’ll be adding to my water on Wednesday will give my body a little energy kick with the most minimal of calories but still something compared to nothing.

Review of symptoms:
This morning, my face actually had a sign of improvement: there were no new pimples! Almost every morning I’ve had at least one new one if not several. Perhaps my body has had enough time cycling everything on the inside without having outside substances to deal with that it is able to concentrate on healing my acne. This is good news for me! My energy is lacking; not horribly like yesterday morning, but not as awesome as last night. I was also shaky again this morning and though it is certainly not as bad as yesterday, it is definitely noticeable. Though I wasn’t able to drink much in the morning, it picked up throughout the day. In total, I think I drank about 1.25-1.5L of water today. Much less than expected, but not bad for my body to adjust to. My body is reacting to temperatures in extreme ways and I’m really hoping this will sort itself out. Something I didn’t expect but totally noticed today was that my teeth are whiter! I haven’t done anything special. In fact, I’ve just been using my clay toothpaste. But the yellow tinge they had before starting my fasting is almost completely gone and they are looking pretty white. This is an exciting side effect!

Weight at the end of the day: 185.4 (down .2 lbs from yesterday, a total of 3.6 pounds lost in 48 hours)

Total Calories = 0

Dry Fasting – Healing Journey Day 2

Journal:
This morning was rough. I’m not gonna lie. After having such an energetic and fairly normal day yesterday, I seriously think I could have laid in bed and slept on and off all day. I did NOT want to get up this morning whatsoever. I was a little hungry, but even more so, I was extremely thirsty. Part of the reason may be the heater I’ve been turning off and on in my basement room; it seems to dry things out. But nonetheless, it was harder to concentrate and move. Interestingly enough, my hands were also incredibly shaky. I just wanted to lay around with zero energy.

I finally made myself get up and get moving around 2:00 in the afternoon. One of the local organic stores had a 15% off sale going on today so I wanted to see what juices they had to break my fast with. I am so thankful I had that motivation because I honestly had to drag myself out of bed to go take a shower. The shower was nice and refreshing, but even after I was done getting ready, I stumbled up the stairs. I was not enjoying the energy-less feelings.

Driving, I seemed to be ok. I purposefully wore capris today because I knew it was rainy and grey outside so the extra exposure to the elements would wake me up a little more.

I thoroughly enjoyed grocery shopping for juice. I’m not planning on starting juice fasting until Thursday, but I figured that if the deals were on today, might as well get prepared! I ended up going to 3 grocery stores and thankfully somehow ending up with the best prices of each type of juice I bought. I got quite a few, though was very tired again when I finally got back home.

When I got back home, the decision had to be made whether I was going to go to the gym or not. I actually decided to go, though it took a lot of time and mental convincing to get myself there. Once I got there, I actually found it decently easy to get through a small ab workout and then a 30 minute walk on the treadmill. Normally, I would do more than just abs and something a little more intense for cardio. But knowing the condition I had been in most of the day, I figured I better not push too hard since I’m not even consuming water to replenish what is lost.

Oddly enough, since the workout, I’ve felt a million times better. This is something I definitely did not expect. I figured I would be toast and done in for early for the night, but amazingly feel so much better. I came home and got laundry going right away, took in two loads from the car, and am able to concentrate on the few things I need to get done for tomorrow. It is so comforting to be feeling better because I was honestly getting worried about teaching tomorrow with the way I felt this morning. But feeling the way I do this afternoon, I know I can do it.

This is my last day of dry fasting as planned and I have a bottle of water beside my bed to drink first thing when I wake up tomorrow morning. I’m hoping/expecting that my body will celebrate the taste of water; I’m excited to find out. I’m not sure how my body will react as I continue with 3 more days without food as I move into a water fast, but I can only imagine the effect that simply adding water back in to my body will have.

Review of symptoms:
I haven’t noticed too much difference in my face. In fact, I noticed at the gym that my face got red much more easily when breathing in a more forceful way to help with the ab exercise repetitions. I have not had my face do this in forever, if ever. Of course, I’ve been going around with a noticeable feeling in my stomach; it’s not really painful but definitely noticeable. I’m not sure whether it is hunger, thirst, or something else. It’s definitely something I can live with; very mild. The shaking has gone away for the most part since my workout; it was really bad this morning. Being able to actually sit down and be able to work and focus on something rather than fighting my thoughts to sleep like I did this morning is really nice too. My hair is not as greasy as it normally would be at this point which tells me that the junk food and greasy food definitely affects how much oil is in your hair.

Weight at the end of day 2 = 185.4 lbs (down 3.4 lbs in 24 hours)

Total Calories = 0

Dry Fasting – Healing Journey Day 1

Journal:
Today was the first day and let me tell you, it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be! I have never dry fasted before, so this was a completely new experience.

For those who don’t know what dry fasting is, it’s abstaining from the consumption of food and liquids, including water. There is absolutely nothing but the air you breathe entering your body. Yes, it can be quite intense and no, it is not something that you can do for a long time.

There are some dry fasting extremists who even avoid brushing their teeth and showering, but I have chosen not to go that route as I use a very natural, clay toothpaste and shower with only water so I believe that is all apart of the cleansing state I’m trying to be in.

I quit eating around 7:00 last night. I was full from supper – a root veggie burger with corn – and though I planned on stuffing myself before falling asleep, I was so tired from my first week back to work that I crashed and didn’t get around to eating anything else.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty normal. I walked the dog, was on the computer for a bit, then got up and got ready to go to church.

Church went well; I always enjoy singing worship songs and the sermon was excellent as well.

After church, they had a fellowship meal in the hall. Yes, there was lots of good food, but just by going around and talking with different people that I knew, I was able to stay away from the food fairly easily. Thirst had not yet set in either so this didn’t really seem like a big deal to me.

After talking with almost everyone I was happy to see, I came home to the smell of garlic bread and lasagna – two of my favourite foods. Although I knew I wouldn’t be bothered to eat them because they were not made vegan, the thought of food did enter my mind. However, I must say that it wasn’t too hard to continue battling food at this moment. I was even offered vegan food to be made for me, but thankfully, my housemates have a baby so I was able to trade off by saying that I would take care of the baby while they ate and to not worry about a thing. There was even pumpkin pie and homemade peach sorbet but I managed to keep busy with the baby while only starting to notice hunger creeping in.

After a couple hours when the food was put away, I was invited to a church corn boil and potato roast. I was encouraged to come out to get to know some of the younger adults in the church so I took the opportunity to socialize, but knew I’d be confronted with food that would be perfectly delicious in a hungry state. However, I was determined to not allow the fasting to ruin my life and to get rid of the hold of food, so I still decided to go.

I had a good time overall. I got to meet some awesome new people and connect with people I haven’t seen in a long time. The corn was freshly harvested the day before as well as the potatoes. There was a cucumber salad, juices, lemon water, and cookies for dessert. Many times I was eyeing the food, but again, kept myself busy socializing with other people. By the time the sun began to set and we had a beautiful Vespers service, I knew I had gotten through without food or water successfully.

After I finally got home for the evening, I was hungry but not so bad that I was going crazy. Before too long, I came to bed and went to sleep.

Review of day and symptoms:
Overall, this honestly was a fairly easy day. I managed to dodge 3 food-related social situations by keeping myself busy talking with other people and taking care of the baby. I don’t feel bad at all besides the minor hunger and have been surprised that my energy has kept up all day. I consider this day an absolute success.

Weight at the end of day 1 = 188.8 lbs.

Total Calories = 0

Journey Through the Healing Chart

Hello everyone.

I have been thinking about this for a long time and finally have decided that now is the time to jump right in. For the past couple of months, I have been intrigued by two charts that I have seen. One was presented by Joe Best from The Best Transformation on YouTube. He presented a chart that categorized the vegan doctors / gurus in a scale from healing diets to athletic diets. Unfortunately, he has recently taken the video down that had that chart so I have requested that he put it back up. I will let you know when/if he does.

For now, I have been presented with another chart that uses diet alone to categorize rather than names of doctors with their suggested diets. It actually breaks down into greater detail the steps on what would be the healing end of Joe’s presented scale. The detailed scale looks like this:

Though I don’t have huge health issues, I have been looking at breaking the hold that food can have on us; the feeling that we have to eat this right now. I watch people around me suffer intense cravings and not be able to stay away from junk foods at events. Food seems to call us to it and have more power than it should ever have over us. Though I have stopped craving foods for quite some time, I wanted to prove to myself that the hold of food is gone. I also have been suffering from bad acne again and have no doubt that it is linked to the vegan junk I was still eating. So as I said previously, I jumped in.

Now, if you are looking at the chart above, there is a dark green level at the bottom that has many foods I do not consume as a vegan. I will not be hitting that level. I am vegan, have been vegan for over a year, and plan on staying vegan for the rest of my life. That level may as well not be there whatsoever.

Looking at the chart again, you will notice the top level is water fasting. I am actually taking this chart one step further and going to be starting with two days of dry fasting. Dry fasting is where not only is food not consumed, but water is not consumed either. Yes, it is risky and not something you can do long-term. In fact, depending on where you live, I wouldn’t recommend more than 3 days at the most. Definitely research this one for yourself before you attempt this as this is the most risky stage of a fasting stage/detox.

So feel free to join me on this journey or simply stand by and watch my progress. I will try to log about each day, what my experiences are and how I’m feeling. I am continuing to live life as normal though my workouts may be lessened in the beginning depending on how I feel. I will discuss how I deal with social situations while I go through each of these phases and hopefully my experiences can advise you on a healing journey you may want to embark on for yourself.

Please remember that I am not a doctor but am simply sharing my own experience. Not everyone reacts to the same things the same ways. My journey is based on my own research, and a simple desire take a new journey with my health to hopefully end up in the best health I have ever had.