The Fast Report

9:00: 14 hours of "fast". The morning hasn't been too bad. I've had a mug of black tea and another of warm water. I usually wait to eat until the kids have been fed and Sprout is off to school. So there wasn't a lot of temptation and I wasn't too hungry. I'm suddenly very cold though. That's not abnormal for me, but this feels worse. Maybe it's a blood sugar issue. This feels very do-able.

12:00: 17 hours in. 2/3 of the way there! Another mug of warm water--probably should have been more. I had a two hour conference call which helped distract me. Bird offered me some of her cashews and didn't like that I wasn't eating. It's hard to explain to a 4 year old. Serving her lunch was difficult. All of the cues to eat were there, at the fridge, the pantry--even just being in the kitchen. I didn't stay with her while she ate. It made me a bit more emotional as I became increasingly more hungry, just trying to contemplate the uncountable number of people--and children--who are hungrier than I, with no end in site. My stomach does feel crampish now, and I just feel a little light headed. 7 hours more will be interesting.

3:00: This really isn't so bad. The weirdest part is fighting my brain, which seems to be quite confused about why I don't just go eat something! I noticed around this time that water started to taste sweet. That continued through the rest of the fast.

5:00: With dinner time drawing near, I'm starting to feel a bit more anxious, and the 2 hours seems like a long time. On the other hand, I'm surprised at how much easier this has been than I expected. I realize at this point that I'm not going to break my fast lightly, and we resolve to hold off dinner until 7:00 and all eat a meal together.

7:00: Cheese pizza for dinner! I am really hungry and it feels good to eat, but it also feels a bit sacrilegious. I definitely want to break my fast with a cleaner, healthier food next time. My stomach did cramp just a bit a few minutes after eating, but it wasn't terrible.

Overall, the 24 hour fast was much easier than I expected it to be. It's definitely something I want to continue doing. It was so interesting to break my normal (sometimes mindless) eating habits, and in a much different way than doing Weight Watchers did that. I felt more mindful throughout the day, able to focus as my instincts rose up and I consciously had to suppress them. Of course I can't tell if I came out technically any "healthier", but I don't think that I did any damage. I do feel, just inherently, that it was a cleansing experience for me. I'd love to hear about your own experiences if you fasted with me or have fasted on your own.

The First Fast

So today is my first attempt at the 24-hour fast. I'm nervous, excited, and yes...hungry. It really is putting some perspective on things. I have had a couple of moments while focusing on work where my mind has wandered and I've thought: "Hmmmm, I'm hungry. I'll go eat something." It's a bit of shock to realize I "can't". Then of course, as I mentioned before, I think of how many people are far hungrier than I am, without a choice. Even looking out the window and watching the birds, seeing the rabbit tracks around the feeder, I think of how grateful they are for an easy meal. Life is good for me. Still, I can't eat for 24 hours, and I'm hoping it's for a good reason. So I decided to spend some time looking for more articles about the benefits of partial fasting. The original NPR article that got me thinking about this cites Dr. Mark Mattson. Searching for information about his studies brought me mostly to articles from every source about his studies in 2003 that focused on fasting in mice. Here's the most comprehensive one:
NIA/NIMH: Fasting Forestalls Huntington's Disease in Mice. Finding more information from the other researcher cited by NPR was more difficult. She focuses mainly on pediatric diets, and discourages "fast" food. The articles I did find about her work with the American College of Endocrinology on fasting was so technical that I had trouble discerning exactly what the results of the studies were. This quote from the NPR article seems to sum it up for the lay person though: "You re-tune the body, suppress insulin secretion, reduce the taste for sugar, so sugar becomes something you're less fond of taking".

It's frustrating that there doesn't seem to be a good resource out there for the everyday person who wants to do a 24 hour fast for health. There are a lot of individual organizations that have different recommendations, but they all have their own take on why their fasting, and how it should be done. Can you drink coffee and tea? Do you really only fast for 24 hours, or do they mean 36--no meals waking to sleeping plus an entire night? How do I prepare myself for a fast? How do I break my fast? I've tried to put it all together and have come to a few conclusions, to be taken with a big grain of I'm-not-an-expert salt.

1. 24 hours is a sufficient period of time to allow for cleansing and stress the cells to a point that gives them a "work out". Dr. Mattson recommends simply skipping meals as one method of benefiting from calorie reduction. Any longer than 24 hours and you can start to have issues with muscle break down, etc. I am doing mine from 7PM-7PM.

2. Coffee? Tea? I don't know. Definitely not anything sweetened, including juice. Your pancreas is getting a break here and any sugars you consume have to be processed. I chose to have a cup of black tea this morning so as not to add a wicked caffeine headache to my hunger, but I will forgo anything but water for the rest of the period.

3. Fasting isn't about weight loss. There are lots of studies out there that show that fasting doesn't help weight loss, and can even screw things up. However--and this entirely my speculation--it seems to me that it can help if you are following a program where you are already regulating your food intake. That means that you won't binge when you break your fast, and you are going to go back to a healthy method of eating--possibly with your taste for sugar reduced, which can be very beneficial. I know one of my biggest challenges in losing weight is that craving for sweets.

4. Break your fast sensibly. Different methods call for different ways of resuming eating. My own common sense tells me that eating a full meal after depriving my body of food for 24 hours could throw a wrench in the system. I plan to start with a small amount of fresh fruit, then vegetables, and possibly wait until tomorrow morning to eat a normal meal.

So those are my thoughts for now. I will check back in to share more about my experiences once I complete the full 24 hours. Bright Blessings!

The 24-Hour Fast

When I was perusing NPR's top 2007 stories, I came across a piece abour 24 hour fasting. Fasting is something that I've always found fascinating and mystical. Growing up as a catholic, even the brief fast before communion on Sundays seemed very cleansing to me. As an adult, I've been loathe to try it myself. I've made plenty of excuses, but when I saw it come up on NPR...well c'mon, it's NPR! According to the story, fasting for 24 hours retunes the body. It cleans out your pancreas and basically resets your insulin baseline. Other benefits mentioned included: reducing your taste for sugar, lowering blood pressure, and possibly reducing the risk of cancer. Some researchers say it may extend lifespan in general because it stresses cells in a way that basically gives them a workout. Still more research shows that "partial" (24 hour) fasts may be beneficial for the brain and reduce the risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. This was the clincher for me. CADASIL, the genetic disease that is causing my father's stroke--the one that I have a 50% chance of having, it a disease that affects the brain and shares many characteristics of Parkinsons, and causes dementia. If I have it, I have it, there's no getting around it. All I can do is work at keeping my body and brain as healthy as possible, so that when the disease begings to progress, I'm at the best starting place I can be. So, I've committed to fasting 24 hours at least once a month this year, with hopes to move up to once a week.

I did a trial run today. Things have been busy and the family has been sick, so there hasn't been a good time. Today I am recovering from the nasty cold we've all had, but I just had a moment this morning where it seemed like I could try a mini-fast of sorts. I made it seven hours, and it wasn't too bad. I know this is going to sound corny or "out there", but I must admit, it felt very empowering to acknowledge my body's urges, and choose to deny them. There was something ascetic there that I hadn't taken into account. What's more, after a couple hours of actually feeling genuinely hungry, I began to think about how incredible it is that when I'm hungry I can just walk a few feet, grab some food, and satisfy my craving. I started thinking about how much is involved in getting my food to me (something I contemplate regularly, but it threw it into sharp perspective.) I thought about how many people in the world get by on a bowl of rice a day--if they're lucky. For me, fasting is a complete luxury. It's something I'm committed to doing though. Now I realize that it will also give me the chance to retune my mind as well as my body. I believe it will improve my long term physical, mental, and spiritual health. I plan to do my first complete fast this Friday, January 18th. No food, just plenty of water and thought. I'd love to have you join me.

For the original NPR story, visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16513299.