drink your food chew your water

A journey of seven fasting days

In 2013 I became familiar with the concept of “Ekadashi”: the eleventh day after the Full Moon, in which fasting is recommended.

My insight and imagination tell me that on the 11th day the Moon’s shrinking pauses, and we are no longer under its influence, therefore our lymphatic movements stops, therefore it is also easy to fast. Even though this is just my supposition, I won’t stop telling it to people. It’s indeed a nice story.

At the time I owned a standard body for a privileged white 22 year old girl, but fasting was never a problem, because I discovered how beneficial it is not (only) in terms of body health, but also for the mind, and the mindset.

Living up food allows deep strategies of rest to take over, and the mind-setting is into saving mode. This means that all the things that were previously stressing me, all of a sudden had completely lost their importance.

This lead me to re-dimensioning and priorities became really clear.

For years I have fasted on Ekadashis, then every Thursday, until I started prolonging it to 5 days. Since five years ago, I started fasting once a year per five days. It then became twice a year, with a pause during my pregnancy. Five days means 8, because there is one day of preparation and two of reintegration.

Believe me, I would have rather kept on fasting, instead of starting eating again… in fact, this time, I decided to keep on going for 7 days. Even though experts claim that 5 days is more than enough, and one should stop there, even if the feeling of keeping on going is deep, I decided I had the experience to do so. Of course, I was mistaken.

The fasting itself started to feel hard on the fourth day because being a mother of a one year old when the school is closed for Easter holidays equals the concept of rest in no way, at all. Yet, I kept on going: I was curious, and I made this promise.

On the seventh day I understood how beneficial it had been, in fact I was very light inside, and I had felt my guts like never before: I could perceive shapes, internal movements, sounds and colors, and all the feelings that had been trapped there.

This time, coming back to life was even harder: strong headaches and losses of balance were the normality of the first three days. On the fourth and the fifth, I still had a strong nausea after having eaten, which I didn’t have the past seven times in which I fasted for 5 days.

I feared for myself, that I had ruined something in my nervous system.

Fasting is an ascendant practice, which has to be accompanied by meditation, silence, cleansing practices.

I took it down to normality, and I was punished.

Luckily, on the sixth day, all came back to regularity, except that still up to this day, I am almost never hungry.

The paradigm of hunger is witnessed and seen from a different point of view, during fasting, and I guess that having kept this strain for 7 days, I have given a strong habit to the guts. In my best case scenario …

The total weight loss was of 6 kg, of which I regained 2.

Since last year, during the pregnancy, I have lost 18 kg.

I know and I still want to claim that I don’t practice fasting because of weight loss. It is wrong to approach weight loss in this way, but I also understand that from the point of view of the one who sees me or reads me, that’s logically my reason. Indeed, there are still 24 kg to go.

I am still in research on how to be myself in the way I eat, without harming myself.

I am grateful for having approached a mostly vegan diet, I am grateful for the self made healthy and tasty food that surrounds me, and for the overall understanding of the archetypical meaning of food itself.

Thank you all as well, for allowing me to use you as a mirror of sincerity.

It’s a great pleasure for me to keep updating this virtual diary, and that there are people who like to read it and interact with it.

See you then soon on my next post, but if you want to follow the fasting journey, here are some recordings.