Abstract
Using food for comfort and emotional support is common, as are nutritional strategies for supporting various health therapies. But the use of NOT eating is a whole untapped potential.
Connection to website’s theme
The purpose of therapy is to improve one’s health, an essential component of good living. In addition, this article covers a method to improve one’s mental state as well, which makes everyday activities more enjoyable.
Introduction
How did this start?
I’ve been experimenting with fasting since the end of 2019. But then, I’ve been experimenting with various diets in pursuit of various health goals since 2003. Some of those diets were questionable as to whether they actually contained food at all – like the three months when I drank protein shakes only. Each diet approach was coupled with different planned exercise regimens.
Fasting is the first nutrition-based (or should I call it non-nutrition-based?) activity that woke me up to the fact that our psychology is the primary component of how we eat. One’s psychological input to how and why we eat is way more important than the diet structure we follow (or try to!) for supporting our physiology.
Fasting according to pop culture
Fasting as a health tool is becoming more popular. But is primarily being associated with intermittent fasting, as seen in my recent conversation with a colleague, while I was on a business trip:
At hotel in morning, a colleague, who is into cross-fit, is eating breakfast and I arrive right when we’re supposed to head out.
Colleague: Did you eat already?
Me: No, but I’m ready to go.
Colleague: You aren’t going to eat any breakfast before we leave?
Me: No, I’m fasting today.
Colleague: Oh yeah, I was doing intermittent fasting some time back, I did a 6-hour window, and … (blah blah blah)
At pizza restaurant for working lunch.
Colleague: What are you going to get here?
Me: Just water, I’m fasting today.
Colleague: So, you’ll eat dinner?
Me: No, I’m not eating anything today.
Colleague: Wait, what?! No food at all? And you can just do that?!
Fasting based on my experience
This above exchange turned into a long conversation of my experiences, why I started, and what I think about fasting. A lot of questions stemmed around weight/fat loss. I asserted to my colleague (and am asserting here) that fat loss is the least relevant portion of fasting (though it does work well for that).
Fasting is one of the best tools I’ve found for accessing my psychology. In today’s world, so much of our thinking and emotional mindset is tied up with eating, tasting, social food, being full, snacking, cravings, etc. Diets potentially raise many such challenges as well. But they usually shuffle one’s issues with one food or method we’re eliminating onto another food or method that serves as a substitute. This results in the underlying issues never being uncovered or resolved.
Fasting gets to the heart of it. Even better, fasting challenges many basic life-hindering assumptions of how much we need to eat, how often, what kinds of food, and what happens to us when we fast.
Fasting for therapy
Benefits of fasting
If you want to feel better about yourself, have less triggers/cravings, less frustrations, and more awareness of your personal needs, you need to dig deep into your psychology, introspect, and understand what is causing these unpleasant needs. Once you are aware of them, you can then change them. Fasting is one of the best ways to do reach that awareness. And fasting is quick too, unlike hours of going to a therapist, accumulated over many months.
Not being aware of your personal situation or needs, work with your doctor to ensure it’s safe for you to try. Maybe start with a 1-day fast (24 hours). But you’ll want to do at least a 3 if not a 5-day to see how much “crap” surfaces out. The longer fasts will yield not just more results, but a completely different perspective.
Clear your schedule so you don’t have any demands while you work on yourself. I know, that’s its own huge challenge. The best benefits I’ve seen for me are for 7–15-day fasts, but everyone is different. Experiment and follow your own needs. Isn’t that the goal? To understand our true selves and be that person, rather than this amalgam of cultures, family, our younger personalities, etc.?
Each component of the amalgam, to the extent that it hasn’t been built into our core self, ends up pulling us in different ways. That makes living in the present very difficult. Hence we reminisce or look to the future more often than not, and miss out on so much joyful living.
Questions and tips for success
I’ll sum up some findings or notes that concern many people (including me):
Muscle loss?!
Fasting is actually muscle-sparing, and fat is prioritized for energy use. Research and my own experience back this up. Especially if you do resistance exercise a little bit (don’t overdo it!), you won’t lose any muscle. Especially for such a short duration as a few days. This assumes you are within historically normal bounds of muscular development (~20lbs of extra muscle gained since adulthood). Think evolutionarily. If primitive man had to go months in the winter without a solid meal and muscle was the first thing to go, how would humanity have survived?
Is coffee, tea, beer (!) allowed?
Each of us needs to start where we are, and not follow some guru blindly. I did enough of that and it only gets you a checkmark on following the plan, not any real fulfillment gained. To obtain the psychological benefits of fasting, you do need to have near-zero calories, true, but other things can be ingested without taking away from the fasting type responses.
Just remember, the goal of this is to search inside your soul, not to do it a certain way, and there are many ways to look inwards. I will warn you that anything other than water that crosses your lips will likely trigger a whole host of resistances to continuing the fast. Those can be useful for our assessment as well. But I find them less effective in aiding introspection than just focusing on the “not eating.” If we over-challenge ourselves with difficulties in continuing the fast by resisting such triggers, our ability to openly view ourselves gets blocked behind a wall of willpower. Do your best to make the fast easier. It will be hard enough with what will surface just from not having food.
Starting fast’s time of day/meal
This really doesn’t matter whether you eat breakfast and then start fasting or dinner or whatever. The goal is to reach the point where the body bubbles up with fears, anger, guilt, joy, etc. that are overly bizarre and don’t feel like you. For some people that may take only 24hrs since one’s last meal, for others, maybe several days.
Hunger
Most of us really don’t even know what hunger is. Usually what we go by is habitual eating times, social situations, an emptying stomach, comfort or emotional needs, thirst, or tiredness. Whatever you start feeling, after you’ve passed your usual window to the next meal, is not hunger. It’s something more emotional. But I will say that the stomach-type movements and smallness-adjusting sensations that make us think it’s time to eat do usually reduce by the third day.
Energy
This one is similar to hunger. We often eat for immediate energy, which is a problem. Our physiology should be able to take care of any immediate energy needs. We often simply jump right to eating rather than letting the body take care of it, often because what we really need is sleep. In today’s go-go world, it’s easier to down caffeinated drinks or eat a snack than to get more rest.
The point is that if we are feeling completely drained on a fast, it’s not because we need food. It’s because something else is a problem that we’ve been covering up with food intake. Often, it is a chronic sleep deficit. But it could also be motivation related. Fasts often make us realize that we really don’t want to be doing the activities that we’ve defined for ourselves, such as our job, or the busy schedule we plan for our kids. Let this all be part of your self-awareness journey.
Some people have very low energy on fasts, and some people are bouncing off the walls. In general, a positive energy situation would be proper evolutionarily in order to be ready to hunt. But it shouldn’t be such intense energy, mental or physical, to make sleep difficult. Anything on the extreme ends point to something abnormal at work. The same concern of abnormality applies to how well or how long we end up sleeping during a fast, whether those are on the extremes.
Of course we should be aware that the body itself is adapting to a fast as well, though usually that is less of a burden than the psychological stress. In some cases it can be intense, though, as the body has challenges becoming fat adapted, which can lead to low energy. Eating just enough to help the body over that hump can help but see above about the issues of such eating triggering one’s emotional eating needs.
Conclusion
Go forth and journey into yourself (and your not-so-self). You will come out a more complete person on the other side, with all the benefits of feeling more alive, and not torn in various directions. It’s worth it.
Important disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals. Always consult with a qualified medical practitioner, and your own best judgment, before making health decisions.
For comments or questions on this article, please email jeremy@tobeandwhattobe.com
Article image courtesy: Gino Crescoli from Pixabay
