Fasting for the Win

Hour 106 is on the horizon.  106 hours of fasting, or incredibly restricted eating for those fasting purists out there.

Monday night at 9pm I embarked on a journey to fast for 108 hours and then run a 5k.  My plan was to go my first two days with coffee, water and la croix.  No calories other than coffee.  From day 3 onward I planned to not be dogmatic about it and add some heavy cream to my coffee and maybe some coconut oil.  I did have about a cup of bone broth.  Through this point I've had no more than 75g of fat, 20g of protein and 3g net carbs through 4 and half days.  That's about 750 calories if you are counting.  Last night I did have 3 small pieces of the chicken stir fry dinner my wife made.   It was just to tell my body and mind to shut up.  Then I went grocery shopping.  The only battles were psychological.  Of course...if you aren't fat adapted, fasts are miserable.  Your body revolts.  And then day three...it gets a bit easier.  If you are fat adapted, you just lose a ridiculous amount of ten year old fat stores and battle your mind.

The bible tells you not to tell people you are fasting.  I'm not sure why.  Fasting is awesome.  Even if you aren't into the whole Low carb/keto thing, intermittent fasting or a 5/2 diet is awesome for your brain and losing fat.  Look into it.

The biggest battle came last night.  I was ready to call it a success and eat dinner.  But I wondered what the ramifications would be by not finishing the goal I had set for myself.  Mind you, the longest true fast I had done so far was 60 hours a few weeks ago.  There was no real basis for my goal.  So, 94 hours would have been an amazing accomplishment.  I would have done great.  But was "great" what I was after?  Or was committing to what I started more important?  And why was it so important that I finish? Wasn't what I had already done good enough?  Why did I even set that goal?  What was I trying to prove?  That answer to all these.....I don't know.  

Here I am, three hours to the starting gun.  And I'm gonna crush this 5k.  But honestly, I don't care what my time is.  Ok...maybe a little.   I set my playlist last night for 27 minutes.  I'm slightly ambitious.

The moral of this story?  I don't know.  I just needed fodder for my blog.

Totally kidding.   I know the moral,  if you don't know why you are doing something, it's hard to keep going.  But maybe along the way, your "why" changes.  That's also ok.  Maybe you don't know why you are doing something, or you don't know if what you are doing will produce the desired results.  That's ok too.  You can still do things.  Like me getting up at 5:30 am and writing every day.  I don't really know for sure what I'm doing is doing anything.  It's more of a habit now.  And I'll never get good at writing if I don't practice.

But after 105 hours with that extremely minimal amount of food, I feel great.  I'll let you all know how the 5k went later this morning.

And now.  The obligatory middle class white american privilege guilt trip.  Spoken from the viewpoint of my inner self.  He's an necessary asshole sometimes. So Jon, you have all this food in your house.  You have plenty of money to buy food.  You don't have a real reason to not eat.  You are in great shape.  And you chose not to eat for 4.5 days to play a mind game with yourself?  You do realize people around the world don't get that choice.  They go for days without eating, because they can't.  They don't have access to food.  So good for you, you just didn't eat for fun while others don't eat and have to survive.  And now you feel like you have to write about it as some badge of honor.  You don't deserve your middle class white american life.  You did nothing to earn it.  It just showed up on your doorstep when you were born.  Don't EVER take for granted what you have.  Don't EVER think that all americans have it like you do.  You have a pretty resilient and adaptable body, you were given that.  You did nothing to deserve that.  But God damn it, thank you for not letting it go to waste.  Thank you for using it.  Thank you for using it to ultimately inspire others.  But don't ever forget it could all be taken away any minute.