More on fasting

I went to bed at midnight last night and quickly fell asleep. The two apples around 6pm last night was excellent in keeping me satisfied for 6 hours, although occasionally I thought I should feel hungry now, so I did feel a little hungry, but I believe my stomach was actually in a good shape. I woke up at 4am this morning, thinking it was too early, so I went back to sleep. I woke up at 5am again, and 10 minutes later I was totally awake, so I got up. Eating less does reduce the amount of sleep you need. I was feeling very hungry when I was about to get off the bed, but after brushing teeth and washing face, my stomach was comfortable. While in bathroom, I finally decided to break the fruit fasting by eating light today. The reason is that I have a lot of work to do and catch up and I need to make sure that I have enough energy to work efficiently. Also, I’m expecting my menstrual cycle in two days, so I don’t want to disturb my body too much. As long as I eat light, mostly raw food, and eat only the amount of food that I need, I’ll be in a good shape to enter my 10 day water fast 3 weeks later.

When I took off my cloths to weight myself before eating or drinking anything, I noticed that my stomach had flattened out. Haven’t had that for a long time. I weighted 53.3 kg, 2 kg lower than before the Thai curry. But according to my readings yesterday, I’ll be back to where I was after resuming my normal diet. Sure enough, right after I released solid waste, roughly an hour after drinking a lot of water and eating two apples as breakfast, my weight increased to 53.9 kg. I’m still curious to see to what extent I will recover though. Some side notes about the water and apples I just mentioned: 1) Water: starting from yesterday, I began to drink boiled (as opposed to just warmed) tap water to make sure my water is absolutely safe. Clean water is important in adjusting your body. 2) Apples: right after having the two apples, I might feel a little bit full, but my stomach soon felt great. I’m feeling great too, because the sun is out, I opened the window, and everything is alive!

Since I was talking about weight, I suddenly remembered that I need to mention that 20% of the reason why I decided not to fast before spring break is that I might win the bet with my roommate without any effort. Just think it interesting to see her doing the funny/awful thing as a result of losing the bet :) Another 80% of the reason is academic. I just checked that next next week I’ll have a project due and final exam, both for the hardest class I’m taking this quarter, so I won’t fast next weekend. The next next next week is final’s week, which I expect to be miserable considering I’m taking 6 classes this quarter, so I don’t want to fast next next weekend either. In conclusion, I won’t fast until the end of this quarter, which coincides with the end of the bet. The bet has good timing: it starts a month and a half before I went vegetarian, unknowingly helping me transition from a voracious carnivore diet to a vegetarian diet; the bet ends right when I want it to end so that I can take another major challenge in my life.

Yesterday while sitting at the lunch table (i.e. I didn’t have lunch) with my friends off campus, I preached a lot about being vegan (I haven’t preached for a long time). That was a more tolerant group than I expected, since 4 out of 5 of them seemed to enjoy listening to my sermon. But sometimes they just could not believe the numbers I listed and I didn’t have a PhD title to be credible enough to convince them. This is frustrating, as well as getting into an argument with friends. I think I’ll just stop preaching anything non-mainstream until I have acquired solid knowledge and extensive experience with what I would like to preach. If I’m not credible enough, even if people don’t disagree or argue with you, they will at most think what you advocate entertaining and won’t actually adopt them, so there is no use preaching and making your friend think you are a freak, although I do think I have always been a freak.

Starting from now I’ve decided to fast reading about fasting and other health related stuff. It’s too addictive and has stolen an enormous amount of time from my work this quarter. I would say since the weekend when I went vegetarian, I have spent almost all my weekends on studying health related stuff online. It has become my biggest hobby now. But it is also important that I do decent work in school, so it’s time for me to prioritize work over hobby, especially in the last three weeks of the quarter, when the time investment yields the highest return over the entire quarter. Most importantly, since I will need a lot of rest during my 10-day water fasting over the spring break, I will do almost nothing but reading about fasting and meditation, practicing meditation, plan my parents’ trip to the US, and plan my last quarter of undergraduate career, so I will have enough time indulging myself with my hobbies. If you don’t have the self-discipline to fast your hobby for just three weeks, why do you think you can successfully do a 10-day water fast?