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?

Environmental reasons

I've always had a hard time trying to clearly explain to people the environmental reasons for being vegetarian, although I think sustainability is a vitally important reason to eat an all-plant diet. So I spent 3 hours this morning compiling some convincing hard numbers from online. Although I tried to use reliable sources and take into account different numbers from different sources, there might still be mistakes. I just hope that this list can give people a rough understanding of the environmental reasons to go vegan.

• 50% of water in the US
• 70% of grains in the US, and 40% of grains in the world
• 80% of land in the US, and 30% of land in the world
are used to raise animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops)

Loss occurred from grain to meat
• It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef. That's 94% more land and pesticides
• By feeding grains to livestock, we lose 90% of the protein, 96% of the calories, 99% of the carbohydrates, and 100% of the fiber
• If Americans would reduce meat consumption by just 10%, enough grain would be saved to feed the 60 million people who die of hunger each year

Water
• 2500 gallons produce 1 pound of meat, while 25 gallons produce 1 pound of wheat
• It takes 300 gallons of water daily to feed a vegan, 1200 gallons to feed a vegetarian, and 4200 gallons to feed a meat eater. Thus by becoming vegan, one person could save 3900 gallons of water each day for their entire life
• You save more water by not eating 1 pound of beef than by not showering for a whole year

Land
• One acre of land can produce 356 pounds of protein from soybeans, 265 pounds from rice, but only 45 from meat, and 20 from beef
• On an ongoing basis, it takes 3.25 acres of land to produce one meat eater’s food, but only 1/6 of an acre to produce a vegan’s food. So only 5% of the land currently devoted to food production would be used to produce food if we all ate an all-plant diet. That’s also 5% of fertilizers and pesticides

Other
• Global warming: the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all of the transportation industry combined
• Water pollution: livestock produces about 130 times the feces of the entire U.S. population, and since none is treated or recycled, they pollute our groundwater and river more than all other industrial sources combined
• Energy consumption: producing 1 calorie of protein for beef uses 54 calories of fossil fuel, while grains only 3 calories of fossil fuel
• Deforestation: Every 8 seconds an acre of trees in the US is cleared to produce cropland for meat
• Topsoil loss: 85% of topsoil loss in the US is the result of livestock production, with each pound of steak resulting in 35 pounds of eroded US topsoil
• Extinction of plant species: livestock grazing is the number one reason that plant species in the US go extinct