I have fasted of an on for a long time. Our bodies are meant for it. Primitive man didn't have a dependable food supply and so when food wasn't available he just didn't eat. It wasn't a big deal. If anything the lack of food made him more active and mentally alive. He needed FOOD and so his body and mind made adjustments. When he had a full belly he became more sedentary. early man also had a dietary cycle that was controlled by the seasons. Twice a year there was a bounty of easy to get carbohydrates as the berries in the spring and the nuts and grains in the fall became ripe.
The summer and especially the winter was a mostly meat diet. What this did was make us eat all that we could while it was available. Carbs make you hungry so you eat more and more. Meat has hormones in it that make changes in our basic metabolism. When you eat carbs it turns on your ability to make fat. When you eat meat it adds L-carnitine into your bloodstream that makes you easily able to break down the fat cells that you made when the fruits and grains were a big part of the diet.
When you stop feeding the system there are adaptations. Your system becomes more efficient to make the available fat reserves last as long as possible. Nonetheless, you become more active because you need to FIND more food. This goes on until your body declares an emergency at which point your energy levels drop.
The exact time table for these body changes from person to person depending in part on your ancestry. If your ancestors came from a place where famines or seasonal drought were common you are unlikely to have a fast metabolism or a tiny stomach with limited volume.
I know, "get to the point". have fasted for 14 days three times. That seems to be my cutoff time where my energy levels start to fall. I have fasted for a week to many times to count. For a couple of years, I ate one meal every other day and now I eat one meal a day. If I eat every day three times a day I gain weight. If I diet by reducing my intake my body fights this and my weight loss is so slow that I could go months with minimal loss. My ancestors were from Scotland and evidently starvation was common enough to make slow efficient metabolisms such a survival trait that it became a part of the people that were my ancestry.
Dieting and cookie-cutter diets don't work the same for everyone. We are all different in our ancestry. All of that aside, over the years I have found that as I fast there are a lot of good changes in me both physical, mental and emotional. You know how a lot of people are stress eaters? Well in a lot of cases this is a sort of cyclic thing and circular problem. If you train your body by eating when you are upset then eventually you will get upset to make you eat. It seems to be that eating much past what your body needs are sort of like an addiction. Like an addiction, it will take control of you and find ways to make you feed your addiction. When I fast, after the first three days, I experience a clearing of my mind and emotions. The hunger is gone and it seems as if my energy levels go up.
I love good food. I Like to eat but like most addictions, the end result isn't good. I LIKED smoking too and several members of my family liked drinking a lot. Even smoking done in moderation isn't very harmful but addictions are never happy with moderation. If you are an alcoholic cutting back doesn't seem to work for long. I tried cutting back on my smoking but in the end, the only way was to just stop it. The same seems to be true of people with drinking problems.
The big problem with food is that you can't just stop eating. What you can do to some extent is force your body to learn to like fasting and not eating all the time. The pleasure at the end of a fast is great but the fast can become attractive as well. This like anything with people needs to be done in moderation and intelligently. Each of us is different. As anyone that has suffered from anorexia can tell you, even that high from starvation can become addictive!
There ARE pleasures that come from changing your body chemistry and metabolism. Doing so though needs to be done intelligently and with careful oversight. The first time that I fasted for 14 days I didn't want to stop. It was a Doctor that explained to me that after this point my body would start eating itself and do damage that could be permanent. After that, I made 14 days my maximum limit. A week is sort of a less pleasurable experience because you have three days of your body resisting it for only 4 days of a higher state. I now am pretty settled into my once a day eating. I have actually thought about doing away with meals altogether and substitute snacks and see how that would go but I suspect that it would cause a weight gain.
Obesity is what you get when you evolve the need to eat as much as possible when food is easily available to carry you through the times when food was hard to find.,,and then live in a world where food is ALWAYS right there for you to eat. Fasting takes you into a more primitive state. It is or can be a pleasure...
