Foodless: 30 days of water fasting, with data

13 min readAug 23, 2020

Day one: May 7, 2020

The sun is soothing my white, winter skin — boxers only. For the last nine days I have been intermittent fasting (18 hours fasting per day — food taken between 0600 and 1200). Today I let it all go. I will fast until true hunger returns or all symptoms cease.

I start my first day with a salt flush. A tablespoon of salt and cup of warm water forces my body to poop madly —purging the salt by flushing the intestines with water — in order to reach a saline equilibrium.

**Pre fast, end fast, and 2 week post fast photos.** Interestingly, you cant tell much of a difference. hehe. i lost about 10kgs through the process. about 300g per day.

*Post fast note: My main reason for starting the fast was my diarrhea. I had been having on and off runny bowel movements since Nepal (2 months ago) — likely a number of parasites and/or bacterial bad-guys. Another symptom is my two “fat lumps” (lipomas) which have been with me for the last 3 years. Additionally, I am interested in the effects on my vision. My pre-fast prescription was -1.25,-1.25. After the fast I got tested again. The other measures are subjective, based on my personal feeling.

During the fast I filled a daily spread sheet with data on symptoms, behavior, bowel movements, and other points of interest. To see charts and numbers of note go to end of article. Below are the main symptoms I tracked:

Table 01: Subjective symptom rating for before, after, post one month, and two month

Day two:

I pass out in the kitchen.

My mind rides a foggy ferris-wheel and I come-to slumped on the floor. A weird buzzing floods my awareness. I have no energy at all. I’m lucky I didn’t hit my head! I’m not sure what I’ve signed up for. I am doing this fast unsupervised and with only a couple previous 4 and 5 day fasts, I am already underweight, and I am in rural India during the Coronavirus lock-down. Help is far. I take electrolytes realizing I’m dehydrated from the salt flush.

Day three:

My energy is a bit better. Up at 0700, walk to sunrise rock, listen to “Wrinkle in Time” for the rest of the day — mostly in bed. I’m skinny as can be from losing all my water weight, my mucus smells like stomach, and every time I stand the world spins. I regress to sensual pleasures — meditation seems impossible. I am no Jesus or Moses on Mt Sinai.

Supposedly my body is adapting to a ketogenic state. I feel ill.

Day four:

0800, wake-up, but laze in bed running down memories. They are all meaningless, contrived, but so stimulating. I DON’T NEED THEM! They serve nothing.

I feel super low and wonder how starved animals really fare? I guess they don’t have 30 years of poor diet, and the associated accumualted preservatives and toxins, as well as a number of maladies.

It’s been raining everyday. Thunder booms. The three meters to the bathroom feels like climbing Mt. Everest, I am so deprived of vitality.

Day five:

Another lazy day. Less vertigo but all physical activity is a royal tax. I ponder previous fasts, dietary choices, and food habits — what is this weird daily process deeply embedded in our mind and body? I am going through withdrawal.

Day six:

Food is a simple refuge — a temporary removal from the day’s other doings. If dealt with mindfully all content is inherently the same and should be treated as such — without attachment. As memories of food arise I ask myself: why? Why was that meal pleasant? The taste, the abundance, the company, the novelty, the peanut butter, the nutrition? The latter is rarely the object of pleasure.

As a child I cared little about food, except for hot-dogs and spaghetti with cheese. It helped to have a spiceless household where steamed vegetables were left out in a pot and the rice was brown — no additions. Curries, oil, and creativity were rare, giving me a bland outlook on cuisine other than noodles, and spice other than hot sauce.

As I ventured farther afield, variety touched my lips, and increasingly I did my own cooking. It became a practical tool — fuel for fun. With dumpster-diving in my 20’s, creativity was unleashed and my eyes opened wide to the industrial food system. Also gluttony and nutritional imbalance came to surface. When you find 200 perfectly good bagels in the dumpster, gluten reigns supreme. Later on, with my solo outdoor trips, where food was rationed and revered at the end of long days, I found food’s true purpose — survival.

Now with fasting I see it all — sustenance to seduction; saliva to habit; excess to abstinence — food is just poop backwards. To create a healthy relationship to food is the same as creating a healthy relationship to anything: I must be aware of my actions, know the why of my actions, and refrain from hurting others. In other words: eat when I am hungry, eat what I need to be healthy, while being mindful of the sensations present. Also, share my food, don’t steal it and don’t kill for it.

Simple. But to tear myself from habit requires bravery, diligence, motivation, and awareness. Yes, there is always some meal to miss, some taste to try, but if I end up with diarrhea, what’s the point?

Before each bite, ask: do I need this?

Day seven:

Super exhausted. Weird stomach feeling in morning — I poo out black sediment!

I feel dangerously weak and don’t leave room all day. I am a ghost in the mirror and most of my features are inverted. Something is happening — I submit to the process. I can’t imagine obligations outside laying-down, pooping, and drinking water.

To be in discomfort is to encourage reflection and discourage stagnation; to inspire change. Discomfort is the mother of all mentors.

Day eight:

My mind runs wild-willow combing my entire life of food-related memories. Getting up from bed and going to the toilet is like running a marathon. I fear I will pass out and injure myself. I see no salvation, no increase of energy. It is though I am terminally ill. My body must be processing a monster. My mouth is dry, then saturated and always stinky. My tongue has white fuzz coating it like mold. Laying down is OK but movement is monumental

Rest, young soul, rest.

Day nine:

As though a miracle, my energy increases. Especially once I am up and moving — blood flowing. I will survive. I feel like I have passed an important check point.

Day ten:

Yippee! Ten whole days without food, and I feel more energy. I need little sleep and need to find new directions for my mental alertness.

I try a salt flush in the morning to clear out any remains but gag at contact. I get some down.

Day eleven:

Again there is no energy in my system beyond bed. Last night the salt flush finally arrived and robbed me of black bile and intestinal mucus, but also of my energy reserve.

My left knee vibrates — involuntary muscle contractions which I take as signs of construction and healing. I almost fall asleep sitting on the toilet. My body is cleaning out 30 years of poor diet, air, and water. Purging my past. Making way for what?

*Post fast note: for the last year I have been reinjuring a meniscus tear — overdoing it prematurely in each respective recovery. I hoped this fasting might help the healing, and slow me down as not to reinjure it again.

Day twelve:

Falcons swoop, the stream trundles, and smells of curry waft from the Indian kitchen below. In previous days, all food related memories have been excavated, examined and salivated over. An inevitable symptom of my process I suppose. It doesn’t exactly serve my mental stability, but what does? It is interesting how many plants and animals I have stuffed down the ol’ rammer all in the name of progress — in the name of sustenance, social cues, habitual triggers, greed, distraction, emotional reaction, and “filling the hole”. Yes, many positive pancakes have been shared, but also tummy aches of indulgence incurred. It’s the lack of control that irks me.

Fasting is an intervention — a disruption to the cycle of ingestion, digestion, and excretion I hold so dear. A break from the bullshit that saturates my soul.

Day thirteen:

A slow day accompanied by boredom, monotony, and some worry. Last night I had a fairly profound lucid experience, but besides that, this whole odyssey seems a test of tolerance — nothing else. I doubt my body’s nutritional baseline. What am I surviving on? The border of two weeks approaches, is it safe to continue? I don’t know.

Day fourteen:

Two weeks! I celebrate by going for a walk and having a sip of kombucha vinegar. I need a pick-me-stomach given the above entry. I do my movement exercises for the first time since going foodless.

I have never breathed so clearly — both passages always clear. This is one amazing result.

Day fifteen: (May 21, 2020–384 hours with no food)

Busy day. Up at 0900. bed-yoga, sun-soak, laundry, poop! Then a big walk (maybe 1 km), I slowly pace the Indian village to the “junction” where I sit on a bench and watch the stomachs of passer-bys. The sun bakes my energy and sauntering home takes colossal effort. I nap on return.

I am in no condition to hunt mammoths, spear salmon, or forage mushrooms. I wonder about my fasting contemporaries. Maybe they were a bit more seasoned. They also didn’t have audio books, hot showers, and cozy beds. Different context.

Day sixteen:

Yesterday’s nap toss’s last night sleep to a wild mind. I loop and loop around lentil salads, nut butters, and a small farmer market business plan. What a story-teller I am. I don’t sleep till 0300. No napping! I must direct my new-found energy

Day seventeen

My cells are under construction

Day eighteen:

Up at 0600. Sun bath. Exercises. Meditation. Yellow mucus poop. My tongue is pink — not fuzzy — and my breath smells better. A good sign. Lipomas are still present. I drink nettle tea and will try that out. Now the interesting part of the fast — more energy, adapted keto-body, less toxins — let’s see what happens.

Day nineteen:

Days slip by in slow motion. One oozing in to the next. At times only half conscious, at others profoundly interconnected.

Day twenty:

Yahoo! 20 days of intestinal freedom — or something like that. The body is definitely working through a challenge.

No food, no fame, no family, no sleep, no sex, no stuff, no body, no mind! Just this transient expression. I harvest and hang stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) to dry for tea. Listen to “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K Le Guin. Now windy and thunder.

Day twenty one:

I feel 95 years old. Every upright endeavor is a risk and calculated effort; my body is increasingly uninhabited; my mind — a fragile glass sphere floating between the earth and the heavens. Perspective and clarity sharpen at times, like bird songs in the morning air, but fall to a dull but peaceful silence more often than not. Sleep seems useless — a relic of previous habits more than present need. I am running on reserves and solar technology. The water entering my throat slides through, lubricating gears that would otherwise rust.

Stars, ladybugs, and leaves take on new meaning — brothers and sisters of impermanence and process.

My eyes glaze, half disguised by the lids. The man in the mirror is a curious phantom of fate and old resolutions. “I will not eat,” I proclaimed, “I will purify my body and heal my ailments, I will swallow the golden pill. I will be Moses on the mount and come down as a bed fellow of god! I will break the habits that shackle my struggle with the mundane!” Blah, blah bla.s. freaghj,.mklds,am,,,,,,,,,,,fdsa..

Yes. There is a middle path, but a voyage to the brink allows a clear view of the topography.

Day twenty two:

It is only through intervention that perspective and insight can arise and take deep root. Comfort breeds conformity, convention, and stagnancy. A clever intervention deliberately removes ease, denies habits, and demands presence of mind. It requires letting go — relinquishing feelings of ownership towards self, thoughts, preferences, and patterns. It is not the holiday, weekend, or visit to church that offers salvation from the mundane, but interruption of the routine. It does not matter if you fast 30 days, or are diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the curriculum is the same: Impermanence 101, Philosophy of the mind 200, Human Behavior and Habit Patterns, Am I an algorithm for 1500, Death and It’s Friends, What the Hell is All This 201, Applied Morality… The list goes on.

Family, fame, food, fortune, sleep, sex, status, body, and death are big habit-catchers. What effective experiments can we create? Solitude, charity, chastity, alarm clocks, meditation, and sleeping in graveyards could help, but the design has to cater appropriately to the capacity and path of the motivated individual. To stay committed to changing is key and requires novelty, vows, schedules, companions, teachers, risk, applied pressure, faith, aim, time, space, and acceptance, or whatever helps. But take it easy, OK.

Day twenty three:

Slow-motion day. See one slug. Monsoon season is coming.

Day twenty four:

Drinking more water allows more energy. In retrospect I have been chronically dehydrated — likely this is why I have been so low.

Day twenty five:

I binge on the company of my overseas lovers. I call family and friends trying to arrange old faces in my mind to present voices.

Twenty six:

Life is embedded processes paired with random explosions. Surprises in simple-looking shells.

Day twenty seven:

My heart is pounding and I gasp for air; the dream leaks into my midnight eyes — a dream of being unable to breath while a dark figure sneaks into my room.

Day twenty eight:

The bed is too sacred to sacrifice, I get up late. The mountains penetrate me through the windows. I laze in the sun watching brown bodies shepherd cows and goats into feeding grounds. It seems all beings are in one constant line-up for the buffet.

My throat has an uncomfortable lump when I swallow — this is strange and I figure I should start eating again.

Twenty nine:

Restless night. No calming of the mind possible. No enlightenment. Dreams of a banquet with unlimited sweets.

Thirty:

It is over. I drink chickpea and nettle broth. No ceremony. No applause. No party.

My taste buds absorb every detail of the soup. Energy surges through me. The simple flavors are heavenly and unparalleled.

Conclusions:

Food is this inevitable thing — a substance, a habit-sequence, an idea. In most cases eating is just something to do — a necessity we overcompensate for. The cultural and pleasure aspect being the justification. Fasting either for health, politics, religion, curiosity, or instinct (fevers for example) are effective at triggering reflection, and a window to reprogram habits.

Interventions are all around us, and work in both directions. The habits we adopt matter and create the lifestyles that define us, and feedback into the societies in which we live. Interventions can be voluntary or imposed. Imposed interventions happen everyday — we miss the bus, the power goes out, a pandemic arises, we get sick —to be conscious of how we react is key. We can choose to smile or frown.

Life never goes as planned, but this can be prepared for. Voluntary interventions — fasting, silence, and meditation — are relatively safe experiments to better prepare for death, sickness, and change.

Re-feeding days:

Day three:

I get up easily with little fog in my eyes — as a baby might. One of the most pleasant days of my life — a wave of clarity; and acceptance; and simplicity; and ease. Sun and thunder.

Day four:

Expansive awareness in my morning sitting.

Day five:

Starting to eat solids, and gain back my stomach capacity (stomach shrank over fast). It’s not what you eat as much as how you eat and what is already inside.

Two weeks after (June 22, 2020)

My foodless crusade is over and I am eating relatively normal. I feel calm, content, and still under construction. Still swimming in the same current as before, but with a sliver more clarity and perspective.

Today I went for a big hike to the upper waterfall with Ian. Green shake in the morning, trail mix on the trail, fiddlehead omelette for lunch with kimchi, peanut butter and milk for dinner (don’t ask).

July 14th, 2020:

Eating lots again. India is still under lock-down and key so I start doing illustration work and adopting projects (including a stray dog).

Time has passed pleasantly since the fast and I wonder of its long term effect. My breathing is still clear without mucus. For so long I lived under stuffy conditions. This alone is of great benefit. My knee is healing and I am doing 2–3 hours of physio to regain strength. I lost a lot of muscle in my legs during the fast.

My eyes have changed in their prescription for the better. I read stories of people reverting to perfect vision under long fasts. I wonder if Ikept going if this would have occurred.

My diarrhea is gone and digestion seems as normal as can be given the Indian and Tibetan cuisine consumed.

August 5th, 2020:

Tomorrow I turn 30 years old. 1/3rd done the ol’ life — likely more. It’s raining and windy — monsoon has hit. I have soup (chickpea, mung, veg). Two hour yoga in morning.

To be honest, the 30-day fast was no miracle cure, but it helped. A small step in some nameless right direction. The direction of better health, or perhaps better acceptance of existing health. I will never be “back to normal”, how can there be normal when everything is constantly changing?

Charts: