My wife wants me to go on a 7-day water fast. I’m a pretty risk-averse guy and going that long without food doesn’t seem healthy so I did a little research on it. One of the suggestions I found was to build up to it, so I decided to try a 24 hour fast. At 5:30 pm Friday I ate just a couple bites of food and started my fast. Of course that’s no big deal ’cause it’s not like I’d be eating before breakfast any way… Woke up about 4:30 Saturday morning (that’s normal for me on weekends) feeling hungry so I drank a couple glasses of water. That helped quite a bit – I was kind of surprised. The main thing to deal with was boredom – I never realized how boring it is to not eat breakfast. I felt hungry all morning but no hunger pangs; I just drank a glass of water now and then. After lunch my wife wanted me to take a nap with her and I agreed, but once we got to bed I couldn’t sleep. My body felt tired but my mind was wide awake so I got up and drank some more water. I thought I was going to be really looking forward to dinner and breaking my fast, but the funny thing is when dinner time came I didn’t really feel all that hungry so I skipped it. Finally at about 8:00 I cooked a small pork chop because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I went to bed with an empty stomach.
So….. does a 24 hour fast really do anything for you? In my case, at least I learned a few things. First, my mind seemed a lot clearer while on the fast. Second, even though I felt fine (other than a little hungry) I was very irritable. Third, when I broke the fast it took much less food than normal to fill me up. Since portion control is so important to a successful diet that alone makes a 24 hour fast useful. In fact I’m kind of thinking of doing this every Friday. Next weekend though I’m going to shoot for a 3 day fast, starting on Thursday night and ending Sunday.