No the above is no witty or tricky heading, and yes this topic is not a normal Hausfrau Róisín topic. But it is true; earlier this month, I fasted. For a week. Nada, nothing only water FOR ONE WHOLE WEEK.
No religious reason - I don´t ´suffer´for my religion at all well. I can live, I can pray, I can ´do´et al for my religion, but suffer for my religion, no I cannot. - If I were to ´suffer´ for my religion, I would feel so superior in my suffering that all the good religious vibe would be lost. So there would no good to be had for all that suffering. ´Hut ab´or ´hat off to you´ as you non-German speakers might say to those who can ´do the Derg´ http://www.loughderg.org/ with humility and piety... but I am not there with you... So no, it was not a religiously motivated fast.)
It was rather a health motivated fast.
And here is the no brainer, but I will say it anyway:
NO ONE WHO IS SICK TO BE BEGIN WITH, NO ONE WHO IS PREGNANT, AND NO ONE WHO IS ANOREXIC SHOULD FAST:
In addition fasting does not help with losing weight, you lose it and you gain it back as quick. A difference between fasting and anorexic non-eating is: with fasting you have weight on your body to draw on, in the anorexic state there is no resources to draw on, one is already consuming less calories than is needed to survive. If in doubt consult a doctor. A no brainer I know but there you are.
The idea came my way rather spontaneously in a slow sort of way, so to speak. Before this the longest I went without food was 19 hours of so. I love my food, I do not like being hungry; I ALWAYS have to hand food or the means to get food should I feel the first nuance of a hunger pang.
I had often previously heard of the healing powers of fasting; digesting food it seems takes up as much of 50% of the energy our body makes. When it can take a break from the business of digesting, the body can finally tend to other matters put on the long finger so to speak, like getting rid of excess gunge and other unwanted stuff that had been hanging about in one´s gut, blood and other organs for a lifetime.
In Germany it is not so uncommon to fast, be it for a day of for longer. In fact just about everyone with whom I for what ever reason mentioned that I was fasting, had also sometime in their life fasted, mainly for health reasons. It occurred to me it might be a good thing to consider, but really I did not see myself going through all the pain and pangs associated with going without food.
It seems the ´average body, what ever that is, has enough nutrients to go without food for the biblical 40 days. And people with a bit of bulk can go longer as they have more reserves.
So it was that just before holidays I was privy to a conversation between two people I know, one a Muslim who was fasting for Ramadan and the other my German language teacher who fasts it seems for 4 to 7 days about 3 times a year. Both were oohing an ahh-ing over the great health benefits of fasting; namely how more efficient and healthy the body is after it has had a change to get rid of all or at least a lot of the gunge. One of the many benefits from fasting is it seems it lowers cholesterol
- that is what peaked my interest, because I have a cholesterol ´situation´. That is what ultimately made me decide there and then that when I came back from my summer holidays I would go straight into fast mode before I even stocked up the fridge.
And so how did it go..............
Ah ha gentle reader, for that you will have to tune into the next blog posting of this exciting web blog....
