Real-life scenario:

You’ve been living a healthy life, exercising, no smoking, drinking, dangerous sex, etc. You take your vitamins. Then one day, you go to a doctor for a minor complaint, he checks your blood pressure and faints. Recovering, he rants on about expecting you to faint in his office from hypertension. He commands you to come back a few times, and threatens you with chronic medication.

What do you do? Accept his diagnosis right off the bat? Well I’m glad I didn’t.

After some digging, I figured out that it’s all the crap that people bake into our pies. It piles up and give us trouble. Then the doctor wants to treat the symptoms with dangerous meds, and blissfully ignore the problem. Rule of thumb: Never take a pill that gives you more side effects than you have symptoms. That’s like getting a credit card to pay a clothing account - as dumb as a tree stump. But at least you won’t die from hypertension …

Hey, sorry if you fell for it, but you were a chump. The good news: contrary to common belief, there is a way to reverse and stop taking those pills

In my case, I was lucky to find this: Truth about high blood pressure

That golden little page details a natural way to reverse this endless cycle of feeling like a reused government-issue condom. And this method is … roll the drums… fasting. Mainly water fasting, but I’ll punt the others later in the article. Hey, I never said it was that easy. But you’ll feel great about it in the end I’ve now water fasted twice, and it’s saved me from a box of stupid pills.

So what is fasting?

Fasting is definitely not a new idea. In nature, when an animal doesn’t feel well, they simply don’t eat for a short time. Same thing applies to us. It’s a means to let the body heal - stop overloading it with KFC and give it a break.

It’s mentioned in most of the religious books (Bible Old and New Testament, the Qur’an, the Mahabharata, and the Upanishads), so a lot of religions practice fasting in one way or another. Some for more sane reasons than others, but I won’t delve into religion just yet.

Why would you torture yourself?

Because I’d prefer to confront my health problems, and not rely on a doctor with blinkers. And the health benefits go way beyond blood pressure. It’s like friggin’ snake oil, only it works!

• High or low blood pressure (noticed myself)
• Low energy (noticed myself)
• Bad skin (noticed myself)
• Unhealthy cardiovascular system (noticed myself)
• Overload of anxiety and tension (noticed myself)
• Bad digestion (noticed myself)
• Screwy bowel movements (noticed myself)
• Obesity (noticed myself)
• Buildup of toxins (noticed myself)
• Keratosis Pilaris (noticed myself)
• Breaking an addiction - smoking, cocaine, etc. Much easier on a fast apparently.
• Asthma
• Arthritis
• Certain types of diabetes – speak to your doc first
• Gross teeth and gums
• Can’t get good sleep
• Aches and pains in muscles and joints
• Regular headaches
• Chronic degenerative health conditions, including autoimmune disorders
• Lupus

Again, this idea is as new as prostitution - it’s been done for thousands of years with a lot of feedback and satisfied customers. Many doctors vouch for it, and I can too after having lightly flayed myself on it twice now.

What does it involve?

Water fasting involves … wait for it … ingesting only water. Never fast unless it involves a lot of liquids. As they say, lubrication, lubrication, lubrication.

Of course, water fasting is the purest and most difficult version of it, and also not entirely safe for certain people (for example, those with hypoglycemia or diabetes). It is the fastest and most effective though. And it doesn’t take rocket science to do it.

And of course, it’s not a matter of jumping in and doing a 60 minute fast, like a twat. Work your way up - start with a few days, then try a few more next time.

 

There are also alternatives, like juice fasting or master cleansing, which are easier on blood sugar levels. The concept with them is that you get just enough nutrition to keep everything slowly idling. Or purring. Or whatever it is your body does.

Juice fasting is … wait for it… fasting on only juice (and water). What type of juice? Any veggies or fruit is fine. Try to get organic stuff, not the genetic crap they sell you nowadays.

Master cleansing (or lemonade diet) involves water, lemon juice and maple syrup. It’s like a hardcore version of a juice fast, without swinging all the way to water. As always, you get the hardened fans of one or the other technique. I personally haven’t tried this yet, but intend to. Like water fasting - not for the squeamish.

Check out the links at the end for more on the other types of fasting.

How does it work?

The fasting is not a cure itself – it just lets your body take a breather from worrying about digestion and lets it concentrate on cleaning out rubbish in your body. This way your body gets a chance to heal in places where it doesn’t usually get the chance because you’re clogging it with KFC.And obviously weight loss is a side effect because your body has to use what it already has packed on.

Some of the health conditions have had clinical trials with water fasting, with great success – e.g. for high blood pressure problems see the Truth about high blood pressure

What can I expect while doing it?

The first three days are the big physiological rollercoaster, so for your first time, don’t just jump into it. Spend a day or two eating only fruit, especially if you intend to do a long fast.

First day: Your body is still using up left-over glucose (raw sugar energy) reserves in your liver (stored as glycogen). You might have a few hunger pangs – quench them with water. You’re going to start to notice how ritualistic your eating habits are.

Second day: (or earlier), your glycogen reserves are depleted and your body starts to panic a little, looking for alternatives. This is gonna be the hardest day of the lot

Over the next day and a half, your body will switch over to pure fat burning mode – aka ketosis. But in this time, your body is going to give you a tough ride, because it hasn’t properly finished the switchover yet. So you’re going to feel tired, grumpy and hungry. Drink a lot of water.

Third day: your body will finish the switchover to ketone production (ketosis) and is happily generating glycogen again from your fat reserves. You shouldn’t feel as tired by the end of the day, but you aren’t going to want to run any marathons either. Your body is going to keep idling conserve energy. I got a lot of phlegm as well.

The rest of the days are more of the same – your body is eating fat reserves and cleaning out the pipes. You’ll feel a bit tired, so no street fighting or olympic sex records. If this is your first water fast, this will be more severe than if you’ve done it before.

Another thing to keep in mind – on both my fasts on about the 4^th day, I had a case of the shits. Runny, yellow … okay, you don’t wanna know. Let’s just say I sharted. This might be specific to me though, because I did eat some butterfish over the years that had a similar ‘feature’ (like a water feature)

How much weight will I lose?

In my case, I’ve done 2 water fasts and lost 2 pounds a day for the first 5 days, and 1 pound a day after that. Roughly 10% of that is in muscle, the rest is fat. In total, I’ve lost 28 pounds in 2 water fasts totaling 15 days. My sanity (what I had of it) stayed more or less intact.

Unfortunately, it’s not always from the flabby spots you want it to be – in my case I still have a small beer tank in the front. This also depends on your metabolism, how much flab you have to lose, how long you fast for, what type of fast and how many marathons you run. In the case of juice fasting or master cleansing, it’s a pure math thing – it depends on how much energy you’re taking in and how much you’re using.

Who should get medical advice or supervision?

A minority of people need to take it easy and watch for complications. You guys are :

• Diabetic or hypoglycemic
• Anorexic or bulemic
• Pregnant or nursing (thank goodness I wasn’t)
• Suffering from severe anemia (or enjoying it even)
• Metabolism disorders, e.g. ketone production problems
• Exposed to lethal poisons that store in fat cells (e.g. DDT)

… then rather play it safe and get a doc’s advice first I’d also suggest a juice fast rather than water fast, if you are in any doubt. I wouldn’t want any corpses sending me complaints (please note suitable disclaimer at the end of my article)

How long can I fast?

This is going to depend on how much padding you have to burn, and your own situation. For most people, it’s pretty safe to do a 4 or 5 day fast without a doc around. If you go for longer or have metabolism, pregnancy or blood sugar problems, it really should be with some supervision and advice from a doc. Preferably a good doc, unlike mine.

Or, if you’re like me (insane and willing to take a personal risk), you can go ahead at your own risk. Personally, I did a 5 day fast, recovered for a week and then did a 10 day fast, losing a total of 14kg (about 28 pounds).

MacD’s is gonna taste so good afterwards!

Hold up, sparky. How you come off of the fast is actually even more important than the fast itself. This is more important than anything else. Your shoe/porn collection included (gender targeted remark) You definitely can’t grab a big mac and chips, followed by some ice cream. Hell, you can’t even expect a single chip.

Your body is going to be like a newborn. No, I don’t mean gooey, red and wrinkled, I mean that it’s going to overreact to food. As far as your body is concerned, you’ve just gone through a severe famine, and need to pack on the fat quickly to ready itself for the next famine. You’ll need to teach it how to deal with food again. It’s in a different mode.

If that doesn’t get through to you how important this is, how about this: Of the 28 pounds I lost, I gained about 6 of them back in a matter of 3 days, even though I was trying to be careful.

So how do I break a fast?

Carefully. You’re going to be tempted to rush this. Be very, very careful. Unless you have nerves of steel, you’re probably going to cheat, and you’re going to learn how bad an idea it was the next day. This is why people have supervised re-feeding programs.

I suggest something like this:

Day 1 of finishing fast: A handful of unsalted, unbuttered popcorn. No more than a handful. This helps clean out any rubbish left in your system. For the rest of the day, drink a little fruit juice with your water (skip this step if you’re juice fasting and move to day 2).

Day 2 of finishing fast: Eat fruit and veggies. No meat. No starch. Just fruit and veg. And no starchy veg. And of course, keep drinking lots of water. Avo’s are good, because of the good fats it contains. And we’re talking only about 3 pieces of fruit or veg.

Day 3 of finishing fast: Fruit, veg and start and some lean fish and chicken. Start doing some light cardio exercise.

Day 4 of finishing fast: Introduce some health breads, crackers and some yoghurt perhaps.

From there onwards, steadily introduce new things, starting with things that are obviously healthy. And start ramping up your exercise routine. You’re going to be very surprised at how little food you actually needs. Enjoy re-learning what your body can handle

Questions & Answers

But it’s bad for you to lose weight so fast!

A: I’ve had a lot of people force this down my throat, but when I ask them what exactly is ‘bad’ about it, they look like I pulled their plug. The best argument I’ve heard is that I’ll ‘pick it all up again’ afterwards. Except that isn’t true, if you’re careful.

 

Disclaimer:

I’m not medically trained. If you want official medical advice, look for some stodgy doc somewhere else. I don’t take responsibility for any of your actions. Do your own damn homework first and don’t try to blame me for your bugger-ups.

Links:

- The truth about high blood pressure = http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/hbp.htm

- Therapeutic Fasting = http://www.diagnose-me.com/treat/T72787.html

- JuiceFasting.org = http://www.juicefasting.org/

- FitnessThroughFasting on Juice Fasting = http://www.fitnessthroughfasting.com/juicefasting.html

- FitnessThroughFasting on Water Fasting = http://www.fitnessthroughfasting.com/waterfasting.html

- FitnessThroughFasting on Master Cleanse = http://www.fitnessthroughfasting.com/master-cleanse-diet.html