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

Do you think you’re a cool, inspirational person, bursting with so many crazy ideas that you think your head might explode and ruin the fancy carpet?
If not, then you’re living the wrong life. You’re living uncle Joe’s life.

Joe’s a moron. Joe is the guy living in neutral. He’s not really awake. He has this glazed look in his eyes and never likes a new idea unless he can crap on it first. He’s also the guy who didn’t read my last article on being adventurous.

He’s not really much fun, unless you remove even more of his braincells with 80% stroh rum, 80 grams of coke, or maybe just a gold brick to the head.
Joe goes to work every day to sell his 8 hours a day only because he has to pay the bills.
He’d really just prefer to decompose at home on the couch watching Jerry Springer with a beer.
He’s in a rut. It’s his own little pointless world, and he likes it. Everyone knows him there.

So what am I blathering on about?
I’m telling you to remove the glazing on your peepers. Think of the stuff that you REALLY think is cool, learn about it, try it out and then learn from the experience. Like an excited kid with a new idea - like an ant farm full of mutant termites.

Remote control helicopters? Camping? Writing? Ninjas? Dreams? Sleep? Aquaponics? … anything really…Have fun with your ideas. Not because you *must*. Not because of *fear*. Not because of the tasty carrot at the end. But just because it’ll be really cool and you’ll find out a lot of stuff in the process. Especially the scary things - they’re more memorable. Notice I keep saying *learning*. I know your school teacher terrorized you and you still wet the bed about it, but learning can actually be fun, if it has a *purpose*. At the time, you weren’t interested in learning calculus, because it had all the usefulness of a mouldy dog bone. Learn because the subject is important to you, not because someone slapped you with the encyclopedia.

But there’s some more pitfalls that slap Joe into place when he has a bright spark idea:

1 - Prepare yourself

Now kids, I’m not telling you to be a maniac and drive off a mountain because it’ll ‘be educational’ (it will be, but not for long)
Learn that gravity kills, and make a bungee rope for the bike first. (and learn about bungee ropes while you’re about it)
Some of these things can really hurt if you’re a moron about it. Duh.

If you’re the stubborn sort that won’t listen to good advice, then you’d better update your will. If someone else has struggled with it, then their advice could be worth more than Pamela Anderson’s tits. Both of them. Why put yourself through pain that you could avoid ? Not all pain is good. Boiling fudge taught me that. This info can usually be found in communities - maybe an internet forum. Use google. Google is your friend (until you smuggle dope, anyway) You might make some buddies there who can help you a lot. So learn about your interests first. Be your own expert on it. It will also inspire you more.

2 - Failure is your friend

Even with some preparation, you’ll probably balls up your first attempts. This is a good thing. As long as you LEARN from it.

Did you think that Thomas Edison got the lightbulb right the first time?
He had over a thousand patents … what a loser!

But failure is good, without failure we’d never really learn anything. They teach you what works and what doesn’t. And often the bugger-ups make for good stories with your buddies. Let me slap you with an example: I know people who tried to have a lucid dream for years, and got nothing. But when I ask them what they learned, all they can say is ‘It didn’t work’ or ‘Duh’ or ‘Smell my finger’ Boy did they miss the point. Learn from your mistakes, dammit. What did you feel? What might have worked? What exactly caused it to go wrong?

2 - Be a trailblazer

Good principles will serve you better than anal rules and carrot-up-arse procedures.
Besides, they blow. There’s nothing fun or upbuilding about sticking to a procedure like an brainwashed cult slave.
Your dreams won’t necessarily have a pretty path to follow so don’t expect a recipe for everything.

Use what you know, and come up with your own methods. Have fun trying them. (kama sutra anyone?)

3 - See the bigger picture

A lot of the good stuff in life takes patience and persistence though.
When having to shovel the shit, you need to look forward to riding the horse that made it.

Seeing the bigger dream helps one deal with the less interesting patches in between.

4 - Dream the impossible

It’s hard to dream about owning a nature reserve when you’re being chased by lions.
You need to take some time every day to remind yourself of your dreams, and imagine how cool they’ll be.
It keeps you focussed and excited about it.

Find some cool pics of your interest, put them up in spots you can see them. And drool over them now and again.

5 - Deal with the fear

If you’re doubtful and scared - surprise! Most of us are. And it’s not worth letting it ruining your life. Accept the doubts and fears and do it anyway. Read here on learning to be adventurous: (article #2)Personally, the only fear I have is getting to the end of this life, and regretting my lack of worthwhile experiences. Like an old, pampered rottweiler with false teeth, a leg humping habit and a spent life with nothing to show for it.

Summary:

Become a person who can learn for themselves, and experiment with excitement and without fear.
We’re animals that love to grow and change. Embrace it. Become a learner.

• Don’t let everyone around you to tell you what to do - figure it out for yourself.
• Let yourself dream the impossible. It’s inspiring
• See the bigger picture, and focus on that when you have to do something not so fun
• Accept failure as just another thing to show you how to improve.
• Accept your fear, and do it anyway

Real steps to do this?

• - Write down all the interests or hobbies you’ve had before or have now. Anything, even sex counts, if that’s your life’s interest.
• Find a community of people that like the same stuff that you do. Speak to people that can help you, or can get help from you. Often the student teaches the teacher too.
• Read something every day on a subject that interests you. Consider what was written. Is it wrong? Right? Why? Question it, and consider it in context of your own life and others.
• Learning isn’t fun if you can’t use it - Actually use your knowledge to *do* something
• Talk to strangers, get their opinions on stuff. Ask yourself why you disagree or agree with them.
• When you read or talk about the stuff you’re interested in, question your own statements and thoughts. Question preconceived notions. Is what you’re saying true?

Kids… Love them or drown them, they can teach us so many lessons. Smartarses.
When you were a kid, you didn’t try things out of fear and doubt. If given a new lightsabre - you’d come alive excitement.

It all comes down to appreciating the excitement of the experience and seeing what you can learn from it, for the pure bloody hell of it., like the duracell bunny with an energy drink and a carrot cake recipe.

Motivation articles blabber on about all sorts of bull, involving fancy latin words, french origins and terms like ‘Theologus Autodidactus’.
And this article will boil it all down for you and save you from the mind raping and credit card pages.

It all comes down to doing things for the satisfaction of the adventure and what you *learn* from it.
Not because you *must*. Not because of *fear*. Not because of the shiny thing at the end.
But because you love the excitement and experience of *learning* something cool about yourself or the world around you.
Think of it as something crazy you can tell your friends.

And if you’re anything like me, your dear mamma was wrong. Very wrong.
Your mamma, bless her, taught you to be a pitiful and cynical coward.
And being a good kid, like me, you probably became one. Eventually anyway.

“Don’t touch that! Don’t go there! I’ll beat you into next week!”
It took a long time before my mum loosened up and trusted me.
That was truly big of her. Lots of parents never wise up. Thanks mom. *wave*

And why? Because they know that some kids have a habit of firing paintballs down their pieholes. And they’re absolutely petrified that you’re one of those morons.

We’re taught to amass wealth and fame, and make our mamma’s heart fill with pride.
So we work like slaves to earn our first car, our first house, our (first?) family, because we *must*. We’re told to.
And when we get there, we feel we like have so much to lose. So much effort that could all be for nothing.

And that’s how some inner demons creep in, like red pitchfork wielding psychopaths.

We learn to comfort ourselves to bed each night after a hard working day, and not face the things we really want.We learn to mindfork ourselves into thinking that we’re just protecting ourselves, thinking of our security.News flash: security is an illusion. Bosses can fire you, lovers can leave you, your possessions can be stolen. You need to grow the balls to deal with living life to the full, ignoring the fear and over-emphasis on security that we’re brainwashed into today. Most people live in neutral, stagnating. They take life as it comes, and take little to no action to paddle their way to the section of the beach with all hotties. In a manner of speaking of course.

And then they mull over how they just can’t do all the cool stuff. And claim to be doing it ‘one day’.
That’s bull. It’s all an excuse. You’re not too old. You’re not too poor. You’re not too stupid.

Either you’re working towards something you find exciting, or you aren’t. There’s no grey areas here.
You’re either taking steps RIGHT NOW, or you aren’t.
Accept your fears. And do it anyway. Every day can be exciting (and scary), with another step in the right direction.

Your fears and doubts should NEVER prevent you from living the way you were meant to - free and excited about life.
Priorities people. Priorities. Get with it.

Ask yourself:
Does publicly speaking to 1000 people make me freeze up like a wide-eyed deer in headlights?
Does undressing in the gym cloakroom make me feel like a gnome in winter?
Have I really considered bungee jumping just for the pure hell of it?
Do I have unreasonable phobias or nightmares? Snakes? Spiders? Leprechauns? Why?

Summary & Tricks:
Fear. Doubt and way too much caution. It’s BAD ™ for you.
If your life isn’t interesting and inspiring, you’re doing something wrong.
Stop making excuses,recognise your doubts and fears, dismiss them, and learn about and do things you want simply because it sounds fun and exciting. And because you’ll find out something new out yourself or the world.

What to do:

• Do one little thing every day that scares the living hell out of you. Deal with your fears. This builds up your capacity for adventure, because a fun and happy life is not always the comfortable one. Each thing you do builds you up for the next one.
• Do one thing a day that is a step towards those seemingly impossible goals. The speed is far less important than the fact that you’re moving.
• Every day, raise your awareness of things around you - Stop living in neutral and take notice of people around you.
• Speak to a total stranger each day. It breaks the social fears. And after all, a good way to find the babe or hunk of your dreams is to walk up to them and say ‘howzit?’

Before I can shove your head under the grimy waters of knowledge, we’re going to have to exorcise those demons in your head.
There’s no point educating you if those nasty little blighters are holding you back from learning.

So I’m going to have to drag you through the negativity of your own mind, and clean up behind you. The efforts I go to, really. *sigh*. As promised, this will be really short and sweet. Like your mamma.

We’re going to start with that whining tendency you might have - “My life sucks”, “Nobody Loves Me”, “I broke a nail”

Maybe you had/have a bad childhood? Shame. Poor you. Now stop cowering in that piss smelling corner and learn how to be happy.
Everyone feels down sometimes, but I don’t care who it is - everyone can find something to be grateful and happy about when they really put some neurons into it.

As tragic as some people’s lives are, there’s always someone to love or something to appreciate.So many people today think that happiness is bought with money. Or fame. Or wealth. Or swinging. The truth is that happiness is a choice. It’s largely about actually *wanting* the good things and good potential that you *already* have. Whining endlessly on about the bad stuff has this freaky, supernatural voodoo effect (I’m not kidding) of attracting even more of the horrible stuff your way.So when you notice yourself being a tired, whiney pessimist, counter it with a reminder of the good stuff in your life.

Appreciation, people, is key. No negative whiners around here please. Whiners this way -> [exit]

Summary & Tricks:

Change your outlook from that angsty, pessimistic bull you dwell on and consider the good things in life.
If you need to work on this, there are some tricks you can use.
They might sound suspiciously like Oprah wrote it, but they really work. Guaranteed.

• Write a ‘gratitude’ list and spend some time each day reading over it to beat it into your mind.
• Stop hanging around with people that make you feel down. Or better yet, teach them to also be grateful and happy about themselves.
• Each time you think or talk about something bad in your life, counter it with something you love about your life. Dwelling on the negative is bad. Real bad.
• If you really can’t get out of your negative habits - visit an elderly home, nursing home or something along those lines. Help them out and get to know them. This leaves you thinking differently about your own view on life.

Sound stupid? Try it first and stop whining, dammit.