Robert Britt

            Author, Columnist

Fasting

      I have been reading about fasting for various purposes and I decided to fast. I started 'officially' yesterday, but in reality I haven't had anything to eat since dinner two days ago. Maybe some snacks on the couch while watching TV, but I don't think so. I am only drinking water and taking my normal multivitamins, etc, but nothing to eat. I had a few things in mind when I started this.

       First, I have heard that you have a sort of spiritual cleansing when you fast. I think I need that. I have a lot of stuff on my mind, some of which has ended up in a new section of this ever-growing site, True Tales of Childhood. I think that is going to grow quickly. Ideas are really flowing. Maybe some are good, maybe some not so good, but I am writing them all down. It might be a historic cleansing, sort of dusting the cobwebs off my skeletons and trying to disarm them.

        Getting back to the  cleansing. There is much processed junk and chemicals in everything we consume. I have been trying to get better food, closer to the grower, or 'all natural' but it is a tough row to hoe. (I've known a couple tough hoes in my time.) So I decided maybe the best way to clear things out is to purge the system, so to speak, by fasting. I had a roommate in college, actually many of them, but I was moving in with this guy, Dave. His old roomate had graduated so I was the replacement. Dave told me the other guy was Indian or Pakistani or something, and once or twice a year he would purge by drinking a pint of olive oil and spend the day on the throne. I'm not going there.

       Actually literally I am not going there. Maybe I have most of my insides empty now, but the trips to the bathroom are pretty much just "making water, Miss Daisy." Maybe I will get to my 'soul' or maybe I won't, but I want to try to reach some mental state that is different than my normal (strange) one.

       So far I have sort of almost a headache; which may or may not be tied in to the lack of food. I also really haven't been hungry yet. Mildly hungry but not gut wrenching hungry. That is my second goal. I have never been hungry, physically, in my life. I mean really hungry, where's some food, I'm willing to eat brussels sprouts hungry. I want to know that feeling, because I am tired of hearing "I'm starving, there's nothing to eat." Which only really means I am too lazy to actually have to cook or prepare something; why don't we have pop tarts? Where is the world going? I don't think any of my children (4 of them, aged 13 to almost 22) can cook. Sad.

The third reason, which is a really stupid one, is that I wonder how it will affect my weight? I was down a few pounds this morning. under 190 for the first time in a while. Fasting is not a healthy way to lose weight, it is a way to lose muscle and get more flabby, so please don't take my weight loss and say, "Hey, there's a good idea." It is not. You lose muscle and then you burn less calories because you have less muscle and it is a downward spiral. But if I am fasting I am going to see how it affects my weight and energy levels.

        As I already said, I seem to have a little less focus than normal, but I also think I have more ideas floating around as well.

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