I had an obligation earlier tonight that would have conflicted with the fast, so I’m going to participate 2 days delayed I’ll respond to this post with a brief description of how it went.
Regarding the length of the fast: I’ll also be doing a 36 hour fast because it seems long enough to be challenging and short enough to be doable. The only other time frame I would consider trying is a 24 hour fast, but then I wouldn’t have the experience of going to bed hungry, which feels somewhat central to the event.
I was surprised to feel my stomach rumbling at 11:00, a mere hour after starting the fast. I’m almost certain it was psychosomatic, since I’d had a normal sized dinner and then had an apple and a cookie around 9:30 to send things off. The rumbling continued as I went to bed, and I was a bit worried about tomorrow. I skip breakfast pretty often, so it wasn’t until around 12:00 that I started getting hungry. Hunger is unpleasant for everyone, but I don’t think I do very well with it even compared to the norm. I’ll get lightheaded, headaches, and nauseous (which feels strange when attached to hunger). The grumbling got a bit worse, and I started to feel lightheaded. Around 2:00, to hopefully stave off a headache, I had some water and a grain of salt for the electrolytes (does that do anything? IDK, but I didn’t get a headache all day which I’m grateful for). Later in the evening, someone I was having a call with took off for dinner, and I felt a bit of a lull. Normally I would fill that lull with a meal, it’s what the pace of the day usually has for me. Instead I had some tea and went for a walk.
Walking kept my mind off my rumbling stomach, which seemed quite annoyed at me for skipping two consecutive meals. Since it was dinner time, the neighborhood was filled with wonderful smells. Someone was making a fragrant indian curry, and the aroma left a far more vivid image in my mind than it usually would. I was surprised to not be annoyed or jealous of the idea that other people would be enjoying that meal instead of me. I expect that if I were truly starving, if the fast did not have a definite and proximate end, that I would have been less cheerful about others enjoying something delicious that I wanted in that moment.
I don’t usually have much self control with food in my house, instead relegating all self control to the grocery store. If there is junk food in the panty, I will absolutely snack on it. If there are drinks in the fridge, I will imbibe. For vavilov day, however, I actually found the willpower component quite easy. I was hungry, and the hunger was unpleasant, but I never really felt much temptation to cheat and eat something. I do remember marveling at how delicious the apples on the counter looked when I was in the kitchen making tea, but back in my room they were well out of mind. Instead of self control, the main difficulty I found with fasting was a lack of focus. I would be following an idea, and it would vanish into the aether, and I would have to think to myself what it was I was trying to think about.
I found falling asleep hungry easier than I thought it would be as well, with the hunger lingering in the background but staying out of focus as I drifted off. I awoke hungry, which was unusual for me, and I kept a much closer eye on the time than I usually do in the morning, and was happy to enjoy a rather large breakfast for me.
Overall, I’m glad I participated in the day of observation (holiday? exercise?). It got me to think about my relationship to food in ways that I usually ignore. I can still remember, a week later, the increased vividness that hunger gave to food that I saw and imagined. I think the length of the fast was appropriate for me at my experience level, although I might try a longer one in the future. I still like that the fast breaks with breakfast, so the next cutoff would be 60 hours, which seems like a long time but doable.
Thanks again for providing initiative behind this day, I was glad to be able to participate.
I had an obligation earlier tonight that would have conflicted with the fast, so I’m going to participate 2 days delayed I’ll respond to this post with a brief description of how it went.
Regarding the length of the fast: I’ll also be doing a 36 hour fast because it seems long enough to be challenging and short enough to be doable. The only other time frame I would consider trying is a 24 hour fast, but then I wouldn’t have the experience of going to bed hungry, which feels somewhat central to the event.
I do enjoy that the fast breaks with breakfast.
I was surprised to feel my stomach rumbling at 11:00, a mere hour after starting the fast. I’m almost certain it was psychosomatic, since I’d had a normal sized dinner and then had an apple and a cookie around 9:30 to send things off. The rumbling continued as I went to bed, and I was a bit worried about tomorrow. I skip breakfast pretty often, so it wasn’t until around 12:00 that I started getting hungry. Hunger is unpleasant for everyone, but I don’t think I do very well with it even compared to the norm. I’ll get lightheaded, headaches, and nauseous (which feels strange when attached to hunger). The grumbling got a bit worse, and I started to feel lightheaded. Around 2:00, to hopefully stave off a headache, I had some water and a grain of salt for the electrolytes (does that do anything? IDK, but I didn’t get a headache all day which I’m grateful for). Later in the evening, someone I was having a call with took off for dinner, and I felt a bit of a lull. Normally I would fill that lull with a meal, it’s what the pace of the day usually has for me. Instead I had some tea and went for a walk.
Walking kept my mind off my rumbling stomach, which seemed quite annoyed at me for skipping two consecutive meals. Since it was dinner time, the neighborhood was filled with wonderful smells. Someone was making a fragrant indian curry, and the aroma left a far more vivid image in my mind than it usually would. I was surprised to not be annoyed or jealous of the idea that other people would be enjoying that meal instead of me. I expect that if I were truly starving, if the fast did not have a definite and proximate end, that I would have been less cheerful about others enjoying something delicious that I wanted in that moment.
I don’t usually have much self control with food in my house, instead relegating all self control to the grocery store. If there is junk food in the panty, I will absolutely snack on it. If there are drinks in the fridge, I will imbibe. For vavilov day, however, I actually found the willpower component quite easy. I was hungry, and the hunger was unpleasant, but I never really felt much temptation to cheat and eat something. I do remember marveling at how delicious the apples on the counter looked when I was in the kitchen making tea, but back in my room they were well out of mind. Instead of self control, the main difficulty I found with fasting was a lack of focus. I would be following an idea, and it would vanish into the aether, and I would have to think to myself what it was I was trying to think about.
I found falling asleep hungry easier than I thought it would be as well, with the hunger lingering in the background but staying out of focus as I drifted off. I awoke hungry, which was unusual for me, and I kept a much closer eye on the time than I usually do in the morning, and was happy to enjoy a rather large breakfast for me.
Overall, I’m glad I participated in the day of observation (holiday? exercise?). It got me to think about my relationship to food in ways that I usually ignore. I can still remember, a week later, the increased vividness that hunger gave to food that I saw and imagined. I think the length of the fast was appropriate for me at my experience level, although I might try a longer one in the future. I still like that the fast breaks with breakfast, so the next cutoff would be 60 hours, which seems like a long time but doable.
Thanks again for providing initiative behind this day, I was glad to be able to participate.