August 21st 2017
Trying to understand the moments when I’m not fasting
It has been a bit over two weeks since my last seven day dry-fasting experience. I ate regularly for about 2 weeks. On the first Sunday I had a 40 hour dry-fast. The following Sunday, meaning yesterday, I started a new fast. I’m not planning on breaking it after 40 hours this time. I’m planning on keeping going for a few days. The past couple weeks, I was able to observe that the periods when I am eating on a regular basis are not optimum. Most of the food I’m eating is raw and organic, but I feel like I’m eating way too much, and way many different things. This situation results in me having a lot of pleasure while feeding myself, but I can feel my body not functioning as well as when I’m fasting.
My idea at the current moment is to fast for a few days, then try to manage the periods when I am eating in a smarter way. Few months ago I was experimenting with mono meals. Which are a great way to eat simple. I should maybe come back to a more simple approach like eating mono-meals. Lately I’ve been preparing delicious salads which I’ve been then rolling into nori seaweed sheets. They tase extremely good, but I’m wondering if I’m not putting way too many ingredients into my salads as well? The last one was made of:
- avocados
- bell pepper
- onions
- spirulina
- maca
- wakane seaweed
- quinoa
- radish
- fresh mustard leaves
Raw Desserts with no Sugar
Lately I’ve been experimenting with raw desserts as well. I’ve been recuperating the pulp from my veggie milks that I’ve been mixing with dates, honey, coconut oil, and chocolate powder. Everything came out extremely delicious. The only problem I see: If I consume plant based milks on a regular basis, then I produce way too much pulp. If I were to convert all the pulp into dessert, then I start eating way too much dessert.
Having some cooked food
Aside from healthy desserts. Every day I make my self a green or red juice with curcuma, ginger, and garlic. On the side, I’ve been eating some dry fruits and nuts as well. During the two weeks when I was not fasting, I also ate a couple times cooked food. I was craving for fish and sea food, so I went to this Peruvian restaurant named la Conga which serves enormous portions of food. They had a fish filet in a shrimp sauce. It was just amazing the pleasure I got from eating seafood again. For the past seven months or so that I’ve been living in Argentina, I haven’t had any seafood. Every bite of the seafood dish at la Conga tasted extremely good! Even though, it was cooked in a sauce, and came with cooked white rice, I think my body was craving certain nutritional elements. The meal was able to satisfy what my body needed at that particular moment. The experience was so memorable that I returned five days later, and ordered that exact same dish. It was also a good experience, but I did not get as much pleasure out of the experience as I did the first time around. During the two-week period, I also had a burger made of grass-fed beef, and some cooked soup couple of times.
Thoughts and Observations
In conclusion I think I’m not doing it all wrong during the non-fasting periods, but I think my approach isn’t optimum yet. I think there’s something extreme in not eating nor drinking for seven days, and then eating the way I ate for a couple weeks. The switch from fasting to eating, I think I am managing it pretty well, since I only consume liquids the first day, and then take it easy with simple raw food. It’s on the period that comes just after where I need to focus my efforts. I need to eat less in quantity, and even more importantly, I need to eat a lesser variety of food in a day. I think fasting is very beneficial, and pretty much everything I’m eating are made of the healthiest ingredients I can get around here. That said, the way I am going about consuming food needs improvement. At least, this is how I feel about it at the moment. I want to figure out why I want to eat big quantities of food. First I was thinking , since I’m fasting on a regular basis, I shouldn’t restrict myself from eating. So when I’m hungry I’ve been eating as much as I wanted to eat. I still think that the approach is somehow valid, but it would probably be wiser to stop eating just before being full.
An other thought that came to my mind is to why do I feel safer in the extremes. I don’t have an answer to that. My current life situation is pretty peculiar at the moment, since I live on my own in a foreign country, without any certainty about my future. It is possible that the answer may reside in the psychological aspect of things. Fasting, and then eating at a subconscious level could represent sort of a refuge from the real elements of life which need to be confronted.
On the conscious level of things, I am doing the healthier living attempt to better myself and perform at the best of my capabilities in life. To a certain extent, I have to admit that it has been working really well so far. A lot of areas in my life in relation with health and a well functioning body have been improving drastically for the past year and a half. I guess this journey is a continuous learning experience, where I need to constantly be experiment in order to improve. I also came to the realization that being healthy isn’t only about the physical and the nutritional. The social, and psychological aspects are also really important. It isn’t enough to eat good, sleep well, and exercise on a regular basis. If we can’t bound socially, if we don’t have a job or a passion that anchors us in life, these shortcomings can also create its own loads of problems.
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I AM NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. I would like to make it very clear that I am only sharing my own experience on this website, and have no intention to give any specific advice on health. Please read the disclaimer section for more information.
