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Letter Re: Fasting and Starvation
Dear Editor:
I am a practitioner of fasting. Having learned how it feels to go without food I feel it necessary to let others know. Hunger is a good thing, but letting hunger go too long is very bad. Let me explain how this works. Hunger and starvation are totally different. Hunger is the state that tells you that your body is not receiving food. Starvation is when your body is destroying itself to stay alive. As a geologist in the jungles of South America I had the not so pleasant experience of typhoid. Most of my time there (15 years) I was well supplied by the companies who hired me to explore. This one time the logistics failed. I went through one month of typhoid, and for anyone who wants to know the details I can provide, but the end result was starvation. I had no muscle mass, only gray skin and bone. The recovery period without exercise was two years. Internal damage remains.
You do not need typhoid to get to starvation. This letter is not to instruct you on starvation, it is how to handle hunger. As a fit man I have about liberally 15% body fat. Using fasting to clean my cells of toxins and accumulated vitamins I would need minimum three weeks of water fasting to achieve the goal. Juice fasting can do the same but failure is more likely since it takes longer.
Here’s how it goes: For the first four to five days I drink only water (bottled or well-filtered water is fine) and I have fierce hunger. At the fifth day hunger stops and the body realizes that it must draw upon stored energy. So, the body enters ketosis, which is the breakdown of fat to produce energy. The process will continue without any hunger pains until a very distinct signal, that is desire for food from the mouth and throat not the stomach. If you feel hunger from the stomach you have cheated and confused your body, keep going. When you feel that mouth and throat sensation it the time to eat, but eat sparingly. There is the urge to gorge, but resist and develop your food intake that equals the time spent off food. Fruit, juices, then more solid soft foods, then hard foods. Of course this will not be possible in a scarcity environment.
I drink only water for the full three weeks or until the signal arrives. The fasting initially may be a logical decision, the end of it is is not, it is very biological. During that time I experience the full range of effects from illness to euphoria, to true hunger.
Pushing beyond the signal is the beginning of starvation. You will know at that point, all your body fat has gone, it’s very visible.That body to dream of is not your friend here. As a survivalist your body fat, in moderation, is your friend and you must keep a decent store of it just in case.
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