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Fast – The End

David Bickley — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:29:14 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, let me just say this: You don’t know bliss until you experience a single slice of pita bread and roasted red pepper hummus after 7 days of not eating, and realizing that your stomach had no problem handling the orange I ate over the course of 4 hours. So, did I make any significant self-discoveries? Well, yes in a way. I learned that I can indeed survive on no food for a week. On a less obvious note, I have learned that I do indeed still have a good amount of patience for things. I had been worried that I was becoming more impatient as I got older, which seems to be the opposite of what should happen. I waited a nice long time to eat, and I understand now that there are some much more important things in life than whether or not an appointment is on time. What really matters is whether or not that appointment brings lunch with them. Ha! In all seriousness though, as difficult as it was to do, it was well worth the effort. I feel great about myself, and many many other things. All the best, David

Fast – Day 6

David Bickley — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:28:48 +0000

My last full day of not eating is almost at an end. Yesterday, I did end up needing to resort to juice to maintain my energy at the water park. I finally slept a full night, the first one since the first day fasting. As it stands right now I weigh about 163. I started this at 180-182. So yeah, a loss of about 20 pounds in a week. I wasn’t overweight when I started this, and I guess I’m certainly not now. We’ll see how my body reacts as I slowly reintroduce it to eating. Tomorrow at 5pm I get to eat again. From what I hear I need to start slowly, so I’m going with one orange. Out of control right? One whole orange. HA! It seems a bit silly to me to be limited to one orange, but I don’t want my stomach to flip out and explode from my torso like in Alien. If I can avoid that, and keep the health benefits of the fast by sticking to super light meals for a couple days that’s no problem. After all, any food would be amazing right know, even if it were a single cashew. Anyway folks, I’m going to wrap this up and go catch a movie. All the best, David

Fast – Day 5

David Bickley — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:57:29 +0000

Feeling a bit better this morning, which is great considering that we are going to a water park for a few hours. Still not sleeping solidly through the night and I’m getting tired of that (no pun intended). I think last night was the turning point. We went to see Tropic Thunder, which is pretty friggin hysterical by the way. When we left the theatre the plan was to go over to a friends house and hang for a bit. Before landing there i needed to stop by the grocery store for some water. I know that sounds yuppie-ish, but if you had ever tasted Columbia tap water you would agree that not only does it smell like public pool water, but it probably capable of dissolving human flesh as well. Anyway, I get my water, and some juice because Heather is afraid that it is dangerous to go swimming in the hot sun all day with the low levels of energy that I have had subsisting on water alone. I’m not in any hurry to pass out, or drown from exhaustion, and i don’t want her to worry so…juice it is. For today. The long and short of all of this is that last night I got this water called “Smart Water,” mainly because they didn’t have distilled at the store, but also because of the neat bottle (I am a smart consumer). Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what “electrolytes” are, but i do know that this water has them and after a few swigs my energy level was amazing. I haven’t been sluggish, or felt wiped out since. So, my mental note for next time I do this…Smart Water is where it’s at.

Fast – Day 4

David Bickley — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:56:09 +0000

I had some juice last night. Technically that means I failed at my water fast. I couldn’t sleep last night, my joints ached too bad so I buckled. I wanted to eat, but Heather stopped me, just like I asked her to. I drank half a glass of OJ & soymilk, and some lemon water. None of that sounds appetizing I’m sure, but it did the trick and was delicious. Today, I am back on water alone. I still didn’t get a ton of sleep last night due to the aches (I woke up at 4am this time instead of 3am) but I was able to get right back to sleep and stayed that way until about 6:30. Tomorrow is the day we go to the water park. I’m nervous about that one. I’ve been trying to save up all of my energy for it, but as I’m sure you know the sun can really zap your energy levels when you’re out in it all day. Plus the exertion of swimming. Either way, I’m still doing it and I’m still not eating. I’m halfway through now. Gotta stick with it.

Fast – Day 3

David Bickley — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:56:03 +0000

So, I’m half way through day 3 of my water fast. I hope that what people are saying about it getting easier after the third day is true. I have to say, today is the day I really feel like I’m going to fail at this. I woke up at 3am last night and wasn’t able to sleep again until 5am. Granted I was able to get some reading done, but I would have much rather been sleeping. It is much more difficult than I thought, God only knows why I had it in my head that going 7 days without anything but water would be an easy thing to do. On the upside I haven’t had any feeling of real physical weakness yet. I am more prone to getting lightheaded if I stand up too fast, but that is about the extent of it. I notice that I mess up typing a lot more than normal now, and I speak in much softer tones than I did monday (the day before I started). Something that is very strange to me is the fact that I can feel my heartbeat across every inch of me. It feels like my whole body is pulsing, quite surreal. I attribute it to my heart being hard at work ridding my body of all the junk that has accumulated in my body over the past 24 years. Overall, I’m still doing ok, just struggling a lot with the temptation and desire to eat. I’m still in the game though, and that is something in itself.

Fast – Day 2

David Bickley — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:16:23 +0000

Well, it’s sure not easy to focus at the moment. It’s just past lunch time and it occurs to me that I’d probably drink ketchup right now if I would let myself. It’s amazing to me how I’ll informed people are about what the body needs to survive. Someone said “you’re crazy, you can’t go more than 5 days without food, you’ll die.” The body can live for a couple months at least before that happens. I am beginning to understand that many people who are fasting tend to keep it to themselves. It’s very difficult to maintain with everyone telling you that you’ll fail. I know I can do this, but I do have a concern. We have plans to go to a waterpark on Saturday, and we can’t really cancel that. So I’m not sure what to do in that regard. I’ve thought about shortening the length of the fast, but I don’t want to go back on what I’ve set out to do. If I can keep to both of these commitments that would be ideal, but if I end up having to choose, I guess I might have to break down and drink some juice or something. Either way, I still won’t eat again until the morning of the 20th. By the way, here’s a photo for you. And also, congrats to Michael Phelps on such an awesome achievement. It seems like world records are broken pretty consistently which is awesome because it means that people are steadily getting stronger and faster. To win that many golds though…wow dude, just wow.

Fast Beginning.

David Bickley — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:32:44 +0000

I can’t count the number of odd looks I’ve gotten in the past couple of days.

I’ve decided to try to fast for seven days, a water fast at that. So (for those of you that don’ t know) what that means is that I won’t ingest anything other than water for seven days and nights. I am not doing this for anything other than the fact that I want to know if I can, maybe find some enlightenment along the way. From what I hear there are a lot of health benefits to doing this.

Those of you that know me already know how much food I generally pack away in this 184 lbs. so you already know that this is no small undertaking.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is 3 hours into day one and I think my stomach knows what I plan to do. I never eat breakfast, ever…yet I wake up this morning already hungry. My stomach is rebelling.

I am going to keep writing entries each day of this self-imposed challenge, so um…keep checking in on me, just incase my stomach decides to digest my brain.