As I ease deeper and deeper into the groove of this diet, I feel like there is less and less to talk about. It's a pattern, a rhythm, a monotony, pretty much like anything else that lasts for thirty days and involves restriction (did someone say prison?).
One interesting change has been how freezing cold I am all the time. Obviously the fact that it is currently 57 degrees here in glorious San Francisco doesn't help at all, but I have never had a problem with cold extremities or keeping up my core temperature. I am not sure if that has to do with a lack of protein or iron or fat or burning off all of my glycogen stores or what. Not eating anything warm, and drinking only the occasional hot herbal tea, doesn't help any. Apparently, feeling cold is a common result of these types of fasts and is one of the reasons that people recommended that I try it in the summer rather than winter (the other main reason being the abundance of local, organic produce).
Another aspect that has really hit me in the last few days is the lack of texture in my diet. No crunch, no sticky, no chewy, no rich, or chunky, or slimy even. I miss all of those oral experiences in addition to the flavors themselves. I miss talking about food with people, where to eat, why, who makes the best this or that. I miss cooking and having contact with food and food culture.
I have started to remember some of my dreams. Nothing too magical so far and nothing about food. I still tend to lose the storyline if I don't talk about it immediately upon waking.
The Stats:
Current Weight: 180
Best Juice of the Week: Carrot, Ginger, Orange, Peach, Papaya, Mango
Ok, bear with me here, I'm about to get all literary..... Here are selected passages from Part I of Upton Sinclair's book called The Fasting Cure, written over 100 years ago, about the glories of a fast..
He is quite long-winded, but very enthusiastic, and covers a lot of subjects which I have touched upon. It is also interesting to witness how similar 100 year old medicine and fasting studies were to that which I have found today. I guess the mainstream of Western medicine is still not ready to look at fasting as a serious cure or even of significant health benefit.
The Fasting Cure
by Upton Sinclair
Mitchell Kennerley, New York and London, MCMXI,
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley
Preface
In the Cosmopolitan Magazine for May, 1910, and in the Contemporary Review (London) for April, 1910 I published an article dealing with my experiences in fasting. I have written a great many magazine articles, but never one which attracted so much attention as this.
I have reproduced in the book several photographs of myself which appeared in the magazine articles. Ordinarily one does not print his picture in his own books; but when it comes to fasting there are many "doubting Thomases," and we are told that "seeing is believing." The two photographs of myself which appear as a frontispiece afford evidence of a really extraordinary physical recuperation; and the reader has my word for it that there was nothing in my way of life to account for it, except three fasts, of a total of thirty days.
My object in publishing this book is two-fold: first, to have something to which I can refer people, so that I will not have to answer half a dozen "fasting letters" every day for the rest of my life; and second, in the hope of attracting sufficient attention to the subject to interest some scientific men in making a real investigation of it.
Perfect Health!
Have you any conception of what the phrase means? Can you form any image of what would be your feeling if every organ in your body were functioning perfectly? Perhaps you can go back to some day in your youth, when you got up early in the morning and went for a walk, and the spirit of the sunrise got into your blood, and you walked faster, and took deep breaths, and laughed aloud for the sheer happiness of being alive in such a world of beauty. And now you are grown older–and what would you give for the secret of that glorious feeling? What would you say if you were told that you could bring it back and keep it, not only for mornings, but for afternoons and evenings, and not as something accidental and mysterious, but as something which you yourself have created, and of which you are completely master?
"I like to meet you on the street," said a friend the other day. "You walk as if it were such fun!"
I look about me in the world, and nearly everybody I know is sick. I could name one after another a hundred men and women, who are doing vital work for progress and carrying a cruel handicap of physical suffering. For instance, I am working for social justice, and I have comrades whose help is needed every hour, and they are ill!
I propose herein to tell the story of my discovery of health, and I shall not waste much time in apologizing for the intimate nature of the narrative. It is no pleasure for me to tell over the tale of my headaches or to discuss my unruly stomach. I cannot take any case but my own, because there is no case about which I can speak with such authority. To be sure, I might write about it in the abstract, and in veiled terms. But in that case the story would lose most of its convincingness, and some of its usefulness. I might tell it without signing my name to it. But there are a great many people who have read my books and will believe what I tell them, who would not take the trouble to read an article without a name.
I spent my boyhood in a well-to-do family, in which good eating was regarded as a social grace and the principal interest in life. I was an active and fairly healthy boy; at twenty I remember saying that I had not had a day's serious sickness in fourteen years. Then I wrote my first novel, working sixteen or eighteen hours a day for several months, camping out, and living mostly out of a frying-pan. At the end I found that I was seriously troubled with dyspepsia; and it was worse the next year, after the second book. I have never in my life used tea or coffee, alcohol or tobacco; but for seven or eight years I worked under heavy pressure all the time, and ate very irregularly, and ate unwholesome food. So I began to have headaches once in a while, and to notice that I was abnormally sensitive to colds. I considered these maladies natural to mortals, and I would always attribute them to some specific accident. I would say, "I've been knocking about down town all day"; or, "I was out in the hot sun"; or, "I lay on the damp ground." I found that if I sat in a draught for even a minute I was certain to "catch a cold." I found also that I had sore throat and tonsillitis once or twice every winter; also, now and then, the grippe. There were times when I did not sleep well; and as all this got worse, I would have to drop all my work and try to rest. The first time I did this a week or two was sufficient but later on a month or two was necessary, and then several months.
It made clear to me that all my various ailments were symptoms of one great trouble, the presence in my body of the poisons produced by superfluous and unassimilated food, and that in adjusting the quantity of food to the body's exact needs lay the secret of perfect health.
It was only in the working out of the theory that I fell down. Mr. Fletcher told me that "Nature" would be my guide, and that if only I masticated thoroughly, instinct would select the foods. I found that, so far as my case was concerned, my "nature" was hopelessly perverted. I invariably preferred unwholesome foods--apple pie, and toast soaked in butter, and stewed fruit with quantities of cream and sugar. Nor did "Nature" kindly tell me when to stop, as she apparently does some other "Fletcherites"; no matter how much I chewed, if I ate all I wanted I ate too much. And when I realized this, and tried to stop it, I went, in my ignorance, to the other extreme, and lost fourteen pounds in as many days. Again, Mr. Fletcher taught me to remove all the "unchewable" parts of the food--the skins of fruit, etc. The result of this is there is nothing to stimulate the intestines, and the waste remains in the body for many days. Mr. Fletcher says this does not matter, and he appears to prove that it has not mattered in his case. But I found that it mattered very seriously in my case; it was not until I became a "Fletcherite" that my headaches became hopeless and that sluggish intestines became one of my chronic complaints.
I next read the books of Metchnikoff and Chittenden, who showed me just how my ailments came to be. The unassimilated food lies in the colon, and bacteria swarm in it, and the poisons they produce are absorbed into the system. I had bacteriological examinations made in my own case, and I found that when I was feeling well the number of these toxin-producing germs was about six billions to the ounce of intestinal contents; and when, a few days later, I had a headache, the number was a hundred and twenty billions. Here was my trouble under the microscope, so to speak.
I gave the next year of my life to trying to restore my health. I did not work hard, and I did not worry, and I did not think about my health except when I had to. I live[d] in the open air all the time, and I gave most of the day to vigorous exercise--tennis, walking, boating and swimming. I mention this specifically, so that the reader may perceive that I had eliminated all other factors of ill-health, and appreciate to the full my statement that at the end of the year's time my general health was worse than ever before.
I was all right so long as I played tennis all day or climbed mountains. The trouble came when I settled down to do brain-work. And from this I saw perfectly clearly that I was over-eating; there was surplus food to be burned up, and when it was not burned up it poisoned me. But how was I to stop when I was hungry? I tried giving up all the things I liked and of which I ate most; but that did no good, because I had such a complacent appetite--I would immediately take to liking the other things! I thought that I had an abnormal appetite, the result of my early training; but how was I ever to get rid of it?
I must not give the impression that I was a conspicuously hearty eater. On the contrary, I ate far less than most people eat. But that was no consolation to me. I had wrecked myself by years of overwork, and so I was more sensitive. The other people were going to pieces by slow stages, I could see; but I was already in pieces.
So matters stood when I chanced to meet a lady, whose radiant complexion and extraordinary health were a matter of remark to everyone. I was surprised to hear that for ten or fifteen years, and until quite recently, she had been a bed-ridden invalid. And this was the woman who rode on horseback with me up Mount Hamilton, in California, a distance of twenty-eight miles, in one of the most terrific rain-storms I have ever witnessed! And this woman, when she took the ride, had not eaten a particle of food for four days previously!
That was the clue to her escape: she had cured herself by a fast. She had abstained from food for eight days, and all her trouble had fallen from her. After another spell of hard work I found myself unable to digest corn-meal mush and milk; suddenly I was ready for a fast.
I began. The fast has become a commonplace to me now; but I will assume that it is as new and as startling to the reader as it was to myself at first, and will describe my sensations at length.
I was very hungry for the first day--the unwholesome, ravening sort of hunger that all dyspeptics know. I had a little hunger the second morning, and thereafter, to my very great astonishment, no hunger whatever--no more interest in food than if I had never known the taste of it. Previous to the fast I had had a headache every day for two or three weeks. It lasted through the first day and then disappeared--never to return. I felt very weak the second day, and a little dizzy on arising. I went out of doors and lay in the sun all day, reading; and the same for the third and fourth days--intense physical lassitude, but with great clearness of mind. After the fifth day I felt stronger, and walked a good deal, and I also began some writing. No phase of the experience surprised me more than the activity of my mind: I read and wrote more than I had dared to do for years before.
During the first four days I lost fifteen pounds in weight--something which, I have since learned, was a sign of the extremely poor state of my tissues. Thereafter I lost only two pounds in eight days--an equally unusual phenomenon. I slept well throughout the fast. About the middle of each day I would feel weak, but a massage and a cold shower would refresh me. Towards the end I began to find that in walking about I would grow tired in the legs, and as I did not wish to lie in bed I broke the fast after the twelfth day with some orange juice. Next there was the keenest activity of mind--I read and wrote incessantly. And, finally, there was a perfectly ravenous desire for physical work. In the old days I had walked long distances and climbed mountains, but always with reluctance and from a sense of compulsion. Now, after the cleaning-out of the fast, I would go into a gymnasium and do work which would literally have broken my back before, and I did it with intense enjoyment, and with amazing results. The muscles fairly leaped out upon my body; I suddenly discovered the possibility of becoming an athlete. I had always been lean and dyspeptic-looking, with what my friends called a "spiritual" expression; I now became as round as a butter-ball, and so brown and rosy in the face that I was a joke to all who saw me.
I had not taken what is called a "complete" fast--that is, I had not waited until hunger returned. Therefore I began again. I intended only a short fast, but I found that hunger ceased again, and, much to my surprise, I had none of the former weakness. I took a cold bath and a vigorous rub twice a day; I walked four miles every morning, and did light gymnasium work, and with nothing save a slight tendency to chilliness to let me know that I was fasting.
For several months after this experience I lived upon a diet of raw foods exclusively mainly nuts and fruits. I had been led to regard this as the natural diet for human beings; and I found that so long as I was leading an active life the results were most satisfactory.
Those who have made a study of the fast explain its miracles in the following way: Superfluous nutriment is taken into the system and ferments, and the body is filled with a greater quantity of poisonous matter than the organs of elimination can handle. The result is the clogging of these organs and of the blood-vessels--such is the meaning of headaches and rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, paralysis, apoplexy, Bright's disease, cirrhosis, etc. And by impairing the blood and lowering the vitality, this same condition prepares the system for infection--for "colds," or pneumonia, or tuberculosis, or any of the fevers. As soon as the fast begins, and the first hunger has been withstood, the secretions cease, and the whole assimilative system, which takes so much of the energies of the body, goes out of business. The body then begins a sort of house-cleaning, which must be helped by an enema and a bath daily, and, above all, by copious water-drinking. The tongue becomes coated, the breath and the perspiration offensive; and this continues until the diseased matter has been entirely cast out, when the tongue clears and hunger reasserts itself in unmistakable form.
Strange as it may seem, the fast is a cure for both emaciation and obesity. After a complete fast the body will come to its ideal weight. People who are very stout will not regain their weight; while people who are underweight may gain a pound or more a day for a month. There are two dangers to be feared in fasting. The first is that of fear. I do not say this as a jest. No one should begin to fast until he has read up on the subject and convinced himself that it is the thing to do; The other danger is in breaking the fast. A person breaking a long fast should regard himself as if he were liable to seizures of violent insanity. I know a man who fasted fifty days, and then ate half a dozen figs, and caused intestinal abrasions from which he lost a great deal of blood.
