My 3-Day Water Fast and Breaking a Big Body Belief
***Please note: This article is not medical advice or expertise, it is simply my personal experience. If you are thinking about embarking on a fast or drastically new eating plan, please consult your doctor about this***
Our bodies have all been through the wringer these last few years, from the effect of low-grade stress and anxiety of the pandemic to actually getting Covid. I’ve been so grateful that even in the midst of some very close calls, I haven’t had the virus. My body was on a different journey these last few years:
2020 started with the discovery that I wasn’t ovulating:
I had a D&C (the same surgical procedure they would use in a termination of pregnancy, is used to clear the uterus lining of any abnormalities) and a hysteroscopy at the end of 2019, to make sure there were no physical blockages or troublesome tissue in and around my uterus and discovered my hormones were out of balance and I wasn’t ovulating
I was then put on hormonal therapy to help balance my oestrogen and increase my progesterone
Mid 2020:
I stopped the hormonal therapy because it made me feel like shit, and decided to try a more holistic route and went to see a functional hormone specialist
Given my presenting symptoms, I was treated for PCOS, even though I had no visible cysts on my uterus. There is an emerging amount of research on hormonal PCOS, but I’ll get into that another time 👌
I went on 7 different supplements to help balance my insulin, cortisol, thyroid function and iron levels. I was doing blood tests every other month, while also seeing a nutritionist and a therapist
After 9 months, I was still needing iron infusions and my hormone levels were still somewhat erratic, mainly because I was unable to control the stress levels I was exposed to at work
By the beginning of 2021, I decided to take a year off all medical and supplemental treatment:
No more tests, no more diet, no more therapy, I stopped forcing myself to working out, and only maintained the bare minimum of supplementation. I knew that until I had more capacity to learn ways to close my stress cycle, no amount of vitamins was going to help me
As 2022 rolled in, I’d gained about 15kgs since October 2020 (I don’t know for sure, because I also decided that I was no longer weigh myself anymore), I was eating way too much dairy, sugar and gluten for my constitution and not enough greens, antioxidants and fibre, to the point where I’d developed acid reflux and my skin was breaking out more than usual
One thing became glaringly obvious to me - my body was craving a fresh start.
After ALL it had been through, my body was holding onto so much that no longer served me. So, I began to see a body image coach, who was able to help me get back in touch with *actually* listening to my body and paying attention to my body’s intuitive cues. One of the biggest epiphanies I had this coaching journey, was that after years of discipline and consistency, grinding and hustle in both work and in the way I treated my body care routines (i.e. movement, eating, sleep etc ), I no longer required those mechanisms in this new phase of life I had reached. I was able to design my own time a bit more, that meant I could design my own body and self-care routines…however I wanted.
This ability to let go of old mechanisms to “govern” my body gave way to a more intuitive approach to what, where and what time I eat, how I move and what I do for “exercise”. It even influenced how I choose to dress and wear my hair - talk about an awakening!
As our coaching journey ended, I felt like I needed to commemorate this new mindset towards a new mechanic for caring for myself. A ceremony of sorts that would help me fully shed the old mechanics and fully step into the new… A way to start my journey to a more attentive and respectful body care practice, with a totally clean slate.
In the past, I would have done a detox. But this time, I wanted something that would go beyond just the physical aspects and tap into a deeper awakening in me.
As I thought about it, I kept coming back to the spiritual motivations behind fasting. I thought about Lent and Ramadan in particular, and how the Christian and Muslim faith use this tool as a way to enrich their connection to the Divine. At the time, I didn’t realise it, but in hindsight, I was looking for a deeper connection between my body and my intuition. I’d intellectually awakened this awareness through my coaching experience, but I was looking for a way to integrate that fully, to embody it fully…So, I decided to embark on a 3 Day Water Fast.
Essentially what this means is that I would not eat food, or anything that would spike my insulin for 72hrs. I would only drink water and herbal teas. In the research I’d done, the literature says that the body goes into Autophagy after about 72 hours of fasting. This is the body's way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. The gross way to explain it is that the body starts eating itself. There is research that shows Autophagy is an evolutionary self-preservation mechanic, where the body can remove dysfunctional cells and recycle parts of them, repair and clean them. In fact, the first time I heard about this was on a blog by a woman who has an autoimmune disease. She fasts like this twice a year, to generate this cellular renewal aspect. So, given my intention to really start fresh, this felt like exactly what I was looking for.
***I gotta say that here again: PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT THE ADVISEMENT OF YOUR DOCTOR OR HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONER. I am not a healthcare professional and am not recommending this to anyone. I am simply sharing an experience.***
I approached this fast with an open mind. I had an intention to fulfil the 72hours, but I was also keeping close to my body and what it needs. In the research I did on this before starting, one personal account of this fast stated that you will know when your body is ready to break the fast, and she was right.
I decided to do the fast over a weekend, so that I could control how much or how little effort I wanted to engage in.
Day one was relatively easy. I even had supper with my family that Friday evening, with a spread of ribs, chips, snacks and wine, and felt pretty chilled about not eating. Each morning I woke up feeling fresh and energised. And on the Saturday although I was in deep detox headache mode, I spent most of the day reorganising and deep cleaning our kitchen. I even went to the shops to get organisation containers. But, by the evening of day two, I was feeling the ravenous mental urge to eat. Jason was gonna get take out for dinner and I kept asking him what he’d buy, living vicariously through his food choices, LOL! When he mentioned he was thinking about getting a Spur burger though, I had to draw the line. I was convinced the smell of Spur food would push me over the edge and I might eat his hand with the burger in it, LOL! Needless to say, he got KFC instead 😉 Saturday was also the day I had a big realisation that really shook me and provided me with the kind of awareness I was craving from this experience. I felt like it woke something in me, and found it a bit challenging to fall asleep that evening. By Sunday, I began to feel the closure I desired, and by the early evening I was ready to break my fast.
Consciously breaking a fast like this requires as much care, if not more, as when you’re on the fast. The research I’d done advised to start slowly with easily digestible foods. I did a few cups of bone broth and then a baked sweet potato.
Two big realisations came out of this fast for me:
What I had known about “hunger” up until this fast was all in my head. I discovered that what I felt as hunger was not physical, but it was actually intellectual. My mind was convincing me I had to put some food in my mouth long before my stomach began to pain from hot having food in a while.
As someone who grew up with a fair dose of body image shaming (my nickname in some circles was “Fatty”, will I was at least 13 - so cringe, I know), I’d learned that what I looked like wasn’t “good” so I became really good at other things - academics, being polite and being a good friend. For most of my teens and 20’s these were the things I believed to be part of my personality. And although I had done A LOT of personal development work on my body image and my mindset in my 30’s, this fast brought me a clarity I’d never had before:
95% of how I treated my body up until this point, both “good” and “bad”, was because I never truly believed my body deserved to be treated with care and respect.
Hear me out…
I have ALWAYS struggled to stay consistent with movement and taking care of what I eat, or even keeping up with Drs appointments, remembering to take my supplements and keep my hair appointments. And over the years, I have realised that I’m not meant to do the same things all the time, that routines are seasonal and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. BUT…I still always felt like there was an element of self sabotage…I just could never quite put my finger on where it came from.
I also feel it’s important to make a distinction here - I absolutely reject the notion of allowing your self-care to be fuelled by consistency and discipline (you know I’m always fighting that patriarchal bullshit narrative!). I believe truly caring for ourselves is a matter of trust, intuition and taking radical responsibility for our needs - there’s a difference. So I was NEVER looking to “perform” a self-care routine for the sake of keeping to a routine everyday.
And part of the reason for reason for embarking on this fast in the first place, was because I was noticing, that the routines and practices that I intellectually knew where more aligned to making me feel good (morning movement, nourishing breakfast, taking my supplementation, drinking water), where really difficult for me to take full responsibility for. While, the routines and practices that didn’t contribute to make me feel great, in the end (eating too much cheese even through I knew it would give me indigestion, staying up late when was actually tired etc) where the one’s I was actively practicing more of. And it was because I was eager to step further into my self responsibility around this, that I felt a physical experience like this fast could benefit me.
Then, on the second day of the fast, while in the middle of my massive organisational and cleaning spree in the house, it hit me: I was unconsciously sabotaging myself by practicing things that didn’t make me feel good because I didn’t believe my body truly deserved to feel good 😔
This realisation really stopped me in my tracks! I actually had to stop what I was doing and have a big cry. It was one of the most cathartic experiences I’ve every had. I felt like the cry realised the little girl who believed all that stuff. I physically felt my body letting go of that belief through my crying. 2 weeks have gone by since, and I still feel like there’s a little residual letting go happening everyday. Makes sense, given that I’d carried around that blind belief for 30years or so.
In the aftermath of this experience, I am concentrating on rebuilding a new belief system. One that honours my desire to take intuitive care for the responsibility I have to my body. I believe I’ll be figuring out the specifics of that for a while still, but I’m ok with that 😊
Fasting helped me to connect what I intellectually knew about why I was sabotaging my ability to feel good, with a core and long standing belief, that I was now able to be aware of and change. This experience just further embeds my belief that our bodies hold an intelligence that our minds will sometimes NEVER see, until we invite our bodies to the party. Do I believe fasting in such a drastic way is the only way to achieve this? Definitely not! There are plenty of embodied practices that can do the same, maybe even more. If we’re ready and open to try them.
Yours in continuous improvement ✌️
Rox
