What Fasting Taught Me About Myself and My Relationship with Food

16 min readMar 15, 2021

Disclaimer & Trigger Warning: In this article, I talk about my experience with fasting. I am not offering medical advice or advocating for the practice of fasting. Please do your own research before attempting to fast. Those with a history of disordered eating may find this article triggering.

If you haven’t heard, fasting is back y’all. Thanks to Dr. Jason Fung’s The Obesity Code, and Jimmy Moore’s The Complete Guide to Fasting, along with intermittent fasting plans promoted by Ketogenic lifestyle influencers, fasting has been making a resurgence in both popular weight-loss circles and the medical community. Although fasting is making a comeback as a legitimate tool for weight-loss and a healthy lifestyle, it has historically been considered a fringe practice, used mainly in medical contexts or in religious and spiritual circles.

A Brief History of Fasting

Willfully abstaining from food has been practiced for centuries in both a medical and religious context. The famed Greek physician Hippocrates recommended fasting to address common medical issues, and Paracelsus, a noted 15th Century Swiss physician, stated that “Fasting is the greatest remedy — the physician within,” in regards to the practice. Millions of people continue to practice fasting according to their religious and spiritual convictions. Every Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, and during Lent, devout Catholics (and some Christians) practice forms of fasting. Other religions encourage fasting to purify the mind and body, and to get in touch with higher awareness.

Despite this history, fasting has been seen by most people as an eccentric idea — an extreme practice that is only adopted by religious or spiritual types or medically enforced on patients who are preparing for surgery, or who are morbidly obese. Perhaps even more extreme, fasting has been discussed in the context of hunger strikes. One example is the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, during which ten participants died of “starvation, self-imposed”. When people think of fasting, they think of starving. They think of depriving the body of nutrients, and of the kind of punishment that comes with refraining from the small pleasures in life. With these kinds of connections, it’s no wonder that fasting has been relegated to the fringes.

The New Approach

It seems though, that these views are slowly changing. Doctors such as Jason Fung and Dr. Mindy Pelz are staunch supporters of a fasting lifestyle, and with their growing popularity on YouTube and other social media outlets, the message that fasting isn’t just for the religious or medical outliers is being heard. These professionals are putting for the idea that fasting is:

Safe for most people
An effective way to regulate hormones (most importantly insulin)
A method of inducing autophagy (a self-healing cellular process)
An effective weight-loss method (paired with other lifestyle changes)
A way to detox and reset important bodily functions

There are thousands of anecdotal stories and peer-reviewed studies that support these claims. It looks like fasting may have benefits that were forgotten and overlooked as the world adopted a you-must-eat-every-three-hours-or-you’ll-get-low-blood-sugar-and-die attitude. These benefits are worth continued research on the subject and are some of the major reasons I decided to try fasting for myself.

My Background With Food

Never before in my life had the idea of fasting occurred to me. I’d lost weight restricting calories and tracking my food intake, but I’d never just stopped eating. My life centered around food. It was a source of comfort and escape for me. I’d go through periods of weeks or months, binge eating certain foods. I’d fixate on that food, making sure to keep it on hand and eat multiple servings throughout the day. I dreamed about it when I woke up in the morning, and I’d become irritable if something prevented me from accessing it. It was a true addiction. Food helped me dissociate from whatever was going on in my life. It was a constant companion and coping mechanism.

Of course, this also hurt me. When I binged I felt fat, ugly, ashamed, out of control, and tired. True to most addictive cycles, I would experience a moment of clarity after months of binging and decide to change. To lose weight I’d jump into a restricted-calorie diet. Three separate times in my life I lost more than 30 pounds, but each time I gained that weight back within a few months.

In 2018 I discovered the Ketogenic diet, and it totally changed the way I ate. For about six months I stuck with the high fat, low carb, moderate protein approach and lost, you guessed it, 35 pounds. Unfortunately, personal stress pushed me off the wagon and I gained about 50 pounds back over the next two years. Even though I was still stuck in the yo-yo diet cycle, it was this first experience with Keto that showed me dieting could be easy. On Keto, I learned to appreciate and even enjoy whole foods and satiating fats, as well as lose weight, all while feeling full instead of hungry.

Research & Preparation

In December of 2020, I finally hit my limit. I was fed up with being overweight again. I wanted to look better, but more importantly, I had finally reached a point in my personal life where I felt ready to tackle my unhealthy relationship with food, not just to lose weight, but to nourish my body. I started eating low carb again, and although I did count my calories, I focused more on eating fresh veggies and fruits, healthy fats, and grass-fed and pasture-raised meat sources when possible. I began losing weight and felt great. By February I was down 20 pounds. I was on a roll.

It was about this time that I started reading about intermittent fasting. As opposed to full-on water fasting, intermittent fasting is simply a lifestyle in which you only eat during certain windows of time during the day. There are many time variations of this type of fasting, and the goal is not to eat less when you do eat, but rather to limit the time frame of consuming food. This regulates your body’s insulin response and encourages different levels of autophagy.

Intermittent fasting seemed doable. I tried it for a week or two and lost a few pounds pretty quickly. I also found that I wasn’t as hungry as I had expected to be. This prompted me to look into longer fasts. I joined the water fasting Reddit community and read about how 3–7 day fasts helped many people jump-start their weight loss, heal their bodies, gain clarity and energy, and a number of other benefits. I thought about it for a few weeks and then decided to give a longer fast a try.

My goals going into the fast were to:

See if I could go seven days on a water-only fast
Get closer to my goal weight by quickly knocking off a few pounds
Challenge myself mentally and physically
Allow my body to get into autophagy and repair itself

My fast parameters were:

Aim for water, plain tea, and plain coffee only (I had bone broth on hand and decided to drink it if I needed to)
Weigh myself every day
Take my blood sugar once per day
Take electrolytes (sodium, potassium, and magnesium are the most recommended during a fast)
Let my mom know I was fasting in case I died and no one knew why
Stop if it became scary or unbearable

With these goals and parameters outlined in my head, I began my fast on Sunday, February 21 at 4:00 pm and officially ended it (there were two *cheats* which I’ll talk about below) on Saturday, February 27 around noon. Here’s what happened.

My Fasting Experience

Overall, my physical, bodily experience with fasting was…mild. I went through many of the reported symptoms and sensations that I’d read about. In some ways, the physical part of the fast was the least difficult. Here‘s what my physical experience was like.

Physical Experience

Hunger

I was surprised by the lack of hunger I felt. Most of us think that hunger pains and grumbling tummies would increase the longer we don’t eat, but that wasn’t the case for me at all. For the first three days of the fast, I drank tons of water and took my electrolytes. During this time I felt little to no hunger. On day three I tried adding flavored sparkling water to my H2O intake. Big mistake. Maybe it was the flavor, maybe it was the carbonation, but that was the day my stomach started to signal that it wanted food. I *cheated* (some say this doesn’t truly break a fast) midway through the day and drank a cup of bone broth. It tasted delicious and I felt a surge of energy, but I really struggled with wanting more food later than evening. On the fourth day, I made it until dinnertime, but as I hovered over the whole wheat pasta and chicken in a garlic lemon cream sauce that I’d prepared for my daughter, I lost control and ate about half a cup. The thing was that I wasn’t physically that hungry. The break came because of my psychological desire to eat. I fasted the rest of the week, again with little hunger, and ended it a few days later after wrestling with that same psychological desire.

Lightheadedness & Headache

I struggled with headaches and lightheadedness from about day three onward. From my research, it seemed like low sodium was the most likely culprit, so I swallowed pink Himalayan salt with some water. This did seem to alleviate the headaches, however, there isn’t really an exact amount prescribed, so it was kind of a guessing game as to when the headaches would come, and how much sodium and water to take.

I would say the lightheadedness was less of an “Uh oh, I’m about to faint” feeling, and more of a disconcerting sensation of lightness. I think some of this was psychological, maybe even spiritual, and had more to do with my brain tripping out over the fact that I hadn’t ingested food in days and was still alive, rather than being physically faint or dizzy. The only time I was actually scared of passing out was when I squatted down in Walmart to look at something on the bottom shelf and stood up too quickly, but in fairness, that kind of movement would normally cause me to feel faint, so I don’t think it was inherently tied to the fast.

Bathroom Stuff

I won’t go into too much detail here, but bathroom visits were something I wanted to know about when I researched, so I’ll share my experience as well. I did not “go” the entire time I fasted. It was weird. Maybe not physically uncomfortable, but I didn’t like it. I did pee an awful lot, which isn’t surprising because I drank water constantly. Any time I was out and about with my kids in a store I had to visit the bathroom at least once which was annoying.

Sleeping

I’d also read about insomnia while fasting. I know from experience that when transitioning from glucose burning to fat burning, there is usually a period when the body has so much energy that sleeping feels impossible. I had already been eating a mostly Ketogenic diet for two months before starting the fast, so I think my body had already adjusted. However, around day three I did have a night during which I could not sleep and struggled with restless legs. During the remainder of the fast, I slept pretty soundly. I felt cold and tired, and I started going to bed around 8:30 or 9:00 pm, which is pretty early for me.

Blood Glucose

I took my blood glucose levels a few times during the fast. I took the first reading after 40 hours of fasting and it read 91mg/dl. The second reading was 89mg/dl, and the last was 70mg/dl after something like 90 hours of fasting. I was pretty happy with these readings. What’s more, they showed me that the idea that our blood sugar will go low and we will stop functioning if we don’t eat every three hours is incorrect. (Of course, some people have medical conditions that would be complicated by fasting, but as an overall culturally endorsed sentiment, it seems to be wrong).

Weight

Anyone on a weight loss journey knows how great it feels to lose a chunk of weight quickly. I had been losing about 2 pounds per week prior to the fast. I was resting at 163, then went on vacation and came back the day before the fast at 165. At the end of my six days of fasting, I weighed in at 158.6. I had lost 6.4 pounds. I felt lighter, my stomach was flatter, and I was really happy with this aspect of the fast.

Energy

I never experienced the amazing clarity and energy that some fasters talk about. I think that had I stuck with it, I may have, but overall, I felt less energetic on my fast. I didn’t exactly feel lethargic though and had I not let my psychological hang-ups stop me, I think I would have been fine doing more physical activity. I did go on a few 30–60 minute walks during the fast and felt completely fine during and after them.

Psychological Experience

Now for the more difficult part of my fasting experience: the psychological stuff. Oh. My. Goodness. This was by far the hardest part, and also the most surprising. Almost nobody talked about the emotional or spiritual aspects of fasting in the sources I’d researched. After some searching, I found Tyler Tolman’s blog posts on the topic, but only after I was already dealing with wave after wave of emotions. Here are some of the psychological issues I ran into during my fasting experience:

Uncontrollable Emotions

By far, this was the most unexpected and difficult side effect of my fast. The first evening was fine, but when I woke up Monday morning, I was a blubbering mess. In the past, I’d dealt with waves of anxiety, the kind where you feel as if you are drowning in a turbulent ocean. I’ve put in a lot of work over the years to learn how to manage this feeling, so I knew it would pass eventually, but man, it hit me hard and seemingly out of nowhere. During this time last year, I had dealt with some major losses, and I began re-feeling the exact feelings of hopelessness and despair that I’d had at that time. Again, I knew it would pass, but not being able to eat food or have my morning coffee (i.e. my warm hug in a mug), exacerbated these feelings. There were a few days when I felt angry for no reason. These emotions weren’t tied to a physical symptom. They were most definitely tied to the fact that I didn’t have food to comfort or cover up my emotions.

Cravings for Old Foods

Since re-starting my low-carb diet in December, I had been eating fairly healthy. I enjoyed foods like chicken, salmon, beef, bell peppers, green beans, cauliflower, and my little treat to myself, sugar-free whipped cream, strawberries, and one square of dark chocolate. I hardly ever thought about fast food anymore, and the idea of eating processed food had begun to gross me out. So it surprised the heck out of me that on my fast I began to intensely crave all of my old, addictive foods. Ice cream, burgers, fries, loaded sandwiches, chips and salsa, cakes, you name it. Sure, you could say that my body wanted food, but that wasn’t it. My body didn’t feel hungry. My body didn’t want sugary, greasy, unhealthy food. It was my mind. I believe this was another symptom of my brain trying to use food to shield itself from hard emotions.

Boredom

I’d read about this one so I was prepared, but not prepared enough. When you aren’t eating, it frees up a LOT of time during the day. No grocery shopping. No watching videos to find new exciting Keto recipes. No cooking and preparing food (or this is torture because you’re preparing food for someone else). No eating food. No bonding with others over dinner or lunch. Even on Keto I thought about food often, so taking food away left me with much less to do and think about. This was a really weird feeling. It felt like a big chunk of my life was missing.

Meaninglessness

Another psychological surprise was the feeling of meaninglessness I encountered. This went hand in hand with the boredom and was more of a spiritual musing than anything else. So much of our lives are centered around food. So much about our bodies is centered around food. Food ties us to the Earth, it keeps us grounded, and eating is something we do from the day we are born. until the day we die. When I abstained from eating, I felt the weight of the question of what is the meaning of life? Maybe it had to do with the fact that my body was feeding itself with itself. I wasn’t tied to anything. I was a spirit or soul inside a physical shell that could move, talk, and live, without any outside help. Of course, this couldn’t have gone on indefinitely, but even just refraining from ingesting food for a few days made me contemplate the meaning and meaninglessness of existence.

My Fast Induced Revelations

I learned so much from my fast. I can’t say I’d jump into another one anytime soon, but I’m glad I challenged myself. It was something I never imagined I’d do, not just because it seemed extreme to me in the past, but because I didn’t think I would be capable of doing it. Pushing through the uncomfortable moments, reflecting on how I felt physically and mentally, and connecting what I learned to my past reliance on food have taught me a few things that I’d like to share with you. Although these are my reflections, they may be of use to you. I neither encourage nor discourage you to fast, but rather, take in the lessons I learned and see how they might fit into your own life.

I no longer get an emotional payoff from food

Paul Coelho wrote, “People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” This fast was the ‘finding out’ that I needed to fully break my emotional eating habits. I researched food addiction, completed workbooks, even talked to a counselor about it, but it wasn’t until this fast that I truly understood that food does not equal love and emotional support. I broke the fast by eating a huge meal at a Mexican restaurant. I’d been craving chips, salsa, and I just went for it. You know what? It tasted great. You know what else? I didn’t feel emotionally satisfied at all. I didn’t feel worse, but it didn’t carry with it the same emotional comfort that it had in the past. I went back to eating low-carb. I enjoyed the food, but there was nothing emotional about it. I even ate a few more ‘unhealthy’ meals in the two weeks following my fast to test it out. I finally realized that sure, I can eat this food, and yeah, it tastes great, but it isn’t doing much for me anymore other than keeping me from eating healthy and nourishing my body. Now the psychological cravings are mostly gone and when they pop up, I just remind myself of what I learned, and they all but disappear.

2. I respect my body and all that it does

I never really cherished my body before my fast. As I’ve gotten older I’ve paid more attention to it, but I never fully appreciated what it was capable of. The fact that my body had stored up extra fat that it could use to literally keep me alive from its own reserves, amazes me. There are some more scientific explanations I read while researching fasting, and those further proved to me how awesome my body is, and how it regulates different functions and hormones to keep me alive. This revelation gave me a true appreciation for my body, which keeps me wanting to take care of it in every way that I can.

3. I have more self-control than I thought, but also less than I’d like to have

Yeah. So like I said, I never imagined I’d go several days without food. When I started the fast I had no clue if I’d even make it past 24 hours. But I surprised myself. I’m proud that I willfully abstained from something that was not only personally challenging, but that most people would have difficulty with. I proved to myself that I was bigger than food. That I could physically survive being uncomfortable, and that mentally, I was stronger than I thought. However, as I mentioned, I let some psychological struggles stop me from adhering to my goals, and ultimately, I quit my fast because of psychological desires. It led to awesome reflections so overall I’m happy with what I did.

4. Psychological perspectives are everything

I realized that my psychological perspective and ability to ‘control’ my thoughts made all the difference. I began to tell myself that I deserved the foods I was craving. That the fast was stupid and pointless. That I was hurting myself. That I needed food. The objective truth, however, was that none of those things was true for my fasting situation. These thoughts reminded me of my mindset when I was really struggling with my food addiction and self-worth. I was slipping back into those thoughts because my mind was freaking out. My body was fine. This reflection goes for every area of my life. It is often our mindset and inner thoughts that push us to either accomplish our goals or fail, and if we can control those thoughts, we win. If I attempt a fast again, I will be ready for this element and do my best to fight through the psychological struggle in order to reach my objectives.

5. There is definitely a link between fasting and deep spiritual awareness

Fasting has always been tied to the spiritual, and now I personally see why. There is a lightness of being that comes with fasting. It causes you to question your existence, the meaning of life, why you are here, why you eat, where food comes from, and a plethora of other questions. Fasting also leaves you with abundant time to meditate on these questions. I mean that as a simple act of thinking about them, and as an intentional act of meditation. I don’t have the answers to my questions, but I know that I’ve never had a felt sense of this higher awareness quite as intensely as I did during the fast. In the future, I’d probably read a few books on this aspect of fasting to dive into it for more spiritual reasons, just to be more prepared and gain a deeper experience.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it. My reflection on my fasting experience. If you’re thinking about fasting, do your research first. Consult your doctor, especially if you have any medical issues. Don’t do it if you are underweight or have struggled with eating disorders. Start small, with 24–48 hour fasts. Keep a journal or notes on your phone about the experience.

For me, this fast was what I needed to change my innate feelings towards food. This was a completely unexpected side-effect of the fast, but it’s the one I’m most grateful for. I may never fast again (at least not anytime soon), but I’m so glad I tried it, and that I am able to share my experience with others who are interested!