Group Fast anyone?

[fireflysea]

Starting with the new moon this Wednesday I'd like to do an all liquids/mostly water fast. I'm not going to be super strict but I want to stick to liquids. Anyone want to join me for any length of the way and support one another through it? I REALLY need to fast right now but have had little motivation to actually begin. In the past I've done a 14 day water fast, an 11 day water fast, and a 33 day water fast. Maybe a few 1 or 3 day ones that I don't remember lol.

If anyone else is feeling the need for a fast let's do this!!!

[Inger]

Are you kidding?
You say you have a binge disorder/eating disorder... fasting is a very bad idea for you.

I have had eating disorder too, and what helped me the most was going ketogenic. I never fast anymore. I feel so great, I have no need to.
Are you serious about getting back your health?

[Projectile Vomit]

I think short-term fasts (1-5 days) can have a useful role in health, but they need to be approached while already fairly healthy and with the right intention. Feeding an eating disorder with fasting is not the right intention, in my opinion.

[goodsamaritan]

water fast needs to be done in a pristine environment.

diluted juice fast in the city.

my wife and i are scheduled to do some diluted orange juice fasting saturday to monday.

[eveheart]

Here's another no to fasting if you have an eating disorder, which is indicated by your several posts that your eating is out-of-control. Ketogenic is awesome for people who binge, because you will be bypassing the metabolic signals to binge.

If you doubt the folly of fasting, become familiar with the eating disorder research of Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman over the past 35 years. They caught my attention in the 1980s when they reported about creating an eating disorder in a normal-weight, normal-eating population of college students simply by making the students write down everything they ate, a practice that so many so-called "diet" plans advocate. Ask yourself, "Did my previous fasting experiences stop my out-of-control eating on a permanent basis?" Research indicates that the answer is "no" because, even though you feel great during and right after the fast, the good feeling comes from ketosis and carbohydrate avoidance. You can have that every day if you limit carbs, get enough (not too much) protein, and enjoy good fats.

[fireflysea]

Thanks everyone!
I actually don't so much have an actual eating disorder, but rather am still suffering the negative health effects of having been raw vegan for 7 years (esp the last few years of that which were fruitarian....lead to blood sugar issues and bingeing) as well as the intense physical stresses/illnesses my body has gone through since I was about 12. So force feeding, over feeding, sugar and fat roller coaster, and the way sugar now effects my sociability/mental health and causes inflammation. I also have really bad IBS (whatever that really means) which lands me in the hospital every so often.  When I overeat OR eat normal amounts but eat foods that i have sensitivities/intolerances to my gut (and also my body overall) becomes severely inflamed, often for days. Yet the blood sugar waves leave me so allll I'm thinking about is food and because it's very hard to communicate or feel normal and able to be social at all anyway (or focus on anything), I end up eating and eating. It is only once I'm  physiologically effected this way that I ever fall into bingeing.  But at one point the bingeing lasted. For months daily . Once I fasted for several days, and my inflammation went down and my brain felt like it worked again, I had zero urge to binge. That's what I'm looking to achieve with this fast, a reset to nip the bingeing cycle in the bud. It seems to be the only thing that brings down the physiological symptoms so I can function again and get back into a flow.  Ketogenic is very hard for me because I'm a mixed type  metabolically. I have a very small frame and naturally high metabolism even tho I'm quite out of shape right now. Too much meat or fat and I feel very clogged and heavy. I've felt best on a diet of fresh pressed (no fruit) green-lemon juices, seafood, seaweeds, acai and raw olives for fats (I guess I do better with monounsaturated fats?), cultured vegetables, and occasional raw vegetables and non sweet fruits if I can take food enzymes with them. Add in some occasional red meat and veryyyyyy occasional avocado and coconut I guess. It's a very hard diet for me to afford, maintain, and ensure getting enough variety/calories with. I also so better the less fiber I eat and the more liquids. I also make sure to get natural salts when I crave /need them.  If anyone has other good recommendations for keeping it low glycemic let me know. Once I hit those fruits it's a roller coaster.

[fireflysea]

water fast needs to be done in a pristine environment.

diluted juice fast in the city.

my wife and i are scheduled to do some diluted orange juice fasting saturday to monday.

Awesome! I am starting Wednesday (tomorrow) with the new moon! I will have some diluted juice and some water (also herbal teas and green tea here and there)

[van]

diluted or not diluted, it's still sugar water.    You might want to rethink this.  I mean, what actually is your 'head' telling you??    most of the times with fasting, it's a thought, a mental process where you think or have been taught that there's to be some outcome.  I'd look into that, and ask if the same outcome could be achieved simply by a balance of healthy foods eaten  only when hungry and not to excess.  The body know how to heal, and we think that by 'doing' this or that, that we can do better.    I always think that by putting the energy or awareness into balance is the only way to achieve balance and thus to avoid 'doing' things like fasting which to me seems like an excuse to keep doing what's one's habits are. 
     Another way to look at it,  for some fasting acts like doing ten hale Marrys for sin we have done/eaten in the past,, to remove guilt and shame.  If that's the case, it doesn't work.

[fireflysea]

Van,
I def hear you and agree with much of what you are saying. My reason for fasting is not to force my body to do anything unhealthy for it, but rather to regain clarity and function...to direct ease inflammation so that it can have some space to heal and rebalance a bit. I'm not really having diluted fruit juice, I plan on water and one glass of diluted vegetable juice (celery juice is very delicious and soothing to me). I really enjoy periodic fasting as a way to rebalance and refocus on all levels. This month binge was a major reminder that I do not want to live this way or focus on eating and spend all my money on food again ever. And after a fast I tend to be all the more careful and aware of this. My poor body has endured a lot and I'm only 23. It's sad but I have to work with what I have. It's challenging for me to process food in any amount. Sugars and fats tend to be most difficult for me. Sometimes I walk in to the store and want to give up because idk what to eat or buy. I've thought of myself as an intuitive eater when I'm not in full on binge mode (but even then actually), but sometimes I really just can't decide what to eat because Nothing seens to effect me well. Ah well! Anyway right now no food actually REALLY appeals to me at all and I have zero hunger. My glycogen stores feel overfull, I'm 10 lbs over my usual weight, I have flu like symptoms, I'm bloated, exhausted, antisocial, puffy, etc. Hence, a little fast will do me well and help me regain balance.

[van]

makes sense.   it does sound like your heart is guiding you. 

[JeuneKoq]

I also have binge-eating tendencies and actually had the same desire (more like urge) to go on a long fast. I didn't because of several reasons:
-I couldn't work out a long enough period of free time for the fast to actually be worth it;
-I though doing it while on a transitional/S€D diet might not be a good idea, especially having deficiencies in certain vitamins and minerals at the time. However me having low levels of vitamins is most likely due to my body's difficulty actually absorbing them, as it was pointed out recently by the family doctor.
-Wasn't sure if the house I live in could be considered a "pristine" enough location, as it is advised by the fasting experts. I live in the suburbs of Brussels, Belgium's capital. Quite a green area actually. Of course it's probably not as ideal of a place as the seaside, or the mountains, or even the forest.

In my case I was actually thinking things over too much, and was going against my intuitive desire to fast, by eating!
What I mean to say is at that time I didn't feel truly hungry for anything. Be it a raw or processed food, if I stopped and listened to my own body, I found that nothing really appealed. My stomach felt full even though I hadn't eaten anything in the past 12-16 hours.
Plus my nose was (and still is) completely clogged up and insensitive to any stimuli (can't smell anything), which one could relate to macro-nutrient overload. I still ate because I thought I wasn't ready to fast yet, and once I had processed food in my mouth it was hard for me to stop at satiety. Actually I went to bed most nights with a full stomach...

Now days are getting chillier here in Belgium, studies just started, so I don't want to be fasting right now either. I'll leave the vulnerability and detox crisis for the warmer Spring days, if I still feel like it.
This Friday however I'm going to see someone who can help me deal with my eating disorder, which I believe has a psychological root rather than physiological.

What I want to point out is that both of us (I assume) felt like fasting as a result of our binge-eating disorder, or the cause of it at least, if you consider binge-eating to be a symptom rather than the origin. It is known that fasting cleans out your body of damaged tissues, toxins and unwanted organic matter, as you body can focus on cleaning and repairing, rather than digestion. That's why you don't usually feel hungry when your ill.
It might be a way of "reseting" your gut flora, if your making that last transition to your new diet/way of life.
After a long enough period of fast, true hunger finally reappears. Not the "It's noon, time to eat" hunger. Real, basic, vital hunger.

^not talking from own experience, but from content written by other people knowledgeable on the matter.

Doesn't mean that you'll never fall back to your old habits ever again, but at least this type of hunger puts you back on the right tracks when it comes to eating the proper amount of food at the appropriate time.
 Fasting could also have a psychological effect on you, and make you realize that you never needed to eat this much food to feel good and live good. Especially if the food you ate was mostly junk food, processed food.

[fireflysea]

I actually haven't started fasting yet  but am weaning off sugary fruits by eating protein and coconut meat. I'm actually reeeeally craving fresh vegetables for some reason but I haven't done much about it. I'm in sort of a very stuck and difficult space in my life right now too, which I think has a big part in my health problems coming back. I'm going to have a beef/avocado meal tonight though I'm not so sure beef effects me well. I had king salmon for lunch, dried coconut meat and kombucha for a snack, few sips of fermented veggie liquid, a few bites of asparagus, and snacked on more dried coconut meat (way too much, like 800 calories worth I reckon). About to go for a long walk before dinner, and wake up to fast tomorrow.

I've realized a lot of the symptoms I've been having since moving in to my friends place are hypothyroid symptoms (weight/fat gain, sleeping tons, achey and tired, depression, lack of motivation, puffy face, swollen throat, exhaustion for no reason, muscle pain as if I just exercised hard core, bad joint pain, etc) . So today I bought some raw desiccated thyroid from organically raised cows,. I took a LOT of it but I'm starting to feel better! The swelling in my throat actually went down. I wonder if this is related to the fact that she has highly chlorinated/fluorinated city water? I'm so sensitive to that because I grew up on deep well water in a very forested clean area.

Hopefully fasting will help. I'll have to buy water from the supermarket and put fresh plants in it overnight to re-oxygenate it. I guess cold showers instead of warm too. I'm going to start my fast tomorrow and go at least 3 days. Wish me luck!