This is the last full day of my fast, since the fifth full day actually ends tomorrow at dinner time. I find myself looking forward to cooking dinner tomorrow and getting back to normal again. It’s like the opposite of what happened before the fast, in saying goodbye to food before the actual fast. Now it’s a funny combination of the clarity of consciousness while on a fast, and yet with the frequent pull away from being here and now by thinking about the menu…
2.00pm:
The day started a little slower than yesterday. In the end, I think yesterday’s activity did tire me out a little. But I can’t complain. In earlier fasts, I always paid the price for too much exertion: tiredness through the whole next day, probably with muscle aches too. Last night, I did have trouble controlling my body temperature, and felt cold – something which I’ve often experienced in the past during fasts. I also woke up with low blood pressure and a feeling of weakness in the legs. My kidneys were aching a little, as well as my spine for the first time during this fast. (In earlier fasts this has always been a typical feature of detoxing.) So I did some yoga warm-ups for the back and spine, put on a winter coat and then took the dog out for a half-hour walk. Someone in the park commented that they’d never seen me dressed up so warmly! Very true 🙂
Movement definitely helps to move the toxins out, so I had a bath afterwards too. Since then I’ve been feeling fine. I wonder about why I felt so slow after waking up this morning… Ketosis definitely affects energy levels differently from when you burn sugars and carbs (glycogen). Running on ketosis, your metabolism reacts more slowly to your energy needs. On previous fasts it would take literally an hour to an hour and a half to reach normal ‘speed’ and feel a normal energy level in the morning. Similarly, at the end of the day I’d need a long time to fall asleep at night, because it took longer to reduce the ketosis-powered energy. I definitely feel that, with each fast, my body gets more efficient at using ketosis – and this is one reason why the transition into burning fat at the beginning of this fast has gone so smoothly. So maybe it isn’t ketosis per se which is slower in reacting to the body’s needs, but rather the body’s inefficient metabolism. We simply don’t use ketosis in modern everyday life, so we need to learn to adapt. And of course this takes time. In other words, it doesn’t matter how many ketones are flowing through your blood if your cells don’t know how to metabolise them efficiently.
8.00pm:
I’ve gone into some deeper detox and cleansing this afternoon and evening. I’ve been wearing a sweatshirt and been wrapped up in a blanket for a lot of the time, because I just can’t stay warm. I feel weaker than usual, my kidneys have been present there in the background, and my tongue is really detoxing a lot at the moment, with this crazy frothing stuff. I’ve needed to drink a full 3 litres so far today, and will probably end up closer to 4 before going to bed. I’m just glad I don’t feel generally lousy, as would have happened in the past. Basically, I feel good, just cold and weak.
In any water fast you get periods of really active detox like this. It’s something to expect. There’s no way to know when they’ll occur. They just appear – and then, a few hours or half a day later, things calm down again for a while before the next more active period kicks in. Body knows best. Maybe today, since I was resting for most of the time, it meant that more energy could be focussed on detox rather than on physical energy – which happened yesterday, when I was running all around the place.
I’m just finishing the fourth day as I write this. By bedtime I’ll already be into the fifth and last day.
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