Unlike the other articles on waterfasting.org, this essay takes a much more personal approach, both in style and content. I’m inviting you to share a very intimate part of my life, which I hope can provide context and perhaps even some insight when you fast yourself.
This fast feels like coming home…
It’s 2am, and I’m outside under a perfectly clear sky, watching the strawberry moon – swollen, full and veiled in a wash of pale red – sweep low across the sky, gradually sinking towards the horizon. And I realise: this is the night of Day 21. I’ve planned for my 30-day fast to end 10 days from now on the summer solstice. The synchronicity with heavenly clockwork somehow felt fitting, healing, given the weight of a month-long journey into the self. Until now, however, it hadn’t occurred to me that my fast had not only aligned with the sun, but also with the lunar dance above. 21 days: in one respect just another number. But to me it had greater meaning, bringing me back to my first 21-day fast over nine years ago. How different the whole experience felt now! And I realised, as the moon continued its imperceptibly slow slide towards the treeline, closer and closer, that this fast itself was a form of closure – not just of the last few years, but of a whole decade.
The deeper motivation of this fast was always going to be about closure: the putting to bed of the last five years, which saw us move as a family across Europe in the midst of Covid lockdown chaos, and then provide an emotional and financial foundation for our three kids while they finished growing up and establishing themselves as young adults in a new country. In short, it had been five years of pretty relentless adrenaline and cortisol – and I was very much worn out by it. It’s true that, throughout this period, I had been able to continue with my usual foundation practice of a couple 7-14 day fasts per year, in order to mitigate and partially heal from the accumulating physical consequences of chronic stress. But it really did feel like only damage control. I knew I needed something longer to achieve fuller benefits and healing. This is because access to more fundamental hormonal recalibration – in this case to undo dysregulated adrenal function driven by chronically elevated cortisol – can really occur on fasts of only 21 days and longer.
Fortunately, life had slowed down over the last year, and I knew time was ripe for a 30-day fast. Returning to a longer-term connection and closure with the period of my 21-day fast back in 2016, I was also now free to pursue this fast. It may sound strange at first, but, in the wake of my 2016 fast, I had been effectively banned by my family from fasting longer than 21 days until all three of our kids had grown up. It was entirely the right decision. My first 21-day fast had been conducted in retreat, alone in the countryside. A wonderful experience, but not one aligned with the real-life responsibilities of being a father of three! And so, as soon as my fast had finished, I had to dive back into the everyday world. This entailed driving back to town and collecting our youngest daughter, then 11 years old, from the train station after a school field trip. We hugged and started walking back to the car. Along the way, though, I noticed there were tears on her cheeks. I had no idea what was wrong, so asked why she was crying. To this day I remember her words verbatim: ‘Papa, you don’t look like Papa anymore!’ It was true. I didn’t look like Papa anymore. As a runner, I don’t carry a lot of excess fat anyway, and I really did look like skin and bones.
Even beyond the weight loss, though, I simply didn’t look healthy. As it subsequently turned out, the 2016 fast revealed the first signs that I was headed towards a health crisis. In short, I had been following a fully vegan diet which – although I loved the eco-friendly ideology of it – was not working for me on a physical level, especially while running 40 miles a week. Within another year or two I was suffering from acute protein deficiency, with a myriad of associated symptoms, including chronic joint pain and tendonitis, as well as adrenal fatigue. Thankfully, my wife figured out what was happening, and in 2019 I began my convalescence. However, precisely because of having followed a deficient diet with chronically low nutritional reserves for so long, this initially precluded the possibility of benefiting from longer fasts to heal from the physical repercussions and enduring injury of protein deficiency. In other words, I had fallen in between a rock and a hard place in terms of the relationship between nutrition and therapeutic fasting. Now, however, with six years having since passed, I certainly had built up enough reserves to go longer. And so, this 30-day fast was also always going to be about bringing closure to the whole period of protein deficiency since my 21-day fast back in 2016, as I aimed to heal the remaining damage.
It feels like coming home…
In a way this 30-day fast couldn’t have been a greater contrast with my first 21-day fast, a decade ago. This time it was so… comfortable. All the tension, the friction with the fast and myself were gone – again, a form of closure with the past. Back in 2016, I was engaged in a constant struggle with time. In fact, this remains my enduring memory of the whole fast, as I found myself relentlessly counting the days. Everyday. As much as I tried to let go and be in the moment (and it’s true I was in the moment sometimes), I just couldn’t soften into the full experience of the here and now. This manifested in my mind through fantasies about food: something which of course we all experience when fasting! Still, back then it did feel excessive – or at least certainly more than I would have wished. Here in 2025, however, my relationship with time has been so much more malleable. Yes, I was usually aware of what day I was on, but it really did feel like just another number. And a pretty random number at that. On a deeper level, though, numbers didn’t even matter. They really didn’t. They were abstract quantities with no real weight, no power over me. I was at peace: with time and with myself, now. Consequently, there was no need to fantasise about food, despite the fact that on this occasion I was living at home with my family, and constantly surrounded by the sights and smells of food at all times of the day. There was simply no temptation. Just a little curiosity.
Another huge difference between then and now – and one which I suspect was, in part, a driving force in the different psychological experiences of the two fasts – were energy levels. Back in 2016, they were suppressed and flattened to the extreme from the first few days of the fast. Any movement felt like a literal weight to be avoided. Here on my 30-day fast, though, I was weak but benefited from being more or less fully functional through most of the fast. I would spend time in the garden pruning or weeding, or go for small, slow walks. It was only as Day 21 approached that my energy levels began to bottom out (a phenomenon which I also observe in the majority of my clients: something I attribute to the adrenal healing which intensifies during this period). In terms of energy levels, my 2016 fast marked a turning point: with every fast since, both short and long, featuring notably higher levels of physical functionality. The only logical conclusion can be that I had benefited from an adrenal recalibration and healing, which had unlocked higher fasting energy levels from then on (again, a phenomenon which I likewise observe among those clients who undertake several fasts with me).
If, during my 2016 fast, I had struggled with low energy levels and an inability to let go, this manifested especially at night. As with so many other people, the deeper I went into the fast, the less I needed to sleep, and by the third week I was sleeping on average only 3-4 hours per night. My relationship with insomnia devolved into one of the biggest challenges of the fast. Tossing. Turning. Suffering with the inability to let go and surrender myself to sleep. One night I formulated the experience in its distilled form: that the deeper psychological function of sleep is ‘to escape from the self, from having to constantly live with the tiresome experience of one’s own ego.’ Perhaps true… Even too true. However, the healing and closure of my 30-day fast here in 2025 also birthed a new perspective. I followed a similar sleep pattern as last time, with dwindling sleep requirements, especially from the third week on. This time, though, my relationship with nocturnal life was altogether different. Yes, from time to time I would toss and turn, but more fundamentally I was at peace: at peace with the silence, with the openness expanse of the darkness – and with myself.
Peace with myself. A kind of homecoming. If there’s one overarching theme which characterises my relationship with this current 30-day fast, it’s precisely that. Perhaps it’s due to a decade’s worth of fasting in between these two milestones. Perhaps it’s also due to a decade’s worth of life having been lived. Probably both.
In the end, this wasn’t the fast I had envisaged or planned. If I’d hoped to benefit from the healing of slowing down, family life around me nevertheless continued to rage around me at full speed. (Unfortunately, my own work life didn’t slow down as much as I’d hoped it to either.) But inwardly the pace was different. I just had to tune into it. It brings to mind a recent conversation I had with Dr. Alan Goldhamer during a recent international online conference. He admitted he couldn’t even imagine fasting at home with family running around everywhere… What I realise now is that my 21-day fast back in 2016 took place in a bubble: a wonderful bubble on retreat in the depths of the countryside. For me to benefit from that first experience of a 3-week fast, it probably also had to be that way – and that’s okay. This time, in utter contrast, healing took place at home, which is precisely what has made this 30-day fast so much more real.
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