You should know that I am not recommending that anyone else try this. It should not be considered medical advice. I am simply documenting my personal experience. I am a 47 year old woman and I enjoy trying out new techniques to benefit my health. I have struggled with my weight and self-love for most of my life. I know a lot about nutrition and fitness and I know my body very well, I am in tune with my body, mind and spirit, I am very intuitive and I have an awesome partner who also knows a lot about food and health and who is an excellent researcher.
Also, I will be talking about poop a lot. 😉
I sort of stumbled into this experiment after having a particularly crappy week. The baby had been sick with a nasty virus and I was feeling like I might be coming down with it, too. The day I decided to just drink water was a Saturday. I had been indulging in these oatmeal cookies for a week straight (I am oatmeal/gluten intolerant) which had been making me feel bloated and gassy. I also had pizza which I don’t think was cooked well enough and I had walked in unsupportive shoes for many hours that day, so by the time I went to bed I was feeling physically miserable. The baby had gotten pretty dehydrated during the week and I just knew that I was chronically dehydrated. I plan to live well beyond 100 but if I’m going to accomplish that, I can’t do it if I am unhappy in my body. So lying in bed, I decided to just drink water the next day in order to rehydrate myself and to detox what I’d been eating and to get myself back on track. This decision evolved into the story below.
So day one I didn’t eat anything, instead I just drank several one-liter bottles of salted and spun water. I put about 1/2 teaspoon of celtic sea salt in 1L of water and spin it through a funnel to structure it. (See the Amazon links at the end of this article for links to books with information on why I am salting and spinning my water). I noticed that my bowel movements were very liquidy and “sandy”. (Probably from the cookies and carbs). I told my partner I was pooping the beach.
I started the day with a teaspoon of ORMUS. About 16 hours into the water cleanse, I noticed my bowel movements began to change to a yellow color, still mostly liquid, but with what looked like fat globules. Early in the day, it smelled like I was detoxing something, whatever toxic stuff I have been exposed to. This was in spite of the fact that we are a 100% organic household, including all of our cleaning products. I was having BM’s about every hour and I noticed the smell of it later in the day smelled like fat. It smelled like what a really obese person smells like. My partner said that I sure had a lot of energy for someone who wasn’t eating any food. As far as feeling hungry goes, when I felt hungry I just drank water and the physical feeling went away. My emotions, however, wanted to eat. I have emotional feelings about eating that I had to process.
On the third morning I woke up feeling all kinds of emotions from my childhood/life trauma. Anger, fear, grief. I had a hard time drinking water just because I felt so worthless and was trying to integrate those feelings. Not drinking the water caused me to have so much less energy. After taking a tablespoon of ORMUS, I got back into the water routine and I immediately felt much better. I also didn’t have a bowel movement until later in the afternoon which I’m sure is because I was slow in drinking in the morning. The night before, I had started putting lemon essential oil in my water (4 drops per Litre). My BM’s turned a darker yellow and still smelled like fat. I’m just assuming that’s what it is, I didn’t touch it or try to analyze it. My partner agreed that it looked like I was eliminating fat and water. I did feel like my body was becoming lighter, similar to the way it felt when I lost 86 pounds in 2009 from simply changing the way I ate. It is possible to shed weight without killing yourself in the gym. A healthy, slim body begins in the kitchen.
That afternoon I had a spoonful of coconut oil because my joints were aching and my muscles felt tight. I am sensitive to the weather and it was rainy and very cold that day. I also took a capsule and filled it with 4-5 drops of cilantro essential oil followed by a tablespoon of chlorella mixed in water about 45 minutes later and then again before bed. That evening I had a glass of vitamin C (1 teaspoon ascorbic acid mixed with 1 teaspoon baking soda) and a tablespoon of MSM. My BM was tinted green from the chlorella! In total I had about 10 litres of water that day.
The night before day 4, before taking the second dose of chlorella, I had very tight muscles, especially in my hamstrings and hips. My partner put some magnesium oil on me and I also took 3 curcumin capsules and 3 magnesium capsules. I might have been experiencing a detox effect from taking the cilantro and not enough chlorella to remove whatever heavy metals the cilantro brought out and needed to be removed from my body. I had a chlorella BM that smelled metallic. I decided that dabbling with a heavy metal detox was not a good idea while doing this 7 day water fast, because a heavy metal detox is a serious matter and we needed to do more research before actually doing it. Also I realized that I wanted to know what effects were coming from just the water fast alone, and doing a heavy metal detox would confuse matters.
That morning I felt much better, had lots of energy and my mood was good. I took chlorella throughout the day. I drank 4L of water overnight which was a little disruptive since I had to use the bathroom more often. Another thing I noticed is that my teeth still felt like they needed to be brushed in the morning, even though I wasn’t eating any food. I was wondering about that. Would I still feel the need to brush and floss? Of course it is a routine so I’m not saying I would like to stop, I’m just curious about things like that. So yes, teeth still get scummy even when you don’t eat.
I definitely needed more magnesium. I still had tight and achy muscles and I had to wear my reading glasses more than usual. I was likely quite deficient before doing this experiment and now it’s really obvious that I should make more of an effort to eat magnesium-rich foods regularly.
At this point I felt I had overcome the carb addiction, though, which is very positive. For days some bread had been sitting on the table near me and the smell of it had been torture. My partner made bread the first day on this fast and the smell was sooo tempting. We had leftover pizza in the fridge that I threw away, also some ravioli that was in there and as I tossed it, I didn’t have the same feelings of longing that I had the first few days. I didn’t write it down then, but on day 2 I woke up dreaming about pancakes. I wanted pancakes so badly that it was pretty much all I thought about that day, or at least, it was a recurring thought throughout the day. Now I realize that it was my carb addiction and I was experiencing withdrawals. People don’t generally think about food as being a drug, but it definitely is. Hippocrates said that food is medicine and while that is absolutely true when it comes to cures, it also goes the other way, and the industry knows that. They get us hooked on sugar and carbs and caffeine and we are rendered unable to function properly. Don’t even get me started on what I think about that whole topic. (Next time you go to the doctor and they give you a diagnosis of something, ask them what you can do to help yourself nutritionally… and don’t be surprised if they aren’t able to help you.) Certainly one thing I learned from this process is that food itself is an addiction. I had more feelings about eating or not eating than I had actual hunger pangs or need for food. At this point I predicted that this 7 days of no food would be a jumpstart into a totally new way of being for me. (It was only day 4 so I was simultaneously also longing to eat some cottage cheese, but I was in this for the long haul.)
Yay! I have made it to day 5! I am surprised at how much energy I have even without eating food. I’ve been drinking tons of water, because if when I don’t, it feels really obvious that I need to. Especially overnight, when I go longer between drinking, I feel like a dry sponge filling with water again. Today I am going to set a timer and drink a litre every half hour because, even though it does feel like I am drinking a lot of water, when I blew my nose this morning after waking up, it was a little bloody which I think means dehydration.
I also feel a level of clarity that is new for me. As a medium and intuitive empath, I am always sensitive to subtle energies, it is not something I can turn on and off. With this water fast, when I clear myself to channel, I don’t have the vibration of heavy foods interfering with my ability to perceive my guides. At the same time, I clearly identify negative entities approaching and more easily rebuke them.
I can still feel that thought form that says I want to eat something, but the feelings about it have greatly decreased. Instead of feeling anything at all about the thought, I just remember I’m not eating and I drink some water and continue on with my day. This tells me that when I start eating again, I should drink water every time I feel/think I am hungry before I automatically eat something. I have had far fewer BM’s in the past few days. In the first couple of days, I was having them about every hour. Now they have slowed to one or two a day. I feel like I’m a little smaller, and my partner thinks so, too. We don’t have a bathroom scale so I can’t tell you if I have lost any weight. I can just tell you that it feels like it in my body and in my clothes. Though it’s not significant enough for me to say that not eating for 5 days is a good way to lose weight fast. Besides, I’m doing this for more reasons than just weight loss.
Today I took my child to and from school on the bike. I noticed more room between myself and the bike seat which sits in front of the handlebars. So that was nice. My partner also commented that I am definitely smaller. I guess this is a jumpstart for me to get back to where I was after I had the baby and before I spent 3 months in the States. Food here is much fresher, organic is readily available and not as expensive and ingredients are just all around much better quality. It’s an advantage of living in an agricultural country. I’m very grateful for that.
It is surprising how much energy I have even though I’m not eating food. There really isn’t much to report today. I’m getting used to the routine. I do the daily ORMUS and vitamin C and sometimes I put lemon oil in the water, sometimes I don’t. One of the things I miss most about eating is the camaraderie that sharing meals brings.
Mission accomplished! I feel like the last few days were much easier than the first few. I feel happy, my vibe is up and I have enough energy to ride with my son to the market and grocery store and to ride back all loaded up with food.
This was a valuable experience for me. I will use this as a jump start, but I doubt I’ll need to repeat this project anytime soon. I know it can be done. I was in no way starving while doing it. I still have feelings about food and now I think it will be more clear when I need to be mindful about whether I am eating because I actually need to or because I am avoiding feeling my feelings.
The reintroduction of food is a little overwhelming! There are so many options! What do I eat first?
I decided to take it slow in order to ease my body back into eating solids. My partner makes the most delicious bone broth using the Weston Price recipe. (Weston Price was one of the first things on our list of things we had in common when we met). So I decided to drink broth for the first few hours. Surprisingly, soon after having the broth I noticed I feel heavier. It definitely affected my vibe. This tells me that it’s extremely important to choose the things I eat carefully because it will affect my entire experience.
1. I don’t need as much food as I thought I did
2. Often my desire to eat is probably more about my feelings than actual hunger
3. I need to get back into the habit of drinking a lot more water
4. Drinking water when I think I’m hungry is satisfying and helps me to not eat compulsively
5. Drinking only water helps me keep my vibe up and brings clarity
6. When I do eat, I need to choose high vibrational food in order to keep my vibe up and to have the most clarity
People ask me what I did and how I did it, and what products I use. For simplicity, I have compiled a list of links in order to direct you to that information. Some of the links on my website allow me to receive a small benefit from the retailers (at no additional cost to you), others are just referrals to the companies and products I prefer. Injoy!