Eternal Cheesecake

Just finished a 3 1/2 day fast to let my body accelerate some deep healing that needed to happen in my gut. The duration was pretty easy as I’m used to fasting by now and I wasn’t hungry. However, this was one of the rare fasts where due to its length, I had juiced carrots and beets to get nutrients and sugars into my blood stream. Normally, I fast for one day a week, but this time I noticed this wound needed some extra time. Actually, the hardest part was a newfound awareness of my addiction to eating!

So all the torn stuff in my belly is feeling about 95% better, my skin is soft, the tension around my eyes is relaxed, my back muscles feel calm and limber, and my head is clear.

I’m continually awed by how quickly my body will heal itself now that I’m smart enough to get out of the way. It works so effectively because eating takes about 35% of the body’s energy to digest, process, assimilate and then eliminate the constant barrage of food. Removing the burden of all that kicks the body’s natural healing machine into super duper high gear. The trick is to understand all of the little feelings and thoughts that are unfamiliar when fasting so as not to freak out. That wouldn’t help at all. No…

When I tell friends about fasting, their fears kick in and I get a lot of “well-meaning concern.” I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have some grounding.

What convinced me was this e-book I read on-line that was the life’s work of Dr. Isabelle A. Moser & Steve Solomon. It’s called “How and When to Be Your Own Doctor“.

I loved it because it chronicled her journey through the almighty medical profession, how she questioned the rigid, insane beliefs of the system, and how she came to find the simplest solutions–fasting and cleansing–could cure anyone that came to her, including cancer. I loved her candor, her willing to disclose her pitfalls, and her self-honesty. Such self-aware people are rare to find, and I enjoyed every word of the book.

Do yourself a favor and read the first chapter and see if it resonates with you. If it does, it’ll give you the self-reliance and understanding to know how to heal yourself. If it wasn’t for her… man… I don’t like to think how I’d be in the hands of the medical profession, my gut cut open and mutilated, no better for it in the long run.

Do you associate that really full, bloated feeling after a meal with having gotten your money’s worth at a restaurant? Or at dinner? The stomach is actually at a point of dysfunction and cannot do its job when it’s that way. So as super-tasty as my food has become, and as excited I am to explore new tastes & textures, I am learning–no, forced–to think differently. I realized why I have been gorging myself since I have become a vegan. Because prior to the switch, I wasn’t able to eat that much; my belly couldn’t digest so well. It was frustrating when well-meaning women would say, "You’re skinny–you need to eat more!" Well, duh. I’d like to eat more too. It’s just that I couldn’t. Now I can, thanks to all the cleansing and the cleaner burning fuel I’m running on. However, it feels like I’ve been waiting to be ultimately satisfied with food now that I can eat again… and then I’ll slow down. But I see the foolishness of that. There is no slowing down. Just more, a sure sign of unconsciousness. If I had seen it before, I would’ve averted the personal disaster this past summer where I:

1. over-ate
2. under hydrated
3. was in the midst of a Blessed Herbs cleanse
4. and went for a sub-jog (a sprog?)

My belly went into a pain spasm that took two excruciating weeks to heal, and left me foggy for another two weeks. And I’m still recovering from the cascade of repercussions to my personal life three months later. Now I continuously remember the Karyn Cabrese‘s comment that the stomach is the size of a fist, which reminds me to stop and pay attention to the quantity that I think I can stuff into my belly.

Update: I found a blog post called Full Belly Syndrome that better articulates what I was trying to convey.