No Food. Plenty of Thought

Happy year of the rabbit, reader(s).

My more than a month-long absence from my beloved blog has been a trying thing. The reasons are many, the one that laid me down to be licked by the dogs was Scooter Braun not reading my previous post declaring my wish for him to shoot me to stardom as Senior Bieber. But let's no dwell on my minor setbacks. This post has to do with you--actually, me, but it is a sort of public service announcement on what to do after all the festive eating, drinking, smoking and whatever else people do when recognizing the man who died for our unending, unalterable sins. I say, give your body a rest. Fast. I did, earlier this year, and afterward felt better than ever. In fact, I am soon to start another one. I've forgotten why I decided to detox my pollutant riddled self. Fear of dying, no doubt. My cowardly sense of self preservation that has imagined all that had built up inside me was but one steak frites away from assaulting my enfeebled constitution with the corporeal equivalent of a dirty bomb.

Inherently, I eat well and I drink well. I eat with the mind that what is gulped and slurped should be of as good of a quality as it tastes. I don’t eat foods preceded by the words “fast” or “junk” and neither do I believe that food is medicine. In a nutshell, I’m a conscientious, yet particular omnivore.

          
But, why deny myself this three-times-a-day pleasure? Why give up pate, smoked blue fish, grilled lamb, asparagus with vinaigrette and that bottle of ’86 Pauillac, I’ve been hording, for seven long days of absolute torture? That's right, fear. At the tender age of 45, my thinking is, why not reboot the body? Why not relieve my veins, heart, digestive tract and intestines for a bit, while having the skin of a 15-year old, the lightness of a feather and the energy of a pink bunny beating a drum? Furthermore, I have no desire in the future to have my eating and drinking habits curtailed for reasons to do with cholesterol, liver malfunction and such nonsense. Added to this, is the habit factor. Eating just because it’s breakfast, lunchtime or dinner, doesn’t mean you’re actually enjoying it, or thinking about the pleasure it gives. Apparently, one of the benefits of this healthy stunt is that it will rejuvenate my sense of taste, so much so that hopefully, the effect will be as sensational as a newborn sucking a lemon. So, come with me and flip the breaker switch on your gastric activity. If you get through this, you’ll be back in the culinary saddle in no time, digesting the holy trinity of butter, fat and sugar with renewed gusto and a smile. 

            

And what did I use to bring about this new state? Which road did I take to supreme inner cleanliness? Juice? Fresh Fruit? Raw Vegetables? No. Much simpler: water. Distilled water, actually, since the body, if given no other intake is unable to break down the minerals that exist in all the designer l’eau out there. The bi-product of seven days of drinking two-liters of water per day and nothing else is of course weight loss. Before starting, I weighed 138lbs. I had a few pockets of fat here and there, but no hold-alls, no saddlebags. By the reckoning of others who’ve gone before me, I estimated loosing around 5 to 10 lbs as my body, starved of fuel, turned to itself for nutrition and consumed what it could find.

Before entering into this, there were two preconditions. First, reduce my food intake. This lessened the effect of going off food cold turkey. This fed into the second precondition, which was the most important: the psychological effect of not having a full belly, having no taste for an entire week, basically letting go of what changes our moods and comforts us. Going from full to empty was hard. Going from taste to no taste was psychologically devastating.

Here's the diary I kept from this self-imposed gustatory gulag, which, if you are brave enough to undertake, will release you into a new state never before experienced. Bon courage.

             

Day 1: This is it. I’m off to buy my food for the next seven days, which by my calculations will be about 14 liters of distilled water. Leaving the house this morning, I joked with Hope, “Honey, where’s my lunch?” Her reply? “You’re breathing it.” 11am—I’m sure it’s all in my head, but I can definitely feel my body humming. In addition, my peripheral vision seems greater than 180 degrees, my stomach is churning like a washing machine on the heavy soil setting and I’m yawning excessively. 1pm—This excessive yawning is either a sign of hunger, or hunger induced fatigue. 1.30pm—Time is moving slowly. I now have an extra two and a-half hours in the day to kill. This was eating time, drinking time, table conversation time and time spent talking about what we would eat in the up coming days. Thinking about food is not an option. 4pm—My mouth feels thick, tacky…like someone is sleeping inside it. Also, Hope called to say we’ve been invited to dinner at Al Forno in Providence, tonight, and then on Saturday to 22 Bowen’s. I declined. She was not amused. 5.30pm—Return home. The family is eating. I drink a huge glass of water and immediately take the dog for a walk. I am as grumpy as I am hungry. I think the toxicity that’s leaving my body is coming out of my mouth and onto my poor brood. I had no idea that this purge would lead me to become a low-blood sugar level bitch. 7.00pm—Sitting across from the bookshelf, the titles of my favorite cookbooks; Madhur Jaffrey’s Foolproof Indian Cookery—god, I love her fish in green sauce, Arabesque by Claudia Roden—her eggplants with tomatoes and chickpeas and pomegranate molasses is majesty on the tongue. Seeing them takes me to all the times I’ve enjoyed the recipes from their pages. I switch seats. 8.30pm—I feel more tired than usual.  I’m going to bed.

Day 2: 6.45am—The noises from my stomach wake me. Lying in bed, things don’t seem too bad. I hope today will be easier than yesterday. I think I can do this. I’m sitting around the breakfast table, gulping water and watching the family eat French toast, maple syrup and bananas. 10am—I’ve hung a mirror, cleaned out the basement and will head to the garden to rake. Keeping busy is key. 12:10pm—Making lunch for my daughter was torture. You’ve heard the saying “as easy as taking candy from a baby?” I’m almost that guy. In fact, I’m so used to walking by her tray and picking up a morsel to chew on, that that’s what I’ve just done. I walk to the trashcan and spit out a piece of ravioli. 7.00pm—Any exertion causes me to shake. I thought that condition was reserved for booze and drugs rehabilitation, but if you consider that 34 percent of Americans are considered obese (Centers for Disease Control) then food is a drug, right? Hope and the children have gone out to dinner with friends. Food is social and that’s why I’m sitting at home…alone. 9.25pm—My stomach is starting to hurt. The feeling that it’s being sucked away is palpable.

Day 3: 2.25am—I’m standing in front of the refrigerator with a heartbeat pounding hard in my stomach. It's obviously migrated and is now being digested. Illuminated by the light from the open fridge door I ponder what to eat; leftovers, or fruit, or maybe a crisp bread? Even my mother-in-law’s ashen meatloaf in a Gladware container looks like manor from heaven. I close the door. Pour myself a big glass of water…down it and go back to bed. 3.55am—I can’t take it. I can’t sleep. I wake up Hope and she leads me downstairs and hands me an apple. How Biblical. I tear into it. “I’ll be able to do this with a little sustenance,” I say. 8.30am—I juiced carrots and apples for all four of us. I feel better with this inside. 1.49pm—I definitely feel lighter not in terms of weight, of which I’ve lost 3lbs, but as in “made of feathers.” There’s evidence to suggest that an extended water fast can cure colitis. Which brings me to the point you’ve all been waiting for. Let me answer it this way. When we were visiting the Charleston Aquarium, the chief veterinarian at the turtle rescue center said about turtles that if one end isn’t receiving food then the other end is not delivering the digested remains. In this respect, let me tell you, people are not turtles. 5.43pm—I’m feeling good—remarkably so. Cooked dinner for the family and didn’t salivate...not one drop.

Day 4: 6.30am—I have seen God and he is 8oz. of prime steak with tributaries of marbling, ground into a patty, cooked medium-rare, served with tomatoes, thinly shaved raw onion and Dijon mustard inside a whole-wheat bun. There would be coleslaw made with a light dressing and grated lemon rind and there would be a glass of Cotes de Rhone. Halleluja! 12.34pm—My remembrances of food come to me. The first time I realized food wasn’t just for eating but tasting was in France. I was 16 and spent the summer with a woodcutter’s family in Bordeaux, a mile or two from Roquefort, the place of delectable blue cheese. The lady of the house prepared a welcoming meal of grated carrot and garlic drizzled with olive oil, and rabbit wrapped in bacon and thyme cooked in red wine. From that day on, I’ve lived differently. 2.30pm—It’s remarkable that I’m feeling so good for someone that hasn’t eaten in 96 hours. 5pm—My day with my children has me fit to drop. I’m light-headed. Oddly, the tips of the toes of my left food hurt, and I have a throbbing on my left side…luckily my liver and gallbladder exist on the right. 7.30pm—Drinking my final glass of water for the day, I’m struck by the idea of how much people in the West eat? Could we live on half of our daily intake? The medical costs in the US associated with overeating and poor diet is $147 billion per year. Think what we could do with that? The hardest feeling so far has been going to bed hungry. It makes you wonder what that must be like for so many around the world and with no end in sight.

Day 5: 7.15am—The pads on the toes of my left foot are now red hot and in the absence of eating my mind is working over time. The thought, then, why this same affliction hasn’t affected the right foot is disturbing or consoling depending on how you look at it. 8.30am—Driving to work. I wonder what these drivers around me had for breakfast? Lucky bastards. 10.50am—While in a meeting, I draw a slice of mortadella showing the pistachio slices, cubes of fat and the yummy combination of coriander seeds and myrtle berries. 1.33pm—Even a Tsarist penal colony served its inmates bread with their water. I’m going for a walk! 2.35pm—For the last five days I’ve felt cold. I’m leaving work early as I feel that draining feeling overtake me and have no way of knowing when it will pass. 8pm—My son, Samson, chose Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs for his bedtime story. Kissing him good night and leaving his room, the desire to have it rain pancakes and maple syrup like in the town of Chewandswallow is overwhelming.. Better still, would be smoked fish, a little fresh cracked pepper, lemon and a spicy Gewürztraminer.

Day 6: 10.46am—I seem to constantly have a glass of water in my hand. Seeing as it’s my only grip on life, that’s not surprising. Water is boring. It was boring by the end of the first day. It’s really boring, now. 12.50pm—To reach a weight just under 130lbs will mean I’ve lost 8 precious pounds and for my stature the definition of the unbearable lightness of being is no stretch. 3.45pm—When your toes are red and sensitive, the best course of action is to call your alchemist…really. I have one. He lives in Portsmouth and keeps bees. He said my condition could be my organs righting themselves and that the effects are felt where the majority of nerve endings exist in the hands or feet. He also thought I was crazy to undertake a fast of this kind with two children and working full time. He said my pulse rate is much lower than normal, my gamma brain waves have decreased and my base metabolic rate is way, way down…he’s a persuasive kind of guy and recommended seclusion, mountains and exercise—three phenomena I’m fresh out of. 6pm—Our family has had much to celebrate this week and today Hope added one more to the list with a new job. I chilled two cocktail glasses. She received a gin martini, I partook in chilled water. Cheers.

Day 7: 1.35am—“If there’s one thing I crave, its Mexican food,” I said to Hope. She didn’t answer. No doubt the time had something to do with it. Chava’s in San Francisco’s Mission District might be one of the best I’ve had. On Sunday’s it cooks its famous tripe “menudo” soup, which people flock to eat. Lots of fresh lime juice, cilantro and flour tortillas and away you go. I’m so hungry. And knowing that this is the last day makes it harder. 7.15am—There have been extensive test to support the fact that eating less is better for you. A more dramatic piece of evidence is that the vast majority of people who survived the concentration, POW and torture camps of Germany, Russia and Cambodia lived well into their ‘90s from their forced starvation. 10.48am—I’m looking at the last jug of water that is almost empty. 12.45pm—Throughout this fast, I have been expecting to see a dramatic change; the oozing toxins, the nausea, outbreaks, the flu and other wild transformations…I even read that my hair would fall out. Instead, barring my red toes, which have since subsided, I’ve had mild symptoms of dry mouth, thick tongue, some pains and a week-long rumble in the stomach. On the positive side, my usual aches have completely disappeared, I feel light, limber and have twice the energy. My alchemist called to say that on second thought, my red toes are a reflection of my pancreas. He advised to go have it checked. Looking back on this week, food moved from real to cerebral. The feeling that this fast would be the opposite of supersize me so that it would minimize me never entered my mind. I don’t advocate this kind of fast without a great deal of research and perhaps a doctor’s consultation. However, if you want to know a little more about yourself and those close to you, and if you want to feel the way I do—I mean the good parts—have a go. It is without doubt, the mother of all spring cleanings and I do believe something I might endure every spring. Now, what to eat? Hmmm, a steamed floret of cauliflower sounds about right. Water anyone?

This story originally appeared in Newport Life Magazine, http://www.newportlifemagazine.com/. Many thanks to my editor for letting me tweak it and hang it up on my own blog. Cheers, Annie.