FasterSelf, VII: The After Fast

If you haven’t read the sixth chapter in this series, do so here:

As I write this, it’s been a week since I broke my fast (with apple juice and watermelon.) I was afraid that the fast may not have been what was causing me to feel so sluggish, but it seems that it was. While the first day of breaking a fast sucks a lot, by the next day I felt perfectly fine and back to my normal levels of energy and motivation. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just the way it played out.

After a week of analysis, I’m fairly convinced that the difficulties I had towards the end of the fast are the result of the dry desert climate. Whereas my 40 day fast took place during the summer in Fayetteville, NC (which is incredibly humid,) the environment in Reno almost completely lacks humidity. As a result of this, every morning I would wake up with my nose stuffed solidly and my mouth open and bone dry. That’s pretty unpleasant, if you can’t imagine. On top of that, it made staying hydrated quite a bit harder, and that’s a terrible thing when your number one priority is staying hydrated.

As far as breaking the fast itself went, it was actually much easier than last time. I had really intended to stick to soft foods and all that good stuff for the first five days. I really did. However, as fate would have it, after the apple juice and watermelon, my roommate and I went to a friend’s place and there just so happened to be red beans and rice… so that plan didn’t work. The bright side of this is that I had no issues beyond the initial reactivation of my digestive system. For the record, when you break a long fast, don’t plan on going anywhere for the first few hours- just trust me on that.

The question on my mind now is how I’m going to go about incorporating IF into my normal routine. As of this moment, I’m going to fast the next two days, then I’ll be experimenting with a couple different intermittent schedules. Depending on how the week goes, I may or may not be writing another chapter in this series next Saturday, but I will be continuing it at some point. For now, I have a nice big bowl of pasta salad cooling in the fridge at home that promises to make me a very happy man.

Until next time!

FasterSelf VIII: Intermittent Fasting and (not even slightly) Furious

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