One Whole Week on Water Alone!

Allright, I've got to keep this entry short - which is probably a blessing compared to my rambling earlier ones. But the fast is still going fine. Going for the ten-day mark and then fourteen days, and then I ... well, we'll figure out what to do as we get closer.

Recap of Last 24 Hours
Yesterday was a day off from work. I got up and blogged, got ready, ran some errands. Oh, I went to check out a support meeting - not for fasting, for some other things I'm working on in this life of mine. Tried to go shopping after that. Didn't buy anything again. Came home and cleaned a little - Hey! Finally put that laundry away! The dishes are still waiting, and I hope I can get those done before I leave this morning.

My friend Mick came over last night and helped me with a desk I was building and some other minor construction things around my place. He was there for about three hours. He left at ten p.m., I fell asleep by eleven.

The fast is getting easier in some respects, but as I was saying yesterday about it being boring ... it is boring compared to what I knew before. As in eating, and the choices that come with eating.
For example:

When I was driving to the meeting, it was about noon, and it was in the heart of a very restaurant-heavy area of the city. I drove past a pizza place I used to love and haven't had in years - Oh! It flashed in my head that just one piece would hurt! Luckily, I didn't have time to stop before the meeting; I wonder if I had been early, would I have broken? Then, the other restuarants. So many great choices!

I got thinking about how much I look forward to food most of the time. At work, I think about lunch: What should I have today? Pizza? Burrito? Sub? Salad? It's like this great mid-day personal treat and diversion. But, not for the next week.

I am also surprised again at how emotionally OK I am. Although, at the support meeting I went to - it was my first time there and I am just exploring whether or not I think this program is for me - other people were sharing their experiences. Their experiences weren't all that tear-jerking; I just felt so relieved that I was in a place that I felt could help me with that issue that I was in and out of tears the whole meeting. This is not all that unusual from my prior behavior, though.

Anyway, that night when Mick came over, I went to meet him at the El stop, and again, we were walking past all these restaurants. A lot of what Mick and I did together was going out to eat, I was experiencing this Pavlovian response. I told him this, that just being around him made me want to say, "Forget this stupid fast. We haven't tried this Indian place yet!" But, we didn't.

He said to me last night, "You know, isn't there some TuPac song about how if you imagine it in your mind your body thinks it happened?" I'm not down with TuPac - neither is he for that matter. But I know what he was saying - if I imagine eating the food, my mind will be satisfied. So, I did that last night for a minute, imagined eating one of the foods I'd been missing. It really does work. This morning I woke up, SO WANTING that eggplant parmesean that I was planning on having for my birthday meal tomorrow night. So, I laid in bed, and just imagined the whole eating ritual I have with that meal - cutting the eggplant, spearing it on my fork, twirling some spaghetti onto the fork, salting it, and letting it melt in my mouth. I ate the whole thing in my imagination. I gottta say, it sounds simple-minded and silly I know, but it worked. I feel satiated on my eggplant parmesean craving.

Physical Changes
-I've mentioned my ability to peel the skin off from around my fingers; not down to the quick, of course, just a layer or two down. That has stopped. They are still repairing themselves, but no knew fungus laden skin is forming.
-I had great energy yesterday. I couldn't even tell I haven't eaten food. I was alert and ready to go. Physical exercise is still done lightly, but as Mick and I were doing the construction, there was no light headednes, no need to take it easy per se. Except for:
- I was getting massive acid reflux yesterday. I never got acid reflux before. Mick and I tried to hypothosize on it - is it because I am eating less than my body is used to, but it's still generating the acid needed to process all the food I'd been eating before? I'll have to look that up.
- MY TONGUE - ick. That sums it up. But to give you a visual picture, it's been white coated for a while, even before I started this fast, due to the candida overgrowth in me. Yesterday I looked at it ... Let's see. If my tongue were to be used in a movie, it would be pulsating and bubbling with the white coating, popping up like when spaghetti sauce gets to hot and the bubble explodes. It's coated with a thick, white ... moss-looking substance. That's what it looks like, very fine grain but feathery white moss. It's gross. I can't wait until that clears out.
- No bowel movement yesterday.

What the next 24 Hours Holds
I am working and then driving the approximately three hours from Chicago to my hometown in Wisconsin for my Dad's 70th birthday party. I have to work today, then drive up, drive back, and work tomorrow. It's going to be exhausting, I think, but doable.

Final note: Last night I had a dream that I was at a wedding, and in the dream I had been doing this fast as well. There was food out and it wasn't the most gourmet or even good quality food, it was more fast food convenience store fare. I absent-mindedly picked up a muffin. I took the muffin partly because I was internally justifying eating something - I haven't eaten in a week! I deserve to eat SOMETHING! But I also took the muffin so people wouldnt' think I was starving myself, since it had been so long since anyone had seen me eat anything. I did my ritual with the muffin, taking the top off and eating that first. I got three bites in, and I was like, what have I done? I'm ingesting yeast and sugar - there very things that caused all that gross fungus in me in the first place! And I did that over a MUFFIN? Muffins are fine, but they are not on my top ten list of things I look forward to eating when I start eating again. Fuck. I'm so pissed I did this.

Then I woke up, happy that I really hadn't. I can get through one more week. See you tomorrow.