Dec 15 2007
Water Fasting - Day 4
Weight lost on day four - 2 pounds
Total lost so far - 11 pounds
Well, day four is turning out to be the last day of my “five day fast.” The weakness I felt when I woke up did not go away even after my morning walk with the dog, and it felt like time to call it quits. I believe in listening to my body when I do these experiments - no reason to take things too far and stop enjoying the process.
But I learned a great deal from my four day experiment. For one thing, I learned that it’s a fairly easy thing to lose 11 pounds (a guy would have lost more, of course), and you can do it safely, without taking any of those crazy drugs that claim to increase your metabolism and cause you to lose weight, no matter what you eat.
Of course, it’s only safe if you fast with your doctor’s permission, since things can go wrong.
The most exciting things I learned this week actually came out of the extra time I had, because I did no grocery shopping, didn’t cook any food, and didn’t sit down to any meals. During all that extra time I caught up with some of the newest research on the psychology and physiology of nutrition - I’ll be sharing some of the more important points with you in the days to come.
The next phase of this experiment is the after-fast diet. This diet, designed by Allan Cott, M.D., and explained in his books Fasting: The Ultimate Diet and Fasting as a Way of Life, is quite interesting to me for personal reasons. It appears to be a shortened version of Johanna Brandt’s grape cure. Mrs. Brandt, a South African who came to America to spread the word about her cure, believed that a short diet consisting of nothing but grapes could cure all sorts of ailments, including cancer and gingivitis.
Even though a form of the grape cure has reportedly been used in grape-growing areas of Europe for centuries, I doubt that grapes really have any cancer-curing properties, but since I’m a breast cancer survivor, I suppose a few days on organic concord grape juice won’t hurt anything.
Dr. Cott certainly made no cancer-curing claims about his post-fast diet. He simply designed it to make it easy for the digestive system to readjust itself after a few days rest.
I couldn’t help but notice how good my diluted grape juice tasted this morning. One of the greatest benefits of my fasting experiment may be a heightened enjoyment of food. Since most of us eat too fast, and enjoy our food too little, this in itself will be a welcome benefit.
Will I continue to lose weight while drinking my grape juice for two days? Stay tuned…
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