A few weeks ago I finished a weeklong fast where I lived on water and a homemade electrolyte mixture (pinch of magnesium, salt, and potassium chloride) for a week (with the occasional diet sports drink). I had done a 48-hour fast before, but this was my first longer one. 

To address the obvious “why would anybody do that”? First, it was kind of an experiential bucket list thing. It’s a life experience I’ve never had despite it being all-too-common across time and space. Second, I was curious what a longer-term fast would feel like in terms of the spiritual high. Finally and least nobly, I had gained an enormous amount of weight during a roadtrip, and, let’s just say, I wasn’t exactly at the body fat level where my body would start to cannibalize itself, and I lost 20 pounds. (I also ran across some literature that suggested that at a high enough body fat percentage losses from lean muscle mass are negligible in a long fast when it’s paired with some resistance training.) 

So what did I learn? 

• The spiritual high is very real. Honestly, I typically don’t get much of a buzz from our normal fasts, because the first 24 hours of a fast you’re irritably dealing with cravings and being “hangry.” After the first 24-35 hours the cravings and hunger pains go away and you’re left with that mellow, chill (if slightly tired) vibe that makes you feel like a wise monk with a subtle smile on a mountaintop that people line up to for advice. I was actually shocked about how not hungry I was after getting over the initial hump. I had “no more desire to sin.”

 

• While I have only positive things to say about days 2-6, that last day I hit a wall, couldn’t really do much around the house or play “airplane race” with my kids on the front lawn, and the spiritual, mellow vibe had been replaced by absolute exhaustion. Again, my good experience with days 2-6 may have been a function of my higher body fat percentage (probably about 25%). I assume you reach the super-exhaustion stage sooner if you’re starting at, say, 10% body fat (for males). 

 

• I don’ know the history behind our “water + food” fasting, and I’m not arguing against it necessarily, but I do feel like food only fasts should be more of an option in cases where we want to healthily fast for longer. (But maybe it’s for the better, I remember at one point as a teenager wanting to fast for three days for a spiritual matter thinking I could “brute force” the issue, but not doing so because three days without water sounded more dangerous).  

 

• Jesus’ fast of 40 days makes more sense to me than it did before. Often we think of neat round numbers like that as being symbolic, but I appreciate better now how going on a longer fast while meditating and praying deeply really had the potential to uncover all sorts of spiritual insights. While I couldn’t do it this time around, in the future when kids are older and I have more bandwidth I’d love to pair a longer weeklong fast with intense and frequent temple-going, praying, meditating, and scripture study. Again, not to brute-force anything spiritually, but to be able to take advantage of all the spiritually synergistic possibilities.