water fast day seven: homeostasis?

medieval depiction of Hell--as you can see they
are served food there.   yeah, even in Hell.

Today I woke up feeling much better, thankfully. I could  not get to sleep last night for several hours; I actually was very restless but my physical body was tired so I resisted the urge to read.  Finally I fell asleep.  I can't say my intestines are completely over their ordeal but this morning was a dramatic improvement.  I had enough energy to take Madison and Chloe on a long walk with lots of off-leash time as it is going to rain the better part of the weekend.  As we walked there was a thick gray cloud cover that finally opened up right as I was leaving for work.  After the walk I felt depleted though, so I plopped down on the couch for a few minutes until I could gather up the energy to feed the girls and then go upstairs and dress for work.

Having lost 11 pounds certainly opens up my wardrobe options, which is certainly a welcome side effect.  I'm still not as thin as I was while eating and working out a few years ago before my hormones got out of whack.  I would not mind losing a few more pounds of fat and then building back the muscle I lost back in the gym in the coming months.  I wonder how long it's going to take me to be able to rejoin the group rides I've been going on the weeks before the fast.  Eventually when my legs get strong again it will be a welcome relief to climb those hills without those extra ten pounds.  Anyway......we shall see what kind of workouts I am able to do while I am building my strength back up and making the progression of fruits and vegetable juice to raw vegetables to  beans to tofu and so on.  I'm not sure where chocolate fits in there but I'm pretty sure it's at the end of my transition back to food.

Dr. Fuhrman likes his patients to break their fasts with watermelon, which is what I was planning to do.  There are many who give instructions to break the water fast on diluted fruit and or vegetable juice.  I have a good supply of carrots and vegetables between my fridge and my garden to supplement those first days.  The bottom line is my digestive system has been in hibernation mode for ten days when this is all said and done, and popping that avocado in my mouth could make me really sick.  There are stories on the web of fasters who broke the fast with pizza and burritos and made themselves really sick, like bedridden for a week kind of sick.

Back to today, because I am supposed to be taking this one day at a time, by mid-afternoon I was pretty tired  and still suffering from bouts of hunger and emptiness.  I tried to keep sipping as much water as possible, but my intestines were still cramping a bit from my ordeal of the last few days and that made drinking difficult because I started to feel sick.

A couple of notes: yesterday was a pretty humid day, and at 80 degrees walking the dogs normally I would be pretty slick with sweat by the time I returned home and got in the shower. Granted I am walking slower than normally, but I did not perspire at all walking them yesterday or today, and the dogs were panting like crazy.  I also noticed the hair on my legs has barely grown at all, which is handy because I sure don't feel like shaving.  It's amazing how the body quickly adapts to conservation mode.

After work today I am planning on going to a movie if I can find one playing right now that I want to see.  Then I've hit the weekend and the home stretch.  I can't believe I've made it this far.  Kudos to those of you who have encouraged me and shared their fasting stories; especially for you hard-core fasters who fasted for 21 to 40 days.  I don't think I could do it.  Certainly not if I had to work like this.

stats: weight in am = 117.4 saliva PH = 6,5  urine PH = 6.5

my Godchild picking my tomatoes for us