The Fasting Freshman Chronicles: An Experiment

My suitemate does not eat carbs.

That might sound weird to you, and I know it sounded weird to me when she first told me, I think in response to an offering of my mom’s homemade bread. I subsequently read the entire Wikipedia article on “no-carb diets” and was fascinated. Of course, she allows for the various fruits and vegetables that are low in carbs to avoid health complications, but the article clarified that only meat, seafood, cheese, eggs and fat can be consumed in a truly no-carb diet.

I was enthralled!

I love to try different things in order to test my limits, but when I read the article I realized that I had never tried one of the main experiments I had always wanted to try: fasting. Diets and their effects on the body captivate me, but the effect of no food on the body is even more interesting. I have always been a healthy eater and I consider myself a “foodie”–there are few things in life I truly enjoy more than trying a new food, shopping for groceries, and cooking a good meal. However, I have never been on a diet in all of my eighteen years and three months, unless one would consider a three-year state of semi-vegetarianism a diet.

I’m not an advocate for diets. I have never been on a diet and do not think people my age should have to worry about diets. They are just so interesting!

I’m all for being comfortable with one’s body no matter the size, shape, whatever, but eating healthily is something I am even more comfortable with. That is the main reason why I decided to try to fast for 24 hours. Since I entered college, my weight has fluctuated oddly, affected by both the exercise I get daily (rowing practice, walking around campus, jogging along the trails, etc.) and the irregular eating patterns I have developed to fit in with my new schedule. My family is the “three square meals a day” type, and so I would not have dreamed of leaving the house without a timely 6:30 am breakfast in high school. Today, the occasional breakfast of coffee and a bagel occurs about twice a week.

It gets harder to follow this bad boy in college. One the best parts of home life are the square meals and the access to grocery-bought foods.

I am slowly leaning toward the convenience of eating whatever I can find or whatever is close instead of whatever is healthiest, and this change in personal diet has thrown my digestive system, metabolism, and overall bodily function out of whack. I stopped to think about my recent dietary choices after eating buckeye gelato. “I’ll kill two birds with one stone and fast. I’ve always wanted to try it just to see what it was like, and it will serve as a cleanse for my messed-up insides,” I thought. I was not prepared for the effects the fast would have, however.

I allowed myself water, which, I read in all the online sources on fasting, is a necessity. I consumed my last meal at 8 p.m. Monday, and slept very well that night, waking up feeling the same as I do every morning. I did not experience hunger pains until the 13-hour mark, during my 9 a.m. survey class. However, the pains were mild and I easily ignored them. A slight and annoying headache formed around hour 15, but I functioned normally otherwise. I had consumed two bottles of water by hour 15 as well–I even sat in a Panera during a meeting and experienced no hunger pains. And I love Panera! I arrived home at 1 pm, hour 17, and the throbbing in my head had increased. I tried to distract myself from the pain by sitting down and reading a magazine. Halfway through the magazine, to my shock and surprise, my eyelids became too heavy to keep open and my neck fell backward as if it were suddenly unable to support the weight of my head! I unwillingly dozed off for a matter of minutes before awaking to an unfamiliar dizzy and groggy feeling that was, frankly, frightening. It had been 18 hours and in order to continue its functions, my body had been burning ketone bodies (breaking down fat in my body) for approximately 12 hours. If I had been eating, my body could have used the glucose from the food I had consumed. I panicked and ate a piece of bread and a cheese stick, and relief came almost immediately.

My preferred brand of bottled water, which is also the only thing I consumed during the fast.

I was disappointed that I did not last the entire 24 hours. I had read stories of people surviving weeks without food, even months, and I could not survive a single day. On the other hand, the headache and stomach pain continued into the night and through my rowing practice, even though I had consumed baby carrots, orange juice and salad since the initial ending of the fast at 18 hours.

That is one dietary experiment that I will wait a long time before I try again. The effects of the fast hit all at once and I fell into a stupor that alarmed me. I attribute the failure of the experiment to the fact that I did an excessive amount of walking and other daily activity without food to power me–I believe the fast could have lasted much longer alongside inactivity. The positive side of the experiment, however, is that the 18-hour flush allowed my digestive system to basically clean itself out, and I do feel much better in that regard.