Lessons Learned From a 100-Hour Fast
Story about my experience with a prolonged, water-only fast and what it taught me about resilience.
Fasting, like most nutrition topics, has become controversial.
Diet discussions can ignite emotions as strongly as debates about religion or politics.
While everything has its tradeoffs, the key question becomes:
What works for you?
Fasting has been shown to provide improvements in areas such as immune system function, cellular repair, insulin sensitivity, anti-inflammation, anti-aging, fat loss, physical recovery, and heart health.
Whoopty doo.
The reality is these benefits mean little if your daily food quality is poor, sleep is neglected, or physical activity is absent.
Master the fundamentals before optimizing the details.
The true power of fasting lies in mastering urge control.
Consider this: 90% of people in industrialized nations consume food for greater than 12 hours a day.
When do you take your first bite or sip of coffee after waking up?
How long before falling asleep do you stop snacking or drinking anything but water?
Our organs - gut, kidneys, liver, and heart - need recovery time just like our brain during sleep. Yet most of us respond to every hunger or thirst signal, creating extended feeding windows that limit our body’s restoration time.
Ignoring urges has become unusual.
Withholding consumption for personal benefit is rare.
Wants have become perceptual needs.
Average has become mentally vulnerable.
Are you a victim to your urges?
If you’re hungry, does your attitude shift until you eat?
Can you become comfortable when initially uncomfortable?
As with anything, there are trade-offs.
Things can be taken too far causing depreciating returns after a certain point.
When does self-created challenge become detrimental nonsense? I like to test this question on myself from time to time.
This is my personal story of developing discipline with food and eventually completing a 100-hour, water-only fast.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Resilient Mental State to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.