Mindful Fasting

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
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Anders
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Re: Mindful Fasting

Post by Anders »

I did some more research because I wasn't clear about autophagy, if that can remove senescent cells, meaning cells that have stopped dividing and are poisoning the surrounding healthy cells. And I now learned that eating up the senescent cells is called autolysis:

"The physiology of fasting favors healthy cells. Another definition of fasting includes any process that initiates autolysis, during which poorly functioning cells are destroyed, first in the process of fasting, and then the cellular components are broken down and remetabolized. This usually begins after three days of juice or water fasting, ..." - http://treeoflifecenterus.com/fasting-t ... xpression/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So autophagy seems to be for cleaning cells internally, while autolysis is for consuming whole cells, such as damaged cells and senescent cells.

And notice that autolysis according to the article begins AFTER three days of water fasting. Dry fasting some say is three times faster, but does that hold even for autolysis? I doubt that there yet is much scientific research about that. But 3 days of soft dry fasting definitely should be enough, at least with an additional initial night.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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"Water is the most abundant molecule in cells, accounting for 70% or more of total cell mass." -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9879/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

With so much water in human cells, what happens with the ability of the body to consume unhealthy cells in water fasting? I suspect that drinking water during the fast prevents unhealthy cells from being recycled! Because when cells are destroyed their water content is released into the rest of the body. So when the body is occupied with processing water from drinking, autolysis is probably blocked!

"In biology, autolysis, more commonly known as self-digestion, refers to the destruction of a cell through the action of its own enzymes." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolysis_(biology" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

With a dry fast on the other hand, the body can easily destroy unhealthy cells and consume their water content.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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I have started my first prolonged dry fast period now. My preparation has been a few short dry fasts, all shorter than 24 hours iirc. I'm a bit confused about if I should stay totally dry even if suffering begins, or if I should "cheat" a bit by drinking and maybe even eating if the suffering becomes too severe instead of stopping the experiment altogether.

The mindfulness part is still to simply observe how my body and mind feel during the fasting. But even here I'm slightly confused about whether I should add mental visualizations or not, such as programming my mind to promote letting go of holding on to every calorie and instead feel free to consume as many of the body's own cells as needed for fastest healing.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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I'm having a cup of tea now. After just a bit over 24 hours of dry fasting. I plan a longer fast next week and decided to take it very easy in this first week. I believe a gradual approach is more gentle to my body and mind and makes the detachment from the millions of years of food and drink addiction/conditioning/habit more efficient.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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I'm doing a short dry fast today, only to prepare myself for the longer fast starting on Tuesday (Monday night). And I wanted to rant about what I find to be BS in the explanations of dry fasting. The claim everybody makes it seems is that during a dry fast the cells in the body start to fight for survival, like in a kind of survival of the fittest Mad Max scenario. That's a retarded belief imo. The liver doesn't fight with heart in a healthy body. Nor do the cells fight with each other unless there is an autoimmune disease. The body is a whole organism and the cells coordinate in a systemic, holisitic and integrated process.

A much better way to look at it I think is that the damaged and dysfunctional cells indeed are consumed first, but not because of some mindless survival struggle of the fittest. The body is simply intelligent enough to avoid start chewing on its healthy cells first.

As a metaphor, we can think of the body as a kitchen. When we eat and drink all the time that's like never cleaning the kitchen. And during a water fast we don't increase the mess in the kitchen except for bringing in loads and loads of water bottles all the time, which prevents cleaning the kitchen. With a dry fast the kitchen can be cleaned because it's not messed up further (eating food) nor littered with bottles all over the place (drinking water).
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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I only did a 34 hour dry fast this week, because even though only slight thirst during the fast, which is great, I felt weak. And I plan to increase the length of the fast next week if I feel less weak during that fast.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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I found a motivational video for my next dry fast period. The presenter is cussing and seemingly raving a lot, but he has some points I think:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oxWI1AwBq4[/youtube]
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Re: Mindful Fasting

Post by Christine »

Keep letting us know how it is going ... I am most interested in what your practice of mindful observation reveals to you while fasting. I am on a sort of imposed semi-fast myself, having no appetite I find myself eating next to nothing and food doesn't taste good, more like a foreign substance. I too am observing what this is showing me about the body's metabolism. I know it isn't the same as what you are doing and I am not looking at the biology of it, more like the shedding of past attachments.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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Yeah, the mindfulness part I think is important. I have only been doing a few shorter dry fasts during the summer. The key I believe is to get the body to burn fat, even when only fasting for a few hours. Like a reconditioning of the habit of the body to store calories as much as possible, or as Ray Kurzweil said: I want to tell my cells that you don't need to store every calorie, I'm certain that the next hunting season will be good ..... at the supermarket.
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Re: Mindful Fasting

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One problem I have found is that fasting for long periods (24 hours or more) is boring and tedious. That's a bad sign imo. Sure, in the beginning fasting will be a challenge and cause suffering for everybody probably because the body and the mind have to adjust. However, after several periods of fasting the suffering should disappear I think or else there is some kind of inner conflict going on.

Now I found this video where the host said that 16/8 intermittent fasting works for her. That means only eating during an 8 hour window each day and fast during the other 16 hours. And the guest said (from about 31 minutes into the video) that with intermittent fasting the metabolism of the body remains on the same level.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTm4IhBpGUo[/youtube]

With intermittent fasting the body keeps burning the same energy. And the guest said that he believes that the fat cells become trained to start dumping energy every day. Very interesting! Could be worth experimenting with. And I will use dry fasting because it's more efficient. And I will start with 16/8 because that works it seems. The eating window I will set to 11 AM to 9 PM. And I will focus the mindfulness part on the fasting window.
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