Last weekend, I took up a challenge to do a 3 day juice fast. If you know me well, you know I love my food and my periodic shots of caffeine quite a lot. But with all the transformations I was experiencing at a mental and a spiritual level, I thought it’s time to test the physical level too. I wanted to test my levels of self-control and willpower and signed up without really thinking about how tough it’s going to be.
A few reflections that came up as I went through the process:
Conscious intention works
As the date for the fast came closer, I started worrying if I took up more than I could chew. While I’ve been doing Intermittent Fasting and fruit diets on and off, juicing, and that too for 3 whole days was a whole other ball game. As the cold feet crept in, I decided to let the fears subside and make a conscious intention to try the juice fast with all my might. I reminded myself that this was a challenge to test my limits of self-control and it won’t matter if I failed. I just had to start and see how far I could go.
While the first day was difficult with acute detox symptoms (vomiting, headache, acidity – they are all normal symptoms by the way when we suddenly go on a fast), things got significantly better. Meditations, pranayama, and yoga flows supported in internalizing this conscious intention and in giving the strength to stick around.
One day at a time:
Before starting the juice fast I was anxious about the number 3. 3 whole days! I was continually thinking how I’m going to survive without any solid foods for 3 days. But as soon as the first day hit and the symptoms started to kick in by the time I had my third juice for the day, I realized it was foolhardy. The anxiety about finishing 3 days made things worse for where I was on Day 1, and I decided to let go.
Similarly in life, we need to learn to master one day first before trying to conquer them all. Way too often we get caught planning for the idealistic near-perfect future whose arrival we can never be sure of. All we can do is conquer today.
We are stronger than we think we are
On a normal day, I’d walk to the fridge 100 times in the middle of the day to pick a piece of dark chocolate or to the kitchen to brew another hot cup of coffee. I thought this is normal because as a writer I have my bouts of inspiration and chokes and this was a good way to unwind, regroup, and get back to work. But I was surprised by how I managed to ignore those temptations in the juice fast. I didn’t open the fridge until day 3, and even then it was because its Sunday and I needed to stock up on veggies. And coffee? Didn’t even think about it or crave for it despite making coffee for my husband all 3 days. I used to have 2 cups of coffee within a few hours of my workday and I thought I couldn’t live without it. Despite that, I realized I could not just stay away but am now thinking I can actually go for a few days without that cup of coffee( I haven’t yet gone back to it).
Breaking a fast is harder than starting one:
In life most habits are easy to break but difficult to build. With a juice fast it was the opposite, it was so much easier to stay on the fast once the body settled down, breaking the fast took so much time and felt so uncomfortable. For 3 days of fasting, the fast had to be broken down over 1.5 days and even light foods felt so heavy after fasting for such a brief period.
And therein came the biggest realization, our bodies need a lot less food than what we eat on a normal day. Not just to survive, but to thrive. For the longest time I thought it was me, that I craved it unnecessarily, but then I got curious and dug a bit deeper.
All of us today are essentially, dealing with a paleolithic brain in modern society. Our ancestors grew up in scarcity, there was never enough to go around and things like fat, sugar, and fried items were a rarity at best. But we are living in a world of abundance. We have access to cheap food, garments, over stimuli from screens and so many other things and our current lifestyles mismatch the conditions from which our automated responses originated.
Like Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard professor says,
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”
So if you’re like me feeling ashamed that you have little self-control, don’t berate yourself. Understand that this is a difficult journey, you need to rewire neurons in our brains that are conditioned since generations. Be patient and compassionate as you master your mind, will, and self-control. Know that you could slip, make mistakes, miss the goal every now and then, but keep moving forward. Because once you control the tongue, the world is yours to conquer.
