Fasting Day 7 of 21! Emotional Victory Today! 156 hours of fasting, complete!

Victory = 9 1/2 pounds I lost this week! 
BMI decreased by 1.5 points!
Fat weight decreased 4 1/2 lbs.!
I have an awesome scale that measures, bone density, muscle weight, fat weight and %, and more! It has about 10 different measurement parameters! 

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Today is the day I feel like caca... poop... sh**! Of course, spending 30 minutes prior to ingesting any caffeine learning how to use my new ketone blood tester didn't help.  After pricking myself 5 times and continually getting an error message, I got pissed and gave up. I felt shaky and exasperated. Taking part of my daily salt intake prior to getting something in my stomach was a bad idea on top of trying to measure my glucose/ketones* before caffeine time.

I can tell my emotional resilience is low today, commensurate to how I feel in my physical body--so it's a day to take it easy and rest.  I'm pleased and proud that I have the insight to recognize that I am not at full capacity today. I also recognize the need to recall that "This will pass!": the physical feelings of fatigue and impatience are fleeting.  In the past, during my other longer fasts of 5-8.5 days, this is type of day where I would quit.  I just couldn't bear the crappy feeling and feelings of fatigue, malaise, and ennui.  It felt like it would never end. But this thought is the same mistake I've made in the past, and well beyond the realm of fasting.  In my emotional life, when I have a negative feeling--whether stress, depression, fear, physical pain/illness, etc.--it mires me down. The THOUGHTS mire me down, and I THINK that the feelings will NEVER go away.  I sense that I am stuck in that moment of misery forever. This is what causes my downward spiral into depression and ill health--the thought that the negative circumstance or feeling will NEVER END. Worse, the feelings translate into actions and habits, creating neural grooves in my mind that create a feedback loop of more negativity.  Luckily, I recognize this now, and actively work on stopping those thoughts to experiencing greater awareness about the temporary aspects of feelings, emotions, and situations. 

This awareness circles back to what I have been learning about fasting and how my body feels during extended fasts these last 4 1/2 months that I have been experimenting with extended fasts.  Now, I try to remember the wave analogy: waves crest and crash; have a trough and a peak. All feelings about situations--and in fact, those circumstances--in life, crest and crash; have a trough and a peak. Yeah, many people have already figured out this lesson and applied it, but I have years of habits, neurochemistry, and neural pathways that have prevented me from applying that knowledge.  I've always envied people who can just let things go; realizing that since they can't control the situation, why stress out over it! Those people know inherently that a situation will change and pass, so better to accept it rather than allow themselves to feel miserable over it.  Looking back, this has been one of my greatest obstacles. If I don't like a situation, I try to change it.  If I can't change it, I continue to fight it, and get stressed and miserable because of it. Either that or I just leave; AKA, running away.  These thoughts--that the misery or stress will never end--cause an endless cycle of more stress, and then depression.  But I'm working on those thought patterns and the actions that follow. Applying this to the present moment, I recognized pretty quickly that my impatience was at Defcon 3 this morning.  I observed my physical self and my emotional self, noticed the low resilience, accepted how I felt, recognized the need to rest and take it easy, and acted on that awareness by deciding to ALLOW it and take it easy for today! That's not only a huge victory, but pretty damn impressive given my emotional history with these type of challenges!  BOOYA! 

*I don't have diabetes or any of that; it is more of a science experiment on my body.  I want to see what happens to my blood glucose while fasting, as well as check how deep I am into ketosis while fasting.  

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I decided to take extreme measures of self-care, by cancelling a trip into town for someone today, postponing the calls I need to make, and deciding to plop myself on the couch to read and go full cinephile.  My body, mind,  and heart crave rest and an absence of other humans, so that is what will happen! I am grateful I have the space, time, and opportunity to care for myself in this way.  In fact, last night I was thinking: "How awesome is it that I  have the next 2 months to fully commit to self-care, healing, and redesigning my teaching career!" In the past seven days, I've moved deeper into myself as I fast. This process will continue over the next 14 days, as I move toward my planned 21-day fast.  I've even considered extending this fast to 30 days if I'm feeling energized and healthy at the three-week mark! My body is healing. My mind is transforming. My heart is opening.  If I can focus exclusively on three actions over the next 2-3  weeks:  fasting, transforming my body and emotional state,  and building my new teaching business, I will also create space to strengthen my spiritual practice.  I really want to move deep inside myself during this longer fast and heal my relationship with food and my body permanently, as well as structure my yoga sadhana into my daily routine... also permanently.  I am confident that I can make these shifts in my mind, heart, body, soul, and daily schedule!! 

Just like the aforementioned wave, the discomfort crested: I experienced it and allowed it.  Once I accepted it, the wave of discomfort crashed, and now I'm experience the smooth ripples of allowing and taking care of myself. That's the positive outcome of an initially sh**y day: it's not so caca anymore. Yeah, I still feel a bit tired and weak, but I'm not in a "mood" any longer.  Now I can embrace my dual victory of making it through the first 7 days of my 21-day fast, and making it over the hump of fighting reality to accepting reality. 

That makes for a good day!