Water Fast Day 7, One Week Later

The end of today marked the end of an entire week on this water fast. Can you believe it? It still blows my mind that I have had nothing to eat except water for so long, especially when I used to eat almost every two hours.

Today I awoke feeling physically weak again. I figured this was the consequence of overexerting myself yesterday. Walking home from class, some mild chest pains came back, but eased after resting. Then, while walking later in the day, I felt my chest become stiff and I could feel the strain of moving around. Even lifting my water bottle required effort. Definitely a day for rest. The chest pain returned later in the evening when I was just sitting. I have read that many other fasters experience chest pains (some much more strongly than I) and I wondered what issue my body might be healing.

Fasters often experience much more vivid dreams. I also have been having more frequent and vivid dreams, though I don't remember them all. And yes, I have had dreams about eating food. I once had a dream about eating at one of my favourite restaurants. Earlier during the day, I had cravings for a roti dish there, but when the dish appeared in my dreams, I refused to eat it! I would also often wake up at around 5am and toss and turn. It felt like my body wanted to be in a very specific position but I could never find it. Despite the tossing and turning, I have yet to feel the sleep deprivation I used to always feel before the fast no matter how much I slept.

I had mentioned before that I was experiencing soreness in my calves when I walked around campus. The soreness in my legs has disappeared, but now I find that if I slouch while sitting, soon after my back will be sore. And that soreness persists the rest of the day.

My tongue has cleared up and so has my breath. From research, this is possibly a sign that my body is storing up energy for a major cleanse soon.

My weight loss has been a lot more rapid than expected. I knew the first few days I would lose a lot of water weight, however, I was expecting the loss to decrease to about 0.3-0.5 lbs a day. I calculated this by looking at my daily caloric needs and comparing it to 3500 calories per pound. I suspect that a lot of the weight the last few days may be from muscle since the body will resort to burning muscle if not enough energy is supplied by fat.

I find it very interesting that I either have not experienced many of the typical detox symptoms or the symptoms are very mild such as weakness, headaches, nausea, dizziness, back pain, etc. I think perhaps this is due to my fairly clean eating the past couple of months and that the detox process has not yet tapped into the fat stores from my older eating habits.

Here are some gum paste flowers that were sitting in the classroom today. I think these ones were made by the chef as they were very refined compared to the rest.

Cute wedding cake toppers!

Tomorrow will be my first shift in the Marketplace and hopefully everything will go well. Starting tomorrow, us helpers will be bringing the baked goods up to the Marketplace rather than having them delivered which means I will be walking around a moving lots.

Summary
Water drank: abotu 1.5 litres
Weight change: -1.4 lbs
Total weight change: -8.6 lbs
Overall feeling: Weak from yesterday with some chest pains which indicate I need to rest more and stop moving around so much!