No Fast Week 4

Blown out of the water by carbs. Yep – that’s me. No fast because of carbs.

You can read about our once a week fast for the previous three weeks here: Fast – Week 3 and a New Lesson. You will also notice a mention of a certain ice cream. I think that ice cream was the tipping point for causing me to go back to GAPS. Today, Friday, is supposed to be our fasting day, but it isn’t. Usually I wake up fine and am not hungry. Today I was starving and shaky. I haven’t been that way in years, and clearly trying to fast was going to be a very disagreeable experience.

What fasting has taught me is how incredibly much sugars affect the body (in addition to temporarily mutating DNA and crashing the immune system). By sugar I mean not just white sugar, but disaccharides in general (grain, sweeteners, non-fermented dairy, and most beans). In addition to the ice cream (and I didn’t eat a lot, but can tell you that the coconut is my favorite of the three flavors we tried so far), I have been eating corn on the cob and drinking some non-fermented raw milk and beer. I had no food cravings, though, until the ice cream. And now they are back. Last night I capped my food slide off with a chocolate chip cookie, and now I am a shaky, hypoglycemic mess. Even my smoothie didn’t take the edge off right way.

How is Ryan doing? He admitted to food cravings earlier this week, but says he has had them for a few weeks. He eats more grain than I do, and he ate more ice cream, but he doesn’t seem to be affected the way I am. Still, he knows he needs to get back on GAPS.

What happens on GAPS? We periodically go back to GAPS when the food cravings creep in. Since we did the hard work more than two years ago (read this one year anniversary post to learn about the many, many things we healed using GAPS), so this will be cake. I am thinking it will be about two weeks before food cravings stop, and then we will stay on for about another six weeks. We won’t experience any noticeable die-off symptoms (as opposed to the initial time we did GAPS), and that will be about it. We will be free again from the critters in the gut that demand we feed them sugar, grains, etc.

What happens after six weeks? We will stick pretty close to GAPS. It is amazing how we know it is the right thing to do, but we slowly and periodically stray, find ourselves compromised and go back again. I don’t know why we do it over and over when we know what the right thing is, but we do.

I have known for awhile that I needed to be on GAPS, regardless of the new food cravings. When I am eating really, really well, I have no body odor. It is the strangest thing. Needless to say, that is not the case now. In order to lose the odor again, I will probably need to stay on four months or so, but I am going to take it one week at a time once I am past the initial six weeks.

There is no perfect equilibrium when it comes to humans, and each time I stray I learn something new. This experience fasting has shown me so much more about myself, and hopefully I can stay a little closer to that equilibrium that makes my body really thrive.