Lunch.

At the moment of typing this, I haven’t eaten for about seventy-two hours. I actually feel a little better than at hour twenty-four, when I couldn’t read or watch TV for the fear that a character might have the audacity to eat something in front of me. But more about this later. First, I should mention why someone who loves food as much as I do would ever consider embarking on a fast.

1)    Foremost was the notion that a relatively brief fast might help my turbulent stomach return to its usual steely resolve. I’m not sure why it’s been in such a huff lately, but not much seems to soothe it, and I was reminded of a friend who fasts about once a year mentioning that it helped her sort out the foods that she can’t tolerate. If you clean out your system, she said, you’ll know immediately when you start eating again if there’s something you should avoid. I liked this idea of a gastric reset button and decided that this might be a way to clear my stomach’s fog of confusion.

2)    Although it’s far from a proven fact, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that fasting might benefit you in the long run. An article in Harper’s magazine explores the possibility that simply not eating for a few days might help patients undergoing anything from epilepsy to chemo. The problem is that not doing something doesn’t really benefit anyone financially, most obviously pharmaceutical companies, so fasting hasn’t received the funding for rigorous testing. At any rate, I do recall being scared a few years ago by some news article that likened burning calories to putting miles on a car—eventually, the engine, or the body, just wears out. Yikes, I thought. I eat way more than a lot of people. Maybe I should give the engine a rest for a few days.

3)    There was a chance, however remote, that fasting might bring some sort of clarity and insight. People describe having this sort of experience on a fast, and I thought that perhaps I was missing something. Flaubert ate virtually nothing while writing his novels (though if you’ve ever seen his portrait, you can probably guess that he gorged himself as soon as he delivered a manuscript to the publisher). Maybe the next Madame Bovary is lurking within me, blocked until now by food.

(Note: I did not list losing weight. I figured that anything that did not come off while training for a marathon was probably there for a reason. If you’re interested, the Harper’s article, “Starving Your Way to Vigor” by Steve Hendricks covers this aspect in depth.)

I suppose I was also just curious about how it would make me feel. Isn’t that the reason anyone tries much of anything? So I just stopped eating, and drinking, too, save for water and unsweetened tea.

The answer, at least so far, is…okay. I would not say I feel good. Let us not go that far. I almost mauled a woman at the movie theater today for her popcorn, and the initial stomach-growling phase kind of sucked. But generally, I’m amazed at how little I’ve been affected. I look the same and, save some dark thoughts in the cinema, have remained in relatively good spirits. I’m not overly energetic, but walking actually feels good and takes my mind off of being hungry. No, I have not had any grand epiphanies, but it is rather mentally freeing to not have to worry about one’s next meal. Mostly, I just feel sort of amazed at the body’s resilience. If a biblical-style famine rolls around, don’t expect me to collapse on the first day.

All that being said, I guess the true test of whether any of this has been worth it won’t come until I start eating again, which will probably be in the next day or so. Will I emerge a cleansed and better person? I’m not sure. But I guess it was worth a shot.