RUNNING ON EMPTY

I should be miserable. I’d been cautioned: Watch out for day three. That’s when the demons begin to rage. I’m on a medically supervised 10-day fast that promises to help me shed some weight while also futureproofing that newly slimmed-down body against aging. Worth the odd demon or a pang or two, then.

Indeed, I’m a bit hungry—but that’s not surprising, given that I’ve consumed little more than tea, juice and soup over the past 48 hours. But I had been anticipating far worse, as several friends, all veterans of the Buchinger Wilhelmi process I am undertaking, had warned me. The real challenges in forgoing food wouldn’t be simple hunger, they said. “Fasting isn’t the hard part,” said one. “It’s the emotional side. I usually spend the third day curled in a ball in my room, weeping. Everything you repress just comes out, all at once.” A second moaned about the physical side effects on day three for her: throbbing headaches, a furry tongue and dry skin, all because the toxins her body was purging began to crest, she said, wide-eyed. The consensus was that I’d feel, generally, dreadful—not just hungry but also sad, aching and exhausted, likely confined to my bed, wakefully toggling between napping and fretting. Yet another confided that it was day three when the risk of cheating peaked. She’d heard that folks usually skulk out the clinic’s