It is natural to feel hunger, a signal from our body that it needs nourishment, not satiety, which is the feeling of fullness after a meal. Fasting helps us understand and appreciate the difference between these two states.
I wrote this text on the 5th of November, 2023. The truth is I wrote it shortly after conducting a 46-hour fast between the 1st of November (10 p.m.) and the 3rd of November, 2023 (8 p.m.). I believe continuous eating is not natural. How can I prove it? I will try to do it. I often imagine how our primordial ancestors lived in caves (let us name them cavemen) and did not eat regularly. They ate meat only when they hunted animals. During the Spring-Summer-Fall period, they ate more vegetables or fruit once they picked it. While writing about all these things, I asked myself if a Catholic 40-day fasting period that lasts somewhere between the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring was not dictated by food lack, not in prehistoric times, but in ancient times.
I believe the recommendation to post was not dictated by God but by intelligent humans who knew that spending many days without food can make tremendous, healing things for human bodies and souls.
What is my record of fasting? For today, it is 94 hours. I hope to break it. Why do I want to break it? According to Dr. Jason Fung’s book “Complete Guide To Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting,” each human should impose a minimum two-week fast each year on oneself. One should do it to minimize the possibility of getting ill with cancer. Did I feel hungry during the 94 hours of fasting? No. I sometimes felt an appetite for food in my mind but not hunger in my stomach. I felt refreshed and reverberated. A state of hunger gives me power, a sense of control over my body and its needs.
Satiety gives me laziness and sleepiness.
Only children, pregnant women, and feeding women should not do intermittent fasting. What about the brain? Does the brain work efficiently during fasting? Undoubtedly, it works MUCH more efficiently during fasting than during feasting. If it were inverse, our primordial ancestors would die shortly, and something like human civilization would finish in caves.
