Earlier this week, Miss Meathead and I had this exchange:
Me: I'm hungry
Her: Are you hungry or do you just want to eat
Me: I don’t know the difference
And it’s true. I honestly don’t. Such is my love affair with
food. Eat to live?? Balls to that. I live to eat. From the smells to the
sizzles to biting into something so tasty it has a heathen like me saying grace
– food is the ultimate sensory art and I its most eager student.
The idea of doing something like fast, then, seems as pleasant
as a punch to the face. And yet, that is
exactly what I've agreed to do.
Why?
3 main reasons:
1.
Miss Meathead is doing it and asked me to do it
with her.
2.
Doing shit like this with your partner is just
one of those things you have to do as part of the Universal Partner Agreement,
along with carrying heavy things and buying tampons.
3.
Truly, I could do with a detox of sorts. I’d
just like to place the blame squarely on her from the outset so that I can have
someone to direct my bitter resentment towards later.
So, there are the 2 basic rules to the fast:
A.
It’s not really a fast in the purest sense of
the word. I get 3 meals per day, but the meals are limited to these tiny
packets of freeze-dried astronaut food, created with slow torture in mind. My
dad used to tell me about how in the army they’d eat these things called “MRE’s”
(Meals Ready to Eat). I can’t say for sure, but I reckon those were like a
5-stack with hash-browns at Denny’s compared to the pulverised food dust I’ll be having for the
next 10 days. Anyway, I’ll call them MRE’s from here on out for lack of a
better name. They are about 130 calories each, so just under 400 total calories
a day, or less than 20% of my RDA and about 5% of my PFA (Preferred Food
Amount).
B.
I can drink water, leaf tea or black coffee.
Nothing else.
DAY 1
The first day was not so bad, and to that I can thank the
Christmas period. I know the holidays are the time for indulgence but good god,
I exceeded my own lofty standards. I remember one day feeling as though my
intestines were so stuffed that they had turned into, ironically, a sausage of
their own.
A day without proper food was in order, and it took those
first 24 hours to stop feeling full anyway.
Day 2 (Today)
Woke up feeling okay. Starting the day knocking back a few
glasses of water seems to help.
Today being the last with nice weather for a while, Miss
Meathead and I decided to do some walking at a local wildlife reserve. Packed MRE
# 1, which looked like a mini-power bar. By mid-day I'd had enough and had to eat. I nibbled on that power bar slowly, like squirrel eating a frozen snickers, so that it would last longer (this, I can already tell, will be an important strategy throughout).
One thing I've realised early about this “fast” is that it
doesn't mix well with exercise in that it burns calories and thus brings a
hunger that you can’t do a lot about.
By 4pm, I was famished. I mean, proper fucking hungry. It
was all I could do to not think about food. I don't do well as a person when I'm that hungry. In our normal lives, I ask Miss Meathead to carry a bag of peanuts that she can throw at me when I'm hungry and we're not near food. She ignores this request, and at her own peril.
I warded off the hunger with MRE #
2. It was a ‘vegetable soup’ packet, not unlike those cup-a-soups you
can get from the store. It was about half a coffee mug worth, so I sipped it as
slow as I could, again, to give the illusion of quantity.
It helped a little, but by 6pm I had a blistering headache.
Miss Meathead says this is due to a state the body goes into called “Ketosis”.
Something about carb withdrawal.
At this point, I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus dude, it
has only been 2 days”. Try to understand, I’d normally get the same calories in
a single, delicious bacon/egg/cheese/avocado/Cholula sandwich than I've gotten
in the last 48 hours, dammit. <Wipes tears from eyes>.
I finally had my 3rd and final MRE of the day. It
was “Chilli Beef”, or at least that what it said on the packet, only problem
being it was absent of both Chilli and Beef. That said – and this may be the
desperation talking – it wasn't half bad. It was also about half a coffee mug’s
worth, and I literally licked the bowl at the end to get every last calorie I
could get as there is no more food, god help me, for 18 hours.
Will check back in then.
Peace,
Meathead.
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