A new diet starts today.

I started a new diet today.  Well actually it's not a diet as such, it's more of a total detox.  I've been thinking about doing this regime for a while and now seems the appropriate time so here I am on day one of a water fast.  I've read up about fasting and they say that the optimum time is ten days so that's what I'm aiming to achieve.  Fasting gives your body time to do essential clean up duties and healing without having to use most of its energy on digesting unhealthy toxic crap. Losing weight is just one side effect of it; it's also said to aid all sorts of healing within the body.  As I approach my fiftieth birthday I know that my health is likely to start to decline and so this should kick start me back to a healthy level with which to stride purposefully into my middle age.

One of the most interesting concepts that I read when researching fasting, is that hunger is caused by eating rather than a lack of food.  Eating food keeps you in a cycle of eat-hunger-eat that you cannot get out of and fasting, so they say, gets you out of that cycle and so hunger disappears.  I've now been 18 hours with only water and I must admit I feel less hungry at this precise moment that I normally do when eating as I usually do and I've not felt intolerably hungry all day so far.  Apparently the hunger pangs are supposed to go away completely after three days or so and then you just don't feel hungry at all.  You can get smelly breath though, headaches (which I've already got), rashes and boils etc.  This is supposedly due to the body excreting toxic stuff that's accumulated within the cells and the bad breath is a result of the body burning its fat stores for fuel.

As I sit here at home and realise that I'd normally now be stuffing my face with all sorts of stuff, I have to continually remind myself that I actually don't feel hungry and that the desire to eat is out of habit rather than need.  So long as I keep my focus on how my body actually feels, rather than on what I usually do, I should be able to control myself.  Will keep you informed.