I didn’t ride the trainer tonight, even though Tuesday is the day for it. It’s not that I’m lazy. It’s also not that I’ve ridden through the woods this afternoon. I didn’t even ride to work. I stayed at home all day. The reason I don’t feel like exercise is that I haven’t eaten in 48 hours. I’m not at my best, and too weak for exercise.
I didn’t have many expectations when I started fasting after dinner on Sunday. I thought I’d be hungry, but that’s the only thing that hasn’t happened yet. I guess the body turns down sugar consumption overnight. If you don’t restart it with breakfast, the body remains in this state, somewhere between a snooze and hibernation, and doesn’t yearn for glucose.
The first day was surprisingly easy. I wasn’t hungry at all. A few cups of tea and a few bottles of water got me through the workday. I felt fine and worked normally. This didn’t seem bad at all, which makes sense because periodic fasting is well established as being good. It shifts energy from proliferation to maintenance. Normal cellular processes are slowed down or stopped. Only recycling and repair are upregulated to extend survival.
I found three clinical trials in the US designed to assess the effects of fasting during chemotherapy (NCT00936364, NCT01175837 and NCT01304251). Two of them have recently completed, but I didn’t find any results. Instead I found another opinion piece, this time in Nature Reviews Cancer, that praises the potential benefits of fasting, published almost back to back with a response that warned of malnutrition and weight loss (and a riposte to that). Malnutrition is not an issue for me. I’m eating well. Instead of losing weight, I gained a few kilograms during chemotherapy. Now I’m down by more than two kilos. This is quite a bit and urges for caution, but I don’t see this as a huge issue. My appetite is strong, and I’ll regain the weight quickly.
The second day was much worse than the first. I was still not hungry, but I felt out of energy, quite literally half the man I used to be. I had urges to stuff my face with chocolate during the afternoon and with fresh bread at night. I had no idea there were so many tasty things in the house. They remained off limits to me.– I’m also very cold. My body seems to have more important things to do than keeping me warm.
When Muslims fast during Ramadan, they frequently describe how their brain is more alert than usually. They’re much more focused on the things that matter. This might be true for me as well, but the thing that matters is food. As the afternoon progressed today, I found myself increasingly obsessed with food. It became the only thing I was thinking about. Now it’s almost time to go to bed, and I still haven’t eaten.
Tomorrow will be my third day of fasting. The cancer cells are hopefully exploding out of frustration at the lack of energy. This picture gives me the strength to carry on, but I’m definitely looking forward to dinner. I will probably stick to bread and cheese and take it easy at first. No chocolate, no drinks, just clean living for the rest of the night. Asceticism is definitely not my thing, but extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures.
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