Day 3 of 21 Days without Food.

Fasting starts to get interesting once you’ve gone three days without food! 

You might find the shifts that I’m experiencing today interesting if you’re curious about fasting. I’ll be discussing how our emotions connect to our desire for food and we’ll learn another qigong posture. 

The first noticeable difference between today (day 3) and the previous two days is that I can feel my body transition into ketosis. Once the body consumes all of it’s sugar based energy (how we normally process food when eating regularly), the body starts to burn fat for food. This process is known as ketosis. 

If your goal is to lose weight, ketosis (fat burning) is your friend!

Ketosis was an unusual feeling when I first began fasting. It’s hard to describe. Initially it felt like a low-level of nervousness. Now that I’ve gotten comfortable with the feeling of it, the feeling is more of a mild buzzing excitement feeling.

I can feel the buzz within the areas that I store fat. My belly, thighs, love handles and other fatty areas feel a gentle tingling buzzing feeling. It’s the feeling of fat being converted into energy. 

I’ve experimented with doing and not doing the fat burning meditation (fully described in my new book), and it’s allowed me to burn fat more quickly than when I don’t practice it.  

The fat burning excited buzz of my ketosis fat burning engine isn’t the only observable change, there’s also an increase in:

Think of how much information you take in at a given moment. You can think of this in terms of bandwidth. If you only notice a few bits of information every moment, this is low bandwidth perception. If you notice more about what’s happening, that would be higher bandwidth perception. 

I feel a greater clarity. I’m noticing more of what’s going on. My hearing and sense of smell is more sensitive. My thoughts are more creative. I’m noticing things around me that I typically wouldn’t notice. 

My experience is deeper than it was a few days ago.

I feel as if a veil of eating that dampened my perception has been lifted! Now that my body doesn’t have to spend a third of it’s energy processing food, it has more free energy to deal with experiencing my internal and external environment. 

I don’t feel like I’m missing out on any energy, I’m getting plenty of energy directly by following my Qigong practice routine. 

Today my schedule shifts, here’s how I make adjustments to still maintain enough energy to keep living:  

Day 3 happened on March 25th, 2020. I didn't eat any food and worked overnight at my part time job doing security (2 x 12 hour shifts a week overnight in order to get health insurance). Doing Qigong gives me much more stamina than I ever had before!

Here’s what I did during day 3:

Another unexpected characteristic is the higher level of overall energy that’s operating from a mellower frequency. 

My body and mind are working together in greater harmony. I’m operating more efficiently. My physical movements are more relaxed and flowing. I’m naturally conserving more energy. More is happening with less effort automatically. 

Mental distractions and additional thoughts have diminished. Typically I’ll have a stream of several thoughts going at once. Now my attention laser focuses only on the task at hand. I have plenty of energy to do what I want, but my pace is more relaxed. 

I’m getting more out of what I’m doing.

It’s a relaxed and joyful experience. I love this magic sweet spot in the fasting journey! The contrast of this way of being is very noticeable compared with the recent past experience of my life. 

This feeling alone would be worth giving up food for!

Moving forward this will deepen. I’ll also get used to it. In one sense it feels more intense now because it’s a newer feeling. 

There’s also a deeper connection to Qi. When meditating and practicing Qigong I feel more energy flowing. I’m more connected and perceptive. Now that I’ve eliminated the distraction of food, I have a greater awareness of the Qi flow in my body. My mind is also able to more powerfully direct it. 

The increased perception and energy is what Qigong practice is all about!

Qigong allows you to perceive what’s happening within you and around you on deeper levels. You start to notice more about what’s happening within your inner world (your body) and also in your outer world (the world around you). 

What you experienced before simply as “I want to eat” now separates into a broader spectrum.

You start to understand the reasons why you are wanting to eat. You start to differentiate wanting to eat because of boredom as a different reason than because your blood sugar is unbalanced. The desire to eat because of a difficult day emotionally suddenly becomes obvious to you.

Awareness of where our bodies feel emotions is an important discovery in gaining control of your decision on when and how much to eat. 

Ideally, we want to eat in a way that serves us only. Eating that sustains us and gives us some enjoyment, without sacrificing our health would be the goal of any reasonable person. 

So why doesn’t it seem that simple?

Much of the negative emotions are felt between our belly buttons and our heart. Feelings of anger, disappointment, fear and anxiety all happen in this area. The bottom of our lungs and our small intestines occupy this area. 

This is also the area where our stomach and small intestines begin. Food enters the body here. 

Eating food is a very physically grounding experience. Emotions are on a different level. The sensation of eating food temporarily overpowers our ability to sense our emotions. Unless we are playing close attention to the separate feeling of the food and the emotions, it’s easy to not notice the connection.

Qi is extracted from food and gets absorbed into the energy body below the belly button in the tan tien (I explained more about this thoroughly on day 1). The fact that this is all happening within the core of our body in a relatively small area makes it easy to cross our signals and think we’re hungry when it’s actually something else that’s going on. 

Understanding this connection is the first step towards mastering your body. The next step is to practice Qigong that’s designed to help you move beyond simple awareness in order to have the ability to act on this awareness.

Now we introduce our next posture for Qigong:

Yesterday I explained the basics of the standing posture for Qigong. Today we’ll take that posture and move it down into a seated position. 

To sit in this posture, I recommend sitting on a chair. 

Keep your posture as straight as possible and maintain the stomach, lower back, chin tucked, crown extended upward and armpits still open in this position. 

Sit on the edge of the chair to prevent your back from resting against the back of the chair. This is to train yourself to sit upright with straight posture. 

Instead of your arms being at your side, straighten them in front of you and place them on your knees keeping your armpits slightly open. 

Practicing sitting in this posture for 5-15 minutes several times a day. Additionally, you can sit in this posture when sitting for any reason. 

Just sitting in this posture counts as a simple Qigong practice. You can finish with charging your tan tien by aligning your palms centered with your tan tien as discussed on day 1. 

By sitting in this posture you are allowing Qi to circulate in your body. Sit comfortably still and notice without judgement all sensations and experiences. 

Congratulations! You’re practicing Qigong! 

As always, it’s a great day! Feeling the mellower energy and enhanced perception along with the sensation of now burning fat is a great combination! Losing 8.9 total pounds in the past 2 days is equally exciting! 

Feeling good is certainly an encouragement to keep moving forward!

I’m also motivated to continue with this case study because this is important information that will benefit anyone who wants to learn more about living with more energy and controlling their weight by combining fasting and Qigong. 

You’ve just finished learning about my 3rd day without food. Where are you currently at in your learning journey? Leave a comment below and share what stage you’re in today as you read this. I’ve got plenty of experience to share if you have any questions and I’m happy to help if you just ask 😉