[pj567]

I am so glad there is a forum topic about this, because I had recently become interested in fasting as a way to cleanse the body too. And believe me, I believed in big breakfasts and eating every 2 hours and all that other stuff the health experts recommended you to do, but after trying out a fast, I can honestly say my views have all changed about that. I thought I'd share some of my experience with you.

After suffering from acne well into my 30's, (and having already tried medications for it) I wanted to start a diet that promoted more healthy skin. I had already cut out sugar, chocolate, dairy products, fried foods, and anything else that was rumored to cause breakouts, but after 30 days of it, I still wasn't getting clear skin. So when I found out Demi Moore was on the raw food diet I decided to try it.

For the first few weeks it seemed like more of a fast than an actual raw food diet because I was eating salads made up of cabbage, carrots, cucumber and celery 3 times a day. As I ate more raw foods I'd look up the health benefits of each food to see what it did to the body. During this research, I found out that acne was actually a symptom of a digestion problem; the skin is one of the ways the body detoxifies and if it keeps getting blemishes, it means that the liver isn't converting food as well into the things the body can use. Some people can eat whatever they want and not have any skin problems, but this wasn't the case with me. My liver was so weak that my skin would flare up if I ate anything that needed extra work to convert into nutrients the body could recognize. Refined sugar from candy and desserts was one of those things. On the other hand, cabbage was a vegetable that was actually good for the liver, so I decided to eat a lot of it.

Well it was a really quick turnaround. After 3 days of eating cabbage salads, my skin was soft and smooth and most of the blemishes had disappeared. After two weeks, I'd start to try to eat one or two sugary things, but I'd get blemishes again. What was interesting though was that instead of waiting a week for the blemish to disappear, it would take only hours for my skin to clear up again.

Something else that happened from fasting on this cabbage salad diet was that something I had received from a car accident when I was younger (a tremor in my left hand) went away completely after a month of being on the diet. All my life I've only been able to type with one hand, crack eggs with one hand, and carry things with one hand because my left arm was so shaky (although I was fortunate enough to be spared any harsher damage from the accident, and most people can't tell if I've ever been in one unless I tell them) After 30 days on a cabbage salad diet, my left arm stopped shaking so that I could carry two full bowls with both hands. I also had a clearer mind and began thinking more spiritual thoughts.

At the same time though, I realized my short term memory was suffering.
I mean REALLY suffering. I'd take the bus somewhere that took 10 minutes to get to, and by the time it started leaving, I'd forget where it was I was intending to go lol It didn't scare me too much, I just found it peculiar. Later on, I realized that this type of thing can happen to you if you don't get enough protein.

This was where it got tricky. I wasn't well versed in vegetables to understand where to get my protein from, nor was I interested in eating most vegetables (I'm kindofa finicky eater that way.) And as birthdays came up and other social events, I'd find myself eating more cooked food. And I found when I had sugary things and blemishes came up, they wouldn't heal in an hour anymore. My skin would revert back to when it was scaly and rough (and as a woman, this wasn't how I wanted to look.) But when I go back to eating fruit, raw vegetables, salads and 100% fruit juices, my skin got softer again. But the shakiness in my arm would come back after eating cooked foods, etc, and if I had stayed on the fast longer with the right plant proteins, I'm sure it would have finished healing up.

So the proof is in the pudding for me. Fasting works. But I think it's best done when you make sure you are getting all your protein from plant sources or otherwise (right now I'm eating more brown rice seasoned with sea salt or vegetable broth, and mixed with broccoli, celery and onion.) I tried getting it from tuna, but I can't eat tuna straight-I like having it with salad dressing mixed in to get out the fishy taste. And that may be what causes the digestive trouble, but I hear that meat takes a long time to digest anyway.

And sometimes when you try these new fasting treatments, I think that it's important we become aware of what an actual healthy body acts like. There was a woman who posted something about losing her period for a year after she fasted. She saw this as a sign that she had messed up her body. But actually, who says that having a period is healthy in the first place? Animals in the wild don't get periods like humans do. I read a very interesting article called "Is menstruation really necessary?" that said that wild animals only start to bleed when they are placed in zoos and their natural diets are converted to commercial diets. Whether this is actually true or not, it remains that humans are very much influenced by the business economy when it comes to how to eat. Going back to eating fruits, vegetables nuts and herbs has shown me that the body can heal itself.