[MightySunTzu]

Originally Posted by ginkgo

I had never heard of the dry fast except with the Muslims not drinking during the day and then drinking and eating like a pig at night.

My friend, you have a delightfully tender and delicate way of expressing yourself. Has it ever perhaps occurred to you that some Muslim individuals as well as others might become offended by your choice of words, especially since their view of pigs is such a negative one?

Also, the idea of dry fasting is very new to me as well. I like what i read about it, so i decided to incorporate it into my water fast. Aside from the 40 hour experiment which i don't intend to repeat, i am basically "drinking to thirst". For the 18-20 hours dry, i have little or no thirst.

Originally Posted by ginkgo

The coated tongue is there all of the time until you break the fast. I say on my site that during the fast, the mouth becomes an organ of elimination.

Yes or until the return of genuine hunger at which point your tongue becomes uncoated and your breath which has been nasty throughout the entire fast becomes sweet . To those who don't believe fasting detoxes the system, i would enjoy listening to them attempt to explain that away . As to the mouth being an organ of elimination, i agree and help that bad stuff out as much as i can, particularly by brushing my entire mouth and rinsing and/or wiping many times throughout the day.

Originally Posted by ginkgo

It sounds like the dry fasting is an issue of control with you. You want to control something (your mind wants to control something). The fast is where you do not control anything with ingestion and your body drinks when it is thirsty. Your mind is not involved when you drink when you are thirsty. But with this dry fasting then your mind can decide if you drink no water for 10 hours or 15 hours or 21 hours or 40 hours. You can then debate with yourself what is the ideal number of hours to dry fast. Then it is not perfect since your are making a choice. But when the body drinks when thirsty, you do not make a choice. Then it is perfect.

An interesting theory. Perhaps a wee bit of over-analyzing though . To me it's not about control whatsoever. It is about researching the subject of intermittent dry fasting and becomming convinced that this is the most effective way (swiftest way) to eliminate toxins, perhaps 2x faster than water fasting... and then implementing it. In my previous 24 fasts of 7 days or longer, i never dry fasted because i had never heard of it, let alone knew of its benefits. By the way, strict dry fasting is supposed to be devoid of Bathing, showering, hand washing, brushing teeth or rinsing the mouth. I violate all 5 of these... i am just not drinking in that time.

But in listening to my body, i will no longer do 40 hours which was more of an experiment than anything, partly of seeing if at a certain point it would become easier... which it didn't.

Drinking only to thirst within a 4-6 hour window surrounding my 2 hours of exercise and then going dry for 18-20 hours, however, is quite comfortable for me. Any feeling of thirst or temptation to drink that does arise in that time has been quite mild in each of the 6 or 7 days i have done it. I don't even know if it could be called "thirst". Day versus night comfort levels as compared to the 2nd half of the 40 hour experiment where the thirst became very strong and persistent.

Originally Posted by ginkgo

The body has its own intelligence just like with an animal. But people have a mind that can decide all sorts of strange things that are against survival.

Indeed so. Healthy human instincts have in some instances been overwhelmed with learned information, both good and bad. When a person is sick and doesn't feel like eating, the body is telling him not to eat... to fast and thus detox the cause of the illness out of the body. But aunt Betsy and Grandma Alice (and really nearly everybody else) are telling the sick individual "you have to eat to keep up your strength" when unbeknownst to them, eating will only slow the recovery and is the worst thing the person could do. And speaking of animals and their intelligent instincts, did you know that they dry fast too?