Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
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Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#2I've known a few people with Anorexia Nervosa. Not just "skip a few meals, look a bit thin" anorexia, but "detained in hospital against their will in wheel-chairs with forced NG tube feeding BMI of 14" anorexics.
It's pretty scary that they describe very similar feelings as you do, and you only did that for a few weeks.
Also, people with bulimia tend to be overweight exactly because of the cycle of fasting and binging that you describe.
I'm pleased for you that you got a good result, and I'm grateful that you stressed the riskiness.
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#3I've known a few people with Anorexia Nervosa. Not just "skip a few meals, look a bit thin" anorexia, but "detained in hospital against their will in wheel-chairs with forced NG tube feeding BMI of 14" anorexics. It's pretty scary that they describe very similar feelings as you do, and you only did that for a few weeks. Also, people with bulimia tend to be overweight exactly because of the cycle of fasting and bingin…
When I started, I had already limited it to a short-term experiment precisely because I was afraid of developing a fasting compulsion. I certainly don't need to be swinging from one extreme to another.
The risk should definitely be stressed.
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#4Fasting is really bad for you. Does fasting even count as hacking?
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#5Fasting is really bad for you. Does fasting even count as hacking?
Abuse of fasting usually has bad consequences, but when it's done for the purpose of studying one's emotional relationship to food and consumption, such abuse is unlikely.
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#6It's a very interesting, very different experience. I'm not sure what we can take from it. I like the point about "I was so obsessed with the tool that the house was neglected entirely", I feel there's some wisdom in there I can learn from.
Thanks for sharing it, I'm just not entirely sure what to make of it.
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#7This reminds me a little of giving up smoking. That was definitely mind hacking. Obviously the endpoints are different (giving up tobacco forever good, giving up food forever bad).
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#8Fasting is really bad for you. Does fasting even count as hacking?
Fasting isn't hacking, but I'd say the mental changes and introspection that went along with it in this case is hacking.
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#9Although it's great you have felt a sense of empowerment through this, extreme measures I feel are never the best options. I guess it's how you define extreme, but if you ever feel that urgency to rack up the degree of action, ask around for help. Shit, in the right places even internet people are about nice enough.
Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less
#10So true about what you wrote on feeling gratitude. One of the effects of being hungry is feeling alive. You begin to exist because the drive needs you to get off and eat.
One thing about being hungry is how unpleasant it is. And then how unpleasant something unpleasant is. Then the desire to shake off the unpleasantness. If you stay still, it becomes almost interesting to watch. One fathom long body, the master of the universe, can barely hold 4 hours of food supply.
Humans can survive on a meal a day. Just like most animals. My dog puts on weight on a meal a day. But somehow we have conditioned ourselves, through surrounding ourselves with food beyond what we need.