Struggling to Learn the Fasting Discipline - From a "Thin" Compulsive Overeater

by Laura

Hello Everyone:

I am writing because I need to come to see the way into water fasting at greater length. I am someone who is so in need of a long strengthening fast. I do 1-2 days and then, emotionally needy and unequipped to deal with the "emptiness" of my life that becomes apparent and overwhelming (but which might be totally manageable if I only had some little support or distraction!!) -- after 1-2 days I abandon the fast, feeling "it isn't worth it" - when iti s the most worthwhile thing I could possibly do in life.

I have needed to have the skill of fasting several days since I was a child. I have needed it but not managed to develop this skill. I recently (1 yr 10 months ago) got on raw foods only, but I need to go much farther for healing.

I am a chronic overeater, food addict, not supported by my family, who scream at me for trying to fast, because I am thin; and who willfully misinterpret my lethargy and depression and anxiety and dysfunctionality as being attributable to "not eating enough..." when the very opposite is true; it is the case that I am chronically eating too much, always more than is Ok with me, always too much for my body to handle.

I won't try to go into the humiliation of my situation and the complicated way it got the way it is -- I can't admit to failing to fast, because then my family will be smugly satisfied that I am being subjected to a sort of violation with food... they are intent on violating me, on disrespecting my desire to have control over my eating.

It is, I believe, an inhuman way to treat someone. I believe they are guilty of a distinct inhumanity toward me. As it is, I am silenced , utterly, and feel as much in the closet as a gay person who is not accepted.

I have to be honest -- I dreadfully need to fast but feel "entitled" to eat because I am thin. My health demands that I seriously fast. I know this is the right thing for me. Yet doing without the "pleasure" (not really pleasure but rather compulsion) of food seems so impossible. Plus, the woman I live with I am frightened of.

She is fat and makes violating comments to me , demanding to know "whether I am eating" and commenting on how thin I am. Admittedly, she has only made such comments twice. But she has also intimated that she is in some way generally "worried" about me. it is horrific. i entered the house today only to have it demanded of me whether I had returned home last evening.

I know she knew I had returned since she was awake when I did return -- 11:30 pm. This is truly awful. She is totally disrespectful of my privacy. Also reads over my shoulder when I use the common0-use Internet.

So gross. ... I am given to understand that because I am a Very Thin Person I am to be Worried About, violated, treated like I am crazy and have no rights, prevented from expressing my true self, and altogether mistrusted -- treated as not Valid.

I am frightened she will abruptly tell me to leave (I rent a room from her). This is all the more humiliating since I am 40 years old and ought to be more secure and respected in the world.

I have to be honest: the greatest fear I have is of my own thinness. I must fast in order to function at all. I must fast in order to become well. I know it is the right thing. I am really suffering from intestinal bacterial overgrowth and the food addiction that causes it and provokes it to begin with.

The symptoms are horrible, both mental (depression and anxiety) and physical (lethargy and brain fog) and I see clearly that fasting is the way out. Yet I am very thin. I am scared about getting even thinner. I am not actually as afraid of harming my own body (I somehow know I will not) as I am afraid of the reactions of others.

There is this imprisoning landlady. I am terrified of her. I must assert myself -- yet how can I? I felt so strong and self-assured before I entered into this living situation, a week ago. Now I am violated daily and nightly and am pushed into a state of hysterical fear. I doubt what I know in my real heart to be true. I am beaten and bullied by this landlady into a state of terrified self-doubt. It is not fair.

How can I stop this??? How can I achieve the fasting that I need to? Her hysterical fear and her bullying and violation just enable my constant desire to stuff myself. My disease of compulsive overeating just uses the landlady's violating fears to justify itself. I really did feel so strong before this. It just is not right! I live in constant terror now! How can I get the support?

The world just sits by and lets me eat myself to death. I ought to be stopped at supermarket cash registers and taken away to a fasting clinic and treated with hugs... I cannot help but resent the people I encounter daily. I am so utterly neglected and pushed away and unwanted and unknown. ... I am trying to create a blog to reach out to others...

I am writing the first entry ... I cannot even believe I am justified in writing a blog at all -- in trying to learn to push away the food at will, in developing that dignity of control, in achievign that basic human dignity; in trying to learn to fast. The purpose of my blog is for me to learn to do these things.

I fear most deeply in writing this post that people will also respond negatively, telling me I am a bad person for wanting to fast although I am thin. Please see www.soilandhealth.com for testimonies as to the safety of fasting for thin persons. But I need real support...

I am at this moment in the place where it is necessary for me to plan my next fast, and I am so unwilling to do it -- even a 30- or 36-hour fast. Which is it to be? How can I know, if I make a 3-hour fast, that I will on the fast after that justify going backward, as I have done endlessly, never achieving longer fasts, all because 36 hours was a bigger increment to my fasting length than I felt was necessary???

And look at how long it is going to take me to build up to a fast of even 3 days. It will take weeks. ... The final problem -- and I sort of mentioned this above -- is that this process doesn't make room for my intuition, wich frequently says "don't eat! Even though your food plan entitles you to, itis against the interests of your body!"

How am I supposed to learn true "food-sobriety -- " the only way for me to health -- if I enable myself to violate my own body all the time. True food sobriety (which if I fasted ugh. horror. chills through my body... a sense of terrible bleakness, deprivation and loss.. these are the feelings I get when I think of fasting: this is my disease resisting my effort to heal.

It is horrible, devastating, powerful resistance. I have to work through it!-- true food sobriety, which, if I fasted I would achieve naturally, without rules and without struggle) -- true food-sobriety would rest on a policy of simply following the conscience -voice in my head when it said "stop! do not eat!" -- true food-sobriety would be so empowering.

It would bring true health. Yet I cannot obey that voice of conscience because ... I just am driven for powerful reasons to violate myself, to eat when eating is not OK with me.

I go on pro ana sites and the people there are powerful and strong and well and in touch and in tune with their bodies. They have the courage to refrain from eating and have created a solid basis for themselves of obeying their intuition and bodies.

Their intuition is NOT mistaken, though the world pathologizes them.. The world must be made to accept such people a lot more. There is a horrific and horribly life-damaging, for these people, toxic fear of thinness and misconception that thinness is soemhow dangerous.

Even all the symptoms of such people amount to nothing, really, in view of the fact that by intuitively eating little, they achieve strength and stability and peace and strong mental functioning.

The world bullies and rapes them and it should not. Even the desire to be abnormally thin should not be considered dangerous. The damage done by people who scream that this is "Dangerous" -- with no real basis for this -- is horrific, really. It is a total disrespect for the life-choices and intuition and even the very physical bodies of the thin people of the kind on these sites.

... It is a tough and devastating fact for the food addict, such as me, to learn, that overeating is damaging to EVERYONE, to thin and fat alike. That thinness does not give one a free pass to binge.

That it is NEVER OK . That it ALWAYS hurts. I am so dysfunctional form my bingeing, which I must call bingeing though it involves only raw food and limited calories. Thank you for receiving such a long post,
I hope you are all well.

Please, also , please, please, if you would, it is very important to me that the people I share with NOT make comments on what I share, because I am so vulnerable and so easily intimidated and because the ONLY way I am going to make progress and get better is if I REALLY share openly and without the fear of getting reactions or comments.

In this way I can come to know myself in a true and genuine and helpful way... and I can only do a helpful thing for myself if I choose it MYSELF and think of it MYSELF and NOT as the result of being advised to do it by another...

So, though I ask you for help, I mean, would you plese just relate your own experience -- not comment on mine, and not relate things in the spirit of trying to influence my behavior...

Laura