#32 - REPORT - The Ultimate Guide to Extended Fasting

Episode #32 - My 14-Day Water Fast: Science, Health, and Spiritual Insights Beyond Eating Disorders

In this episode, I share my experience during a 14-day water fast, diving into the challenges, discoveries, and unexpected benefits that come with such an intense journey. From the mental clarity gained to the spiritual insights uncovered, I discuss how this fast impacted my history of eating disorders.

🔗 Related Links: The full blog post with resources, references, and transcript can be found on my website.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:28 What is a Water Fast?
• 3:16 Why did I do a Water Fast?
• 4:56 FAQs
• 6:11 Health Benefits / Science of Fasting
• 8:00 What Happens to your Body when you Fast?
• 10:28 My Experience
• 19:35 Refeeding
• 22:18 Spiritual Revelations - Eating Disorders

Transcript

0:02

Vanished. Me podcast. Okay, so I recently did a 14 day waterfall. So first I'm going to get into. What is it? Why did it the science behind the health benefits. My experience, reef eating and the spiritual revelations that I had, for lack of a better word. I had chapter markers for all these sections if you want to skip ahead. And also when I say the science based show that I actually read through the literature, and I have references for all the information that I've provided, you can find it on my blog. I have a degree in science, so I consider this one of my strengths. I just think that that's a necessary evil to mention that in today's day of misinformation. But please note that there's actually a limited amount of studies done on extended water for longer than 3 to 5 days. I also want to make it really clear I'm definitely not advocating for anybody to do this. I'm not a doctor or anything. I'm not giving advice. I just like, really like a rabbit hole. And so I wanted to provide all the information that I came across as well as like, my own personal experience. There's definitely some people who shouldn't do an extended border farce, including people with conditions such as gout, as fasting can raise a uric acid and if you are going to do it, it is advised that you should be monitored by a doctor while you do it. I didn't, but you should. I also think that if you have a history of eating disorders, I think that you should be careful with this. I haven't seen anyone else talk about that. And I think it's worth mentioning. And I very into my experience. Who died at the end. So first of all, what is a water fast? So a water fast is a period of voluntary abstinence from food. Some people don't even have water. That's called a dry fast. So when you're in a fast diet, your body switches from burning carbohydrates as a major fuel source to burning ketones and fatty acids. And this puts you into a genic state. This has an array of health benefits, which I am going to list below. And it's reminiscent of our hunter gatherer diets, when humans would alternate between fasting and facing a fast breaking when anything is consumed that can raise your blood glucose, as this will hold autophagy. There's some debate about what you're allowed to have. Technically, our water force is when you're only allowed to have water. And anything else is called a dirty fast. You really depends on what you're trying to achieve. Some people have bone broth, juice, etc., but this will take you out of a fasting state and a state of keto. And so this will stop you from receiving a lot of the health benefits that are going to blow. Some people have tea, coffee, and small amounts of foods that are high in fat, such as cream and avocado, as this allows you to stay in a fasting state. I personally had water and some lemon in my water, but that I didn't squeeze. I also had my supplements and my medication. One way to test if something is taking you out of the fasting state is to buy continuous blood glucose monitor. It costs about online or about 300. I found one at Community Care Pharmacy and it was about $100. And you insert it into the back of your arm and then you have an app and it shows you live updates and like what your blood glucose level is. So the best way to say if something takes you out of a faster site is to measure your blood glucose levels before consuming something, and then half an hour later, after eating to save it raises your blood glucose. If it rises, then you've been pulled out of a fasting state. If it stays the same, you. Oh good. So I did that to test my supplements, what medications, etc. so why the fuck did I do a 14 day water fast? So the main reason was spiritual reasons. Most religions, if not all, incorporate fasting. A lot of people aim for 40 day water fast. Many report that we got the distraction of food. One is able to reach higher states of consciousness and get closer to God. Fasting is a practice in resisting desires and immediate gratification, which frees you from temptation. It teaches you to accept suffering, which is inevitable in life and naturally increases your gratitude for food. Some also believe that as your body cleans up dead cells and stored hot faces, that these releases with the negative energy that is stored in your body. I also did it for a mental challenge. I really enjoy mental challenges. At the time, I was exploring the concept of the higher and lower self, which I talked about in my previous episode. I also did for health reasons. There are so many health benefits which I'm going to go into in a second, but I have PCOS, so polycystic ovarian syndrome and fasting along with keto is supposed to be like a really good way to treat it. I also did it for weight loss. Only a small percentage of women with PCOS are not overweight or obese. And one study that I found suggests that 50% of women with PCOS are obese. And so I feel this because for me, despite her health conscious, have always been my whole life. I feel like I've always kind of been in a fight with my body and my weight, and I've never felt like my body really reflects my commitment to my health. And so I was chronically ill for a few years, and I gained a lot of weight in that time. And so I have been getting back down to normal, which I am now, but I yeah, I just wanted to see if this was a good tool in my tool belt in order to manage my weight. And, if fasting is for me, what are the health benefits? So first I'm going to go into a commonly asked question is it safe? Yes, it's actually nature. So our body has two fuel systems from which our cells get their energy. One is sugar or carbs and the other is fat ketones. Our brain needs both to function properly. So if you've never fasted for more than eight hours, you've likely never switch into a ketogenic state. The world record is held by a once obese man who fasted for 382 days, during which he lost 125 kilos. So obviously he had the weight to lose, but it just kind of goes to show that he actually can use fat as a fuel source and don't necessarily need to have food. A lot of people ask me if I will lose muscle when fasting, and the general consensus from what I found is no. Doctor Jason Fong wrote in his book, The Complete Guide to Fasting. That muscle is the loss of deteriorate. He says it only happens in very malnourished people with a body fat percentage of less than 4%. So for context athlete a marathon runners have 8 to 10%. However, I have found some studies that contradict this. It seems even though your body will mostly burn fat, sometimes it may burn muscle. For example, if you have poor metabolic flexibility, your body may burn muscle as a body looks poor class again. So I think that's worth mentioning here. Switching into a keto dating site has a long list of benefits which I put in my blog, but I'll mention just a few here, including autophagy, DNA repair, decrease insulin decrease LDL cholesterol, reduced visceral fat, lower blood pressure, improved heart mean pathways, repairs to the immune system, improved gut microbiome, and reducing the recurrence of cancer. It is also associated with improvements to brain function, including increase awareness and mood enhancement. I a really, really recommend Doctor Mindy Pal's book Fast Lucky Girl. Mindy, if you happen by some miracle to watch these, please come on my podcast. I emailed you and the following information that I'm spitting out. I've taken directly from that book. So probably the biggest health benefit you get from fasting is autophagy. So after about 17 hours of fasting, your cells register a drop in blood glucose and they begin repairing. Basically, they sense the food isn't coming and so they just clean up. Instead of looking for food outside, the cells begin to eat what is inside. So over time, our cells accumulate damaged materials. And this causes cellular dysfunction, which can lead to cancer. The parts of the cell that perform jobs also get worn down, and as a result, they just can't do their job properly. So this contributes to ageing and other issues. Autophagy removes these parts. It also repairs damaged mitochondria, which is the powerhouse of the cell, and damaged mitochondria can lead to an array of health problems related to inflammation, such as chronic fatigue, impairments in organs, and cognitive disabilities. I've actually been focusing on mitochondria functioning to treat my chronic fatigue with infrared, sauna, fasting supplements, etc. when in the state of autophagy, cells can sense when a cell is malfunctioning and these cells often turn into cancer. This cell can initiate cellular death as well. So fasting is really great for cleaning up damaged cells and cell parts. Now I'm going to go through like what happens to your body when you fast. And these are rough time frames that obviously differ person to person. At eight hours your liver will start making ketones at 17 hours. This is when your cells move into a state of autophagy, and you basically stay in this state until you start eating again. So at 24 hours, the liver notices the lack of glucose and it begins burning stored from the liver. When this is depleted, you experience a drop in waterway because glass again retains water. And this is when you move in to a ketogenic state. At 24 hours, a burst of stem cells is released into your gut to repay the lining. And this can be useful for counteracting antibiotic use at 12 to 72 hours. You'll notice improved brain function and cognition. This is a good period of time where fasting can prevent a cold. As viruses and bacteria work off our energy system, they can't replicate when we have fasting. This time frame is also great for balancing sex hormones, so it's great for perimenopause, infertility, and PCOS. PCOS has been shown to result from dysfunctional autophagy 36 plus hours. This is called the fat burning period of time, so it is considered the magic number for burning fat. If you can do one day on one day of fasting or 36 hours fasting, followed by 12 hours of eating, this seems to be the best way for people to lose weight, especially if you're weight loss. Resistance after 36 hours would begin to reduce cholesterol. At 48 hours, we reached the mental health benefits. So fasting can rapid dopamine receptors sites create new dopamine receptors sites improved opening pathways, and make your dopamine receptors more sensitive. The benefits of these are often experienced weeks later. This is really interesting to me because I wonder what implications this could have for treating addiction. Fasting can also reduce anxiety as it stimulates your prefrontal cortex and makes a neurotransmitter, Gaba. Taking a break out of a fight or flight response. Okay, so 72 hours onwards. This is really interesting. At 72 hours, your body regenerate stem cells. So people pay a lot of money for stem cell treatments or supplements. But stem cells can find injured body parts and make them anew again. So a lot of people report that at around day 5 to 10, they start feeling pain in areas that they once injured in the past, such as like a torn calf muscle. And this is because the damaged cells are being cleaned up and the stem cells are replacing them. This is while to me stem cells also have a dramatic effect on ageing cells. So people think fasting is really good as like an anti-aging treatment. And from this point on, you will continue to produce stem cells until you begin ageing again. Okay, so that's basically a summary of the health benefits. But now I'm going to go into my diary on my experience. So I actually had two attempts on the first attempt. I got to three days and I was wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor and my blood glucose entered the danger zone. It went to low and I was feeling faint, especially when I stood out really quickly. And so I decided to listen to my body and I stopped the fast. My problem was, is that I severely underestimated the importance of having electrolytes and staying hydrated. Really, really important. The second time around, it was actually kind of easy. I found the first three days kind of easy. Most people report the first three days being the hardest, but I think that was easy for me because I ate a lot leading up to the fast. The more experience that you have from being in a fat burning site there, the easier it is for your body to switch from using cops as a fuel source to ketones. It's called metabolic flexibility. So for people who don't have much experience doing this switch, this is why they experience the keto flu and other symptoms. It's because your body's having a hard time switching off, and this is where your body may burn muscle instead of fat as the body looks for gas again. So on day three, I really felt euphoric, I felt great, I felt like I could do this forever. I definitely was in like an altered state of consciousness, slightly like when I was meditating, I got to like deeper sites of meditation and got some cool insights. At the end of day three, I noticed the pain in the right side of my stomach and I googled it. And it's apparently common for people, especially women, to experience pain in the gallbladder. Most fasting and even devout gallstones. I had one story in Reddit of some lady who had to get a cut. Her gallbladder caught, actually. Lobsters. I don't know if that's true or not, but what I did is I bought something called ox bile salts I put on Amazon. So it arrived the next day and this can prevent that day for I stopped feeling hungry. Hunger went away. The body adapts and stops producing digestive acids and it stopped cleaning all. I've really enjoyed not having to cook, not having to clean, and not having to shop for food. And I didn't notice how much time I spent doing this shit until I stopped doing it. And it felt awesome. I also feel like this isn't a good reason to fast, but I save so much money. Like and I could buy myself, like, some nice things. So yeah, it's a nice reward in itself. Okay, after day four, I've really started to struggle. Days 4 to 8 I experienced really bad insomnia. I already have insomnia, but it was like high tier. This is commonly reported in the first ten days. For many, it can be helped by having more salt before bed, but nothing really helps me when I'm in that place. It went away by day eight for me. Days 5 to 10 I was feeling really bad. I was fatigue from the lack of sleep. I was feeling really depressed. My mood was really low. I was irritable from a mindfulness point of view. I think because I had less distraction, as in less things to do from cooking and preparing food, but also less things going on in my body. I think some things that are always carry came to the surface, and it was like time for me to deal with them. Some people believe that the mind brings emotions from the subconscious up to the conscious during fasting, and by witnessing these emotions, blocked energies are released and I can kind of fuck with that. I reckon that was kind of true for me a little bit. I had a self log diary. I got dressed up and got my nails did, which I can never do. Sorry for myself, flowers and all that. And that actually really helped me feel better. A big thing to nerd at this time is I was constantly nauseous. I just always felt sickos finding it really hard to take my medications. Apparently this can be caused by not taking enough sodium or having acidity in the stomach. So apparently a you're the remedy is to drink slightly warm water was so near and this will, like, help you vomit. I didn't want to do that, so I just like stayed nauseous. I also experienced restless leg syndrome and slight heart palpitations. So these are signs of electrolyte deficiency. If you want more information on electrical arts, I go into more detail on my blog. But in short, the most important electrolytes that you need a sodium, potassium, and magnesium. So for idiom, I take one teaspoon of iodised salt. For potassium I would take one teaspoon of potassium chloride. I've got this, brand on Amazon. And just so you know, right quick, I bet you can find it cheap. I was like $20 for a pack of potassium chloride of like 400g. And I would put like, yeah, a tablespoon of each into like a one litre bottle of water. And then I would drink that twice a day. And for magnesium I would just take my normal magnesium supplement twice a day. The ultra light powders are really hated and they'll make me feel so sick. And I was finding it really hot to drink the water, which was making me dehydrated as well. So I switched to electrolyte supplements, which I bought for $48 on Amazon, which is quite a lot of money. But I wasn't buying any food and I had to take like six per day or something to make sure I actually hit the recommended amounts. Just be really careful with electrolytes, because a lot of like the ones that you see online, that a lot of them are flavoured and have other stuff in them, and they will take you out of the set of autophagy. They will take you out of a state of fasting. Some of them have, you know, flavours and sugar and shit. You can't have that. So you have to really just break it down to the bare minimum, minimum and have like salt, potassium, chloride, magnesium. So yeah, once I had the supplements it was a lot easier. After that. Some symptoms of electrolyte deficiency include fatigue, headache, nausea, insomnia, difficulty concentrating, muscle spasms, cramps, heart palpitations. The main sign is that you feel dizzy and light-headed when you stand up. You may also be dehydrated. This is happening to you. Day nine I started to feel better. I still felt a bit faint if I did too much, and so I just tried to sleep my way through it. Honestly. I started to develop the phenomenon called wide tongue. At this point, this is a common side effect where the tongue develops a white coating and my mouth tasted like shit. I was unable to find a conclusive reason why this white tongue develops. One theory is that the little bumps on your tongue, which are usually swallowed when they die, when you eat, but when you don't eat, they just stay in your mouth. Another theory is that it's an overgrowth of fungus and bacteria in your mouth due to dehydration. Another theory is that it's thrush, so people often buy a copper scraper to help you out on Amazon, or even like a health food stall. Interesting fact I saw a lot of people say that when this white coating goes away, this is your body's signalling to you that it's time to end the fast. I couldn't find any signs to support that, but I thought that was really, really interesting. Day ten I noticed that I needed less sleep. This is commonly reported in two main theories as to why. First, the body's trying to wake us up to go hunt. Well, secondly, the body doesn't need as much rest without the high energy process of digestion. I began to get sore knuckles on day ten on my right hand. And in the past I've had arthritis really briefly, and this was because I had a problem with histamine. Histamine was causing my arthritis and it felt exactly the same as that. And so I looked into the science in the eastern science to suggest that fasting can raise histamine levels. So that's important to know. I think. Day 12 onwards I alternated between feeling really good, like I could do this forever and feeling complete and on a shift and wanting it to end. Yeah. Within one day I could feel full of energy and then very fatigued. It's days 13 to 14. I was just consistently feeling worse, to be honest, when I started this fast, my goal was actually to do 30 or 40 days. When I got to day 14, I was just so fatigued that jobs like cleaning the house would piling up. My mental health was deteriorating and I wasn't getting better. I kept reading every day that said, like, you know, after like ten days, you feel really, really good. I could shoot and then you feel really good. And so I kept waking up feeling like, okay, today I'm going to feel really good. And it just wasn't happening and I was getting worse. And so I decided to call it in. I decided to start introducing foods again. And in the fast, I spoke to my friend Rachel about it, and she told me that basically, like I tried to run a marathon without training. And I think that's exactly what it was. And that's probably why my body had a hard time, especially with the nausea. Other signs that it's time to in the past is if the white tongue goes away. Another sign is when real hunger returns, and there's indications that your body's leaving a fasting state and entering into starvation mode, which is not good because it's when you begin to breakdown muscle and essential tissues. So how much weight should I lose? All in all, I lost seven kilos in the first week. I lost 5.5 kilos and this was Marcy Ward away. In the second week I lost 1.5 kilos. And once I started eating again, I probably gained back 3 to 4 kilos. Something like that. Okay, the re fading stage. So repeating is actually really, really important. If you just go straight back into eating normal food and a lot of food, you can get re feeding syndrome. So apparently 40,000 people from one of the concentration camps died over a feeding syndrome. So it's really, really serious. I used to do the line diet sometimes. And that's when you which the only age the major movement animals like beef and lamb that see it and I one time I did it, I didn't really feed properly. I just went straight back into eating whatever I wanted. And that's not my body like it fucked up my cycle, my period, like I was. It was just really, really uncomfortable. So like, repeating syndrome is no joke, like it's a real thing. The general rule with re feeding is that you take half the time you spend fasting, and you spend that amount of time repeating. For example, if you fasted for 14 days, you need to spend seven days free feeding. So there are varying opinions on what foods to re feed with. The general consensus is that as your body has stopped producing digestive acids, you need to build it back up before you consume foods that are harder to digest. A lot of people start with juice, but this will obviously take you out of the ketogenic state, and it will take you straight out of a fasting state as well. But you need to build back your microbiome in the stomach. So the following advice is again taken from Doctor Mindy. Pills from a book fast Like a girl and this is what she recommends. She recommends that the first thing that you have to break your fast is bone broth or vegetable. If you don't eat main when fasting, your digestive system shuts down and it cannot handle solid food, so bone broth won't back up again. One hour later, you can have a probiotic meal with Sav such as natural yoghurt, olives, sauerkraut, kombucha or miso soup, and this puts good bacteria back into your gut. If you get bloated after this, this is actually a sign that you have got damage. It's pretty interesting. One hour after this you have fibre such as sweet potato, avocado, or steamed or vegetables like carrots or broccoli. They must be steamed or boiled so they are easier to digest. You can also add butter if you want. Here. Fibre will re feed the good bacteria so that it can help digest food. And then one hour after these the digestive system is ready to eat harder to digest foods such as meat. My general rule is I like to introduce 1 to 2 foods per day, and I like to freeze at a high fat. So the order that I reintroduced foods was bone broth, yoghurt, avocado, cream, bacon, cheese, pork belly, sauerkraut, etc. some people avoid meat for many days as it can be hard to digest, but I seem to be fine with it. Okay, so now I'm going to go into my experience re feeding, which is also related to to be like kind of revelations I had or, you know, the spiritual insights or whatever. So I had a really hard time eating, I have a history just very quickly to it. Oh like binge eating disorder, bulimia. Like real heavy, like calorie restriction. And once I started eating again, I found it really hard to control my limit. And I pushed myself harder than I should. Like, I just ate more than I should have. And I had chilli, which is damn looking back on it now, but I really love chilli. And so I had a lot of spice and like, I was like, you know, when you associate that you like diff wouldn't be so bad. It was like that little seed like. And so I really underestimated how much of an impact chilli would have my state. And then but at the same time, I couldn't control, I couldn't control, I limited the foods that I was eating to make sure I was eating the right foods when we're eating, but I couldn't control how much I was eating. So I was bingeing. And it took me back to the times when I was a teenager where I had like, no control over what I was eating because I would stop myself so much, and then I would binge, then I would throw up, and then I would binge and like, I haven't been in that place in such a long time. And so, like when I was a teenager, it was so bad that I stopped getting my period for periods of times like on off over years. I had like right in between, like these three teeth. He had the front, that I had to get, like, scraped out the dentist. And now I have a feeling they're like. And I can always feel that feeling when I'm flossing, and it always feels like it's going to, like, fall out. And so feeling like I had no control over what I was eating. And it really wasn't like a fun feeling. And I got to the point where I was like, make myself throw up again for the first time in five years or something. What I started to realise when I reflected on the water fast is that all of my eating disorder voices had come back, and I didn't even realise so because I lost so much weight in the first week in such a short amount of time, I started to become like more ish. I was like, I want to lose more. Way until now, I've been pretty happy with my weight. Like I've been pretty content. But my deep desire is to be underweight. We're like, coming back. And like, I convinced myself that it was okay to aim for these goals because I knew I would really gain weight after, like I told myself, like I just want so I can hit that goal. Why? What do we lose like 20 kilos instead of like ankle of like five? Like what if we, like, finally hit that goal weight where I would be underway just once, and maybe my 16 year old self so happy. And I was actually convincing myself these things. I think there were other signs looking back as well. Like a lot of the things that I was googling at the time, it kept coming up. We were pointing at the top saying like eating disorder Healthline. And I was like, oh, fuck off, fuck, I'm just fasting. Two people close to me expressed their concern and I was kind of annoyed. I was just like, don't you trust me? Like, and I think that's. I lost a lot of trust in myself, like. And I think that that's actually part of, like, wow. So disappointed in myself. Like once I kind of, you know, relapse or whatever, I feel like I lost a lot of trust myself. I think it takes a lot of humility to admit this, because I don't want others to lose trust in me. I feel like this battle against eating disorder mentality and body image issue is one that I've been winning for years now, and like, I feel so proud of myself for that, that I felt almost ashamed that I'd like, fallen back into this way of being. I feel like I've built so much trust with myself that I know that when I do really hard, like health related things like fasting or going for like really long runs that like my motivation is coming from like a really good place of like love myself rather than like the fear of not being good enough in life, of the wanting to lose weight. And I feel like others around me like have trust that as well. Like, you know, I'm grateful for the people who didn't express concern because it kind of implied to me that you do trust that I had this trust with myself and so really disappointed that, like, I've broken that trust and that I'm scared to even admit this because I don't want people around me to, like, lose that trust in me as well. And like, you know, almost treat me like a child when I say I want to do things that could be inferred as me doing them because I want to lose weight. And so that was really hard. That was really hard. I felt a shame because I feel like I talk about the healing journey so much that it just it made me feel like I was back at square one, you know, it's just like, who the fuck am I to even talk about anything? Now that I'm ever really giving advice? I'm just kind of walking you know, and putting out what I learned along the way. But I don't know, I just felt shame for some reason. The interesting thing is that, like, you know, eating disorders and binge eating and bulimia, it's actually considered an addiction. It's a cycle. Like for me, it's related to the feeling of not being good enough. And so I've set up this system in my mind where it's like, if I set these really impossible standards and goals and I actually reach them, then honour that I'm good enough. But the problem is, is that the goals are so unrealistic that you never can reach them, and that just like, reinforces this idea that you're not good enough and it's just this fucking cycle. And so now I know what triggers me, because something actually happened to me like a month before I started to fast. And that really triggered and made a feeling of not being good enough. And then it's so interesting because now from hindsight, I can say, oh my God, that triggered my eating sources and I'm seeing a clear pattern in my life with that thing being the trigger for me and my eating disorders. And so I gained a lot of clarity from that. And I think that's the whole, like, revelation that I was made to have from this whole experience. And I'm really grateful for that. Something else that I learned is that I don't have my limits when it comes to food, because I've had such a fucked up history of just like binging and starving. I don't know where that line is. So like when I'm full and when I'm in to stop eating, I also realise that the way that I you're you're in white is a reflection of how I have two alternate states of mind. Like there's a part of me that wants to lose weight, and then there's a part of me that wants that heat. And I think that the fact that I yo yo sure is how I alternate between these two states of mind. I found that really, really interesting. And that's why I like internal family systems or parts where because actually missionary like really, really good at treating like, believe me, out and eating disorders because it helps to bridge the gap between these two parts of you and stop having them in conflict. And I think that that's where I'm at right now. I think that I'm trying to bridge these three sides of me together now, and I think my relationship to food moving forward is I'm trying to do more intuitive eating. I'm trying to just listen to my body and listen to what? Like she wants and like what she wants to eat and letting her kind of got it. And so what that looks like for me is that, like, sometimes I'll wake up or whatever, and I will feel like eating and I realise I don't actually feel hungry. I just like, you know, maybe I'm addicted to that, or maybe I'm just having a craving, whatever. And so I won't eat, you know, fast. And then other times I'll be doing a fast, but then I can feel real hunger and I'll be like, okay, I'm going to have some, like, real food now. And also, you know, sometimes I'll crave carbs when I'm in to be in a state of keto, but I'll listen to my body. So this is this is like what I'm going through now. It's kind of like what I feel like I'm doing is like renegotiating my limits because I feel like we've wait. It's a whole balancing act. Like, I spoke to my friend Rachel about this and she said that the thing about these problems is that it's not like an addiction. We've like, say, cocaine, where you can just end it cold turkey, like you always have to have a relationship towards food. And so right now what I'm trying to do is renegotiate that relationship. And I feel like it is such a balancing act, because if I want to say eat something that's really naughty and I go fill up a 10-K run afterwards, you kind of balances it out. Right? And so there's all these things that you can do, like all these tools like, you know, running and fasting and whatnot to like keep things balanced. And it's difficult because you can really, really easily tip over into the eating sort of choices. And so I think what I'm working on right now is like trying to figure out how I can maintain this balance and make sure it's healthy and comes from a place of like, love for myself rather than like, these voices. But I think, though I have such a higher awareness of these voices now, which I'm really grateful for. And so like I will keep fasting as a tool in my tool. I'll just be more aware of it now. And I was really grateful. Like, I spoke to my psychologist about this whole thing, and she said to me, she's like, okay, well, the next time you fast, like, you know, and I'm so grateful that she said that because what she was implying is like, I trust you. Like I still trust you with like what you want to do. And that really meant a lot to me. So that's basically the end of what I've learned from my 14 day Waterfall's. I also realised, like by analysing that in this sort of voice, I've really analysed like, what is that voice and what else is it leading me through life? I know that that voice is the. It's the fear of may not being good enough manifests as this voice that tells me, okay, you have to go achieve ABCd in A so that you can be good enough. And so I really wanted to sit back and be like, okay, well, if I wasn't aware that these sort of voices came back in, where else is this voice? I want to become really aware of it and where else it is leading me through life. And so I think there's a balance, because sometimes that voice or that disciplined voice can be really, really good. But also there's some times where it's really problematic. And so this balance is what I explore in the next podcast episode, which I call discipline versus inspiration. So if you want to come on that journey with me, come to the next episode. Otherwise, thank you for listening. And I never know how to videos up by.