MIND & BODY Cleanse Day 2: How I Felt During/After my 24-Hour Fast

Hey babes!

If you didn't see my post yesterday, read that first. It goes into detail about the 3-day mind/body cleanse I'm doing.

Just to give you a quick synopsis: I'm mainly doing this for mental clarity, to reduce chatter/noise in my mind and life, and just get out of the habit of being a total stressball with my mile-high to-do list. 

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I've done fasting before. My longest fast has been 36 hours, so yesterday I decided that I'd start of my cleanse (which consists of juices, smoothies, kombucha, etc.) by fasting. This means NO calories at all - I only had heaps of water and some black coffee.

I ended up lasting about 24 hours (I probably could've gone longer but was trying to listen to my body and honor what I truly needed), and this is what I learned!

How I Felt During My 24-Hour Fast

Of course, I was hungry. That's to be expected. 

But I was shocked that the hunger didn't completely consume my thoughts all day. In fact, a huge reason I wanted to fast/do this cleanse was to take my mind OFF of food, so I was concerned that by fasting, all my thoughts would be centered around food still. Not the case!

I know 24 hours isn't that long to fast (at all), but here are a few hesitations that came up in my mind/how I felt during the day:

Morning: Woke up, drank 2L of water, drank coffee, went for a long walk. I was very... regular... likely because of all the water and coffee on an empty stomach. 

I walked through the woods and didn't listen to a podcast like I usually do; I wanted to be hyperaware of everything going on around me and really soak in all the beauty. It's been in the 70s (still learning Celcius lol) here and SO gorgeous, so I wanted to take advantage and try to be as completely in the moment as possible. 

Afternoon: I wrote yesterday's blog post which took me around 2 hours. My mind felt really clear and focused, which was amazing! Still wasn't thinking about food too much at this point. 

Pre-hot yoga: I made plans originally to attend a 4:30 hot yoga class (I've been going almost every day and am OBSESSED with yoga again.)... but I was honestly scared I'd pass out or something bad would happen #dramatic since I hadn't eaten in nearly 20 hours at this point. 

I spent probably from 3:30-4 pm Googling, "Should I take hot yoga while fasting?" "Is it OK to work out when fasting for long periods of time?" ... yet everyone had different answers.

I ended up taking the class and felt freakin AMAZING. It was a sweaty vinyasa flow class and was actually more challenging than any class I've been to there because the instructor was the bomb.

I honestly felt so clear, so light and had so much energy to make it through the class. My meditation at the end was especially rewarding 1. because I felt accomplished for going there and 2. because I didn't have anything in my system, so my mind was all over the place. My savasanas are a lot more intense when I'm fasted/haven't eaten in a while and I tend to see visions of things (woo-woo Jules), but I'm super open and welcome to them... maybe I'll go into that in a later post!

Post-hot yoga: I had some freelance work to get done so I plugged away at that and watched the Orlando Magic Dancer auditions live on Facebook until about 8:30 (My old roomie is a Magic Dancer. Go Cierra!)

During which time I pampered myself with a face mask, huge liter of water with sea salt, and fuzzy socks while I worked :)

Then, I finally felt ready to dig into a big azz smoothie right around the 24-hour mark. My fast lasted from 8pm Tuesday night til about 8:30 pm Wednesday night. 

How I Feel After the 24-Hour Fast

I feel great! I was actually worried about how well I'd sleep last night, since I tend to be a naturally light sleeper and don't usually sleep well if I go to bed hungry. However, I had the best night of sleep I've had in a LONG time (didn't wake up til 9!)

I woke up this morning and felt like I didn't even need coffee, which is so shocking because I LOVE coffee. I'm taking slow sips of it now, mainly out of habit because I love drinking coffee while I write these posts. 

Guess my body needed this cleanse and all the rest :)

I'm going to finish out these last two days of my cleanse by consuming liquids. You can find all of my 'approved liquids' in my first post about this cleanse. 

I'll write another update tomorrow!

xo

Julie