40 hours, 0 calories

Well I did it. It was a bit more difficult than I was expecting, but perhaps a bit more enlightening as well. Saturday morning it was pouring down rain (as it has been doing for literally the past two weeks) and so the Habitat for Humanity working bee was canceled. Kyle and I drove back into town for a coffee and visited the Otago Settlers Museum. There were exhibits on Maori culture and language as well as information about the first European settlers in Otago and the long ocean journey they endured (although by the late 1800s expert sailors learned how to make the trip safely in less than 70 days. The invention of steam power made the voyage even shorter.). I was particularly interested to view some paintings of early Dunedin when it was only a few cottages and docks. Of couse the overall landscape hasn't changed much and I could imagine myself in the place where the painter was when he/she created each work. There were also some exhibits on Chinese miners who came to Otago at the end of the 19th century as well but never intended on staying permanently. Later in the 20th century however Chinese moved to New Zealand to begin new lives.

We arrived home around noon and I decided to start my famine after lunch. I made myself pasta with tomato sauce and salami and packed in some saltines with avacado for dessert. Part of me wanted to jam as much food as possible in my stomach, but part of me said it was stupid to make oneself sick from both overeating and undereating within 48 hours. At 1:45 pm I took my last bite.

Eleni from the lab had started her famine on Friday night, so I walked into town to her flat to watch "I heart Huckabees" and the Irish comedian Dylan Moran. Eleni was eating candy and drinking juice, which I considered cheating. Within 6 hours of my big lunch I was hungry again, which is normal for me but not exactly promising when I was 15% through.

I walked to lab and attempted to work on my med school essays but ended up spending most of the time reading the New York Times. I walked home and had a mug of tea, read Tales of the South Pacific for a while, and then tried to fall asleep. Here is where the famine first hit me. I can't remember a time when I skipped a meal, so my body was rather shocked when I asked it to go to sleep with zero nourishment. I felt pretty out of it and didn't sleep very well that night. I also started noticing that I felt woozy every time I stood up (which I've experienced before but maybe not to this extent) and I also found it harder than usual to get warm in our chilly flat.

The next morning, however, my fat metabolism had kicked in and I was warm and relatively perky. (Interesting side note: most of the body catabolizes fatty acids for fuel once glucose stores are depleted, but the brain can't use fats because they don't cross the blood-brain barrier. Instead, the brain uses ketones, a byproduct of fat catabolism, as a backup fuel source.) I did a few stretching exercises to loosen up, drank plenty of water, and walked into the lab to skype and pass some time fooling around online. During this time I experienced another low point, feeling quite hungry and weak in the later afternoon hours. I stumbled home after dark, stopping at the supermarket to buy a few things to eat when the fast was over. When I got home last night I took a shower, which felt really good, drank more tea, read my book, and went to bed at 9 pm. I set my alarm for 6 am, 15 minutes after the famine officially ended.

The alarm wasn't neccessary and I knew it. I again found it difficult to stay warm, sleeping in gloves, a stocking cap, long johns, and a sweatshirt under three blankets plus my unzipped sleeping bag. At 5:15 I got up and started arranging a feast that I hoped would roughly replace the calories I had not ingested over the past day and a half. My first bite of a golden kiwi fruit was pretty amazing, and subsequent bites of apple were pretty good too. I had planned a meal of eggs, potatoes, sandwiches, crackers, and maybe cereal if I was still hungry, but I got through maybe a fourth of all that before I felt sick to my stomach. I lay down with a pretty painful stomach ache and fell asleep until it was time to go to work. Here I am, alive, but my stomach's still queasy and I'm a little tired.

So what did I get out of all this? I'm not sure if my fasting experience was all that representative of what starving children in the third world feel each day. There's no "beginning" and "end" to their fast, and most hungry children probably endure chronic malnutrition rather than a pure water diet for extended periods of time. Their hunger is much longer lasting and more deep rooted than what I felt. However, I did experience some of the physiological effects of lack of calories, some that I didn't expect such as difficulty keeping warm. I also realized that even if a chronically hungry person has an opportunity every once in a while for a solid meal, they probably can't take in enough calories because one's digestion ability atrophies relatively quickly. But the real motivation for this fast was to raise money to feed hungry kids around the world, and in that department my famine was a big success: I raised NZ$316 which according to the World Vision website will provide 74 children with basic foodstuffs, bedding, and soap.

Will I do it again? Almost certainly not. Am I glad I did it once? I suppose so. Next year I'll definitely choose a different sort of famine.

PS. My most recent lab presentation has been posted.