Fung Fasting Report #5: The Breakthrough Month

By Holly Lisle

This was the month in which I broke through my 3-days fasting block.

Went four days easily and comfortably on just water, coffee, and a daily multivitamin, and I think I could have done five, but we had a roast that needed to be cooked and eaten before it went bad.

I fasted yesterday just because I felt like it, and the jury is still out on whether or not I’ll want to eat today. I probably will, but we’ll see. I don’t want my body to get complacent, or to have a regular schedule it can count on.

This was a month in which I dealt with massive stresses, both financial and technical, as we completed all but the clean-up part of getting the HollysWritingClasses.com site out of beta.

It was the month in which — if I were ever going to revert to the secret stress eating that, along with a one-time diet of gummy bears and Diet Coke, pushed me over (probably way over) 220 lbs — I would have.

It was a rough damn month from start to late middle. But it finished pretty well, and so did I.

Waist just prior to adopting keto and fasting: 42” (106.7 cm)

Waist today: 31” (78.7 cm) — 13” (33 cm)

But that’s just a number.

I look in the mirror and for the first time in years, my face is the “right” face — I see the person I was at 25, before my life took that first careening left turn into Bad Shitville.

I don’t look twenty-five, of course.

If you’re fifty-seven and you do, you’ve either made a deal with the devil or a plastic surgeon, and I’m not sure which would be more detrimental to you in the long run.

But I know this face. It has the right angles, the right plains, the right jaw. I have laugh lines around my eyes, but I’d already decided when I was a teenager that I’d rather have laugh lines than frown lines.

And from the point where I decided that, I’ve lived my life with that in mind, always looking for humor even in the middle of darkness and ugliness.

And while I have a lot of laugh lines, I don’t have any frown lines.

I know this body. It runs up stairs, and lopes across the parking lot. It launches me out of bed with a quick rolling snap, from lying down to standing with nothing in between. It picks up socks and underwear with its toes, flips them into my hand with a deft little move we practiced after seeing Matt do it when we first got together, and thinking that was really cool.

It moves the way I remember it moving — fast and smooth and without pain.

I know this brain. It wakes up in the morning ready to go, full of ideas and conversations, full of focus. Full of smart-ass commentary on everydamnthing.

I am more focused, quicker to accomplish tasks. I fall asleep easier. I wake up easier.

I’m fifty-seven, and I felt like THIS when I was twenty-five.

On food…

Feasting is nice on occasion, and we had our little 4th of July feast with Matt’s family, in which I ate vegan cookies with sugar in them without regret. (They were delicious.)

Cookies without guilt or regret. Imagine that.

I’m eating straight keto with fewer than 20 carbs per day on a 23:1 intermittent fasting schedule.

So one day of eating outside of keto in a month when I eat one healthy meal and NO snacks every day… except for the days when I fast is not a sin, or a cause for guilt.

It is a little moment of celebration in a life where celebration comes at the end of hard work, and focus, and dedication.

I’m still hanging in with my old clothes, because I HATE shopping, and the tucks I’ve done work — but everything is baggy, and even the smaller old clothes I had shoved into the back of the closet with that wistful “I used to be this size” stigma radiating off of them are now back in use, and are too loose.

I’ll eventually have to stop being a miser and go buy some damn clothes.

But not today. Probably not next month, either.

There is something wonderful about being both healthy and energetic AND too small for your skinny clothes, and besides…

I still have scissors and thread, and I know how to use ‘em.

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