Fasting for the fun of it!

Not Ghandi: Finally caving in to the cravings
Pic: Jessica Kriedemann

By Jessica Kriedemann

In my Matric year, a group of my friends in a scripture union society decided to stop eating for as long as possible, in support of a fundraiser and to use their meal times for times of prayer and reflection. Because I am such a nut about my three meals a day, I couldn’t really understand why anyone would want to use hunger pains to prove a point or support a cause. Food just tastes too damn good.

Then later that year, we watched Ghandi. No kidding. Since then, I’ve wanted to try last as long as possible without the one thing that I look forward to everyday...food. I just didn’t know what I could do during the time I wasn’t eating, as I didn’t really have any cause to support and exercise probably wasnt the safest idea. Since exams are here, I decided to use meal times as study times. Writing out notes while your stomach is growling was pretty challenging.

Missing breakfast was probably the hardest as I always wake up craving my cereal and coffee, but lunch was easy and I drank lots of water to keep me filled up. I tried to keep myself as busy as possible and didn’t go to the dining hall to sit with my friends. I managed to write out notes for English and although I was hungry, I wasn’t dying or anything. That was until I went to my tut at the Rat and Parrot and had a cider. The one oh-so-refreshing Hunters Dry went to my head a little and on the walk home, I started to feel pretty weak. I got back to res and alerted my friend who said I’d turned the colour of her bleached white cardigan.

I lasted from 8am till 2.30am on my fast and surprisingly lost my actual hunger as the day continued, but I started to feel very weak that night. I grabbed a bowl of muesli, bran, yoghurt and honey in the early hours of the morning while wondering how Ghandi lasted so long. Surprisingly I had to almost force myself to eat the whole bowl, but I knew I needed to.

I learnt three things with this exercise: that I can resist any temptation if I’m determined, that hunger can strangely make you reflect on yourself in a critical way and that one should never ever, drink and fast.