Last night, I saw a preview of a video Elliot Hulse made on how to stop your addiction to porn and masturbating. Being someone who watches porn daily and masturbates even when I’m not horny (became a habit at this point), I was interested in his viewpoint. Especially considering this is a man with whos videos I was relating to heavily while I was in college. Anyway, Elliot goes on to say, the secret is to fast. That fasting works on your self-control and decreases libido and all this other stuff.
I scrolled through his Instagram and the past few posts are about fasting and him praising its benefits. It seems to be his new focus and the vehicle that is currently helping his Alpha.
He caught my attention, so I looked up the trusty Google to see the benefits of fasting and such and ran into this article. It went on to talk about the medical benefits of fasting as well as the psychological effects that you gain from fasting.
Okay. So first, someone I would consider a mentor advises it, and now I’m reading there are studies proving its benefits. Maybe I was wrong for making fun of people who fasted in the past. I always thought it dumb to starve yourself. But if the majority of people aren’t fasting, and the majority of people aren’t living the lives that they actually want to live, maybe I should try fasting like the minority who are living on their own terms.
At first, I was going to embark on a 48-hour fast. Just throw myself into it and really test my will power. But after reading the article, it suggested starting off with a smaller fast than the 48-hour if never done before so that you can learn how your body reacts to not having food. So I decided on the 16:8 method. That is, I leave myself an 8-hour window to eat and the other 16 hours (including sleep), I fast.
My window to eat was 12-8 pm. It is now 10:56 pm and my body is craving food. Especially since it is still recovering from some intense workouts I went through on Monday. When I took my lunch bag to the kitchen, I realized I had a little bit of food left in the container I brought to work. I warmed it up thinking, “I can start this fast tomorrow.” The container is right next to me, warm, smells great, but I have not eaten any of it. I told myself I have to write about this experience first, and if after doing so, I feel like I NEED to eat, I will.
So I took a swing of water from the gallon that stays on my headboard, and that did help. After writing this, I’m going to shower and then make myself some tea, because drinking water, tea, and coffee are allowed during fasting. Maybe the tea will be satisfying enough for me not to want to eat.
The goal is to go through this 16:8 fasting routine until Friday morning. Then next week, I will go to an 18:6 routine OR do the 16:8 routine for the whole weekday. Wish me luck!