Resolutions, Fasting, and Wilder’s Cult of the Blue Bikini

“I’ve never been great at conflict resolution.  Not without a blade, and several rolls of plastic wrap.” – Dexter

I would say that the writing of this book is both Original and Crispy.  This was actually released for free in 2017 by KFC. 

I got home on Wednesday night and the aroma of baked chicken filled the house.  It smelled like Colonel Sanders® had developed a scented candle, and it was amazing.  I wanted to rub the smell under my arms, in my hair, and maybe on my pillow so I could smell it in my sleep.

I had just dropped Pugsley off for wrestling practice, and The Boy had just gotten back from his wrestling practice and had dropped in to grab his term paper to go meet with a study group before flying out of the house faster than a floozy egghead on a baboon crotch.  I am not at liberty to tell you what a floozy egghead on a baboon crotch is, but I assure you it is quite fast.

The Mrs. and I were left alone in the house, a rare enough occurrence, and The Mrs. pulled the hot, plump, greasy, piping-hot chicken thighs and legs from the oven, slowly, letting them linger and adjust to the kitchen air, their moist meat hidden only by the sheerest of skin.  Whew.  I’m getting goosebumps just reading that.

Given that Pugsley and The Boy were normally there for dinner, she’d made about forty-five pounds of chicken.  She had also made gravy and some sort of low-carb mashed cauliflower that was pretending to be potatoes.  I generally try to avoid mashed things that aren’t actual potatoes – I’d just as soon use the mashed cauliflower for drywall repair, or execute it for being an impostor.

“Food’s hot, come and get it.”  The Mrs. walked back with a single chicken thigh and some of the drywall spackle on her plate, covered with gravy.

“I’m fasting.”

“Okay.  Crap.  Now who’s going to eat all of this chicken?”

The Mrs.’ dog Emo looked hopeful and fat.  Her other dog, BWL (broccoli with legs, because he’s so stupid he’s nearly a vegetable) just looked confused.  Which is normal.

Wait, what?  Did you say fasting, John Wilder?

Yeah.  On a lark, I decided to fast for two reasons.  The first one is that it tied into a New Year’s resolution to get in better shape.  I’m a strong proponent New Year’s resolutions – they’re a good sign that even when you’re as awesome as me, you have the amazing humility to realize you could be a bit more excellent.  Truth:  it would not hurt me to lose a few pounds, especially if there’s a good story to it and it was unusual and did NOT involve X-Acto® knives and a vacuum cleaner.  I’m not doing that again, at least not without more tarps and duct tape.

The second reason I decided to fast is that I can’t remember going more than, say, two days without eating.  Ever.  I’ve got an iron stomach, and even when I was sick as a small child I never missed more than a single meal.  Could I go longer?  I remember when The Mrs. and I were first married that The Reverend Al Sharpton© had declared a “hunger strike” to protest that he wasn’t getting enough media attention a bombing range in Puerto Rico.  The Mrs. and I were listening to the radio one day when it emerged that Al’s “hunger strike” included actual food whenever he was hungry.  So, immediately we christened it “A Hungry Strike” as in, “I sure am hungry, I could use a lot more soup.”  Imagine that line in Al Sharpton’s voice, it’s funnier that way.

Our society is seems to be built on the idea that limitless on-demand food is normal and has existed since the aliens first created us as a slave race to develop PEZ®.  It’s also taken as gospel truth that if you don’t eat every four hours YOU WILL DIE.  It’s almost like most people think that for all of the history of humanity, we had a Schlotzsky’s Sandwiches© to serve salami subs on sourdough in the Serengeti or a Denny’s™ dishing dinners and desserts to Danes in dusty diluvial Denmark.  But the sad truth is that there has been the precedent of a society going from abundance to starvation in short order – just look at the fall of the Soviet Union, or that night that Wendy’s™ was closed because the Frosty© machine exploded.

Cult leader Mr. Fizzlesticks liked Kool-Aid™ before he got beamed to the Mother Ship.

I’d imagine that for most of history (which is before McDonalds®, Taco Bell©, or even agriculture), when you ate, you ate really, really well from that mammoth you took down.  When you didn’t eat?  Well, that might be a week.  I can see that ancient people wouldn’t get all trendy and put out websites and courses devoted to fasting.  No, they just didn’t have any food.

But even people you thought were tough, well, I remember watching a biography about T.E. Lawrence, the famed Lawrence of Arabia.  In it, a friend (of his, not of mine) related how Lawrence once went 45 hours without eating or sleeping just to see if he could.

Hell, I called that finals week in college.  But, again, never can I recall going over 48 hours without food.  What the heck, I’d give it a try.  And as I write this sentence, I’m on hour 94, so in two hours I’ll have gone four days without food.

I’m not dead.

And the really, really odd thing is that for most of the 94 hours I haven’t been horribly hungry.  After I started the fast, I started doing some research.  It turns out that there are a very large number of people in the world who fast, not because they don’t have food, but because they think it has more benefits than being Jeff Bezo’s $65 billion dollar ex-wife:

• Weight Loss
• Cancer Prevention
• Increased Lifespan
• Make You Telepathic on Wednesday
• Reduced Inflammation
• Urine Glows So You Don’t Need Bathroom Lights
• Lower Blood Pressure
• Reduce Type 2 Diabetes
• Make You Bulletproof
• More Better Braining, er, Thinking

Okay, some of these are sketchy, and not just the ones that I obviously made up.  It turns out the “increased lifespan” claim was based on some sort of worm that they starved.  The worm lives an average of 21 days and they starved it for a day.  Which is like you or I not eating for three years.  Yeah.  And the cancer claims from starving rats every other day.  If there’s one thing medical science knows how to do, it’s how to cure cancer in rats.

The main reason I did it, though, was curiosity.  Could I?

Yes.

I started out with the idea of doing three days, or 72 hours.  At the end of the third day it was going so well I said, hey, how about doing four days?  I’m glad I did.  I’ll explain below:

On day one it was like . . . nothing happened, because I regularly go 24 hours without eating, and have done so since I was a kid.  I had three mints and a dill pickle.  So, yes, this is technically not a complete fast, but the total number of calories was about thirty.  For the day.

Day two was a bit tougher, and was about four mints.  And three pickles.  So, sixty-five calories.  I felt fine, and not very hungry at all.  Day three was the same, but after exercising (which I do at lunch) for about 40 minutes I felt nearly comatose and my hands were very, very cold all day.  Then, almost like a light going on, I felt fine, and had plenty of energy for day four.  On day four, I had a pickle and two mints, so, 25 calories.

I justified the pickles based on the tiny amounts of calories and the salt that I wasn’t getting anywhere else, even though I was still engaging in some pretty intense and sweaty exercise.  The mints?  Those were for my coworkers.

Total calories:  185 in four days, plus all the coffee and water (both plain and carbonated) that I could drink.  Which was a lot.  185 calories is 18% of a Double Whopper with Cheese©, or like two bites.  Over four days.  So, I count that as fasting even though The Mrs. rolled her eyes and made some comment about “sounds like a hungry strike” under her breath.

Bringing snacks at Fasting Cult?  Best duty ever.

But I’m an amateur at fasting and I know it.  One thing I have learned, however, is if there’s a human activity, there’s a cult on somewhere on the Internet devoted to it.  When started researching, I found people were fasting for periods of up to 100 days.  My little four day fast wasn’t much in comparison to those people.  They had to plan for two things for such long durations without eating, electrolytes/vitamins and refeeding.

It turns out the dangerous part of fasting for a long time, besides starving to death, is starting to eat again.  It turns out that if you start eating again incorrectly that you can short out the lithium battery in your heart, or strip the gears on your lungs.  Or something.  I’m not a doctor, but the Internet Cult of Fasting says you can actually have a fairly dangerous phosphate demand, especially if you eat a lot of carbs when you let your inner fat person out to eat everything in sight.  Your body requires phosphates to process carbs, and you can pull ‘em out of your blood (where it’s required to keep the lithium battery in your heart going) and into your cells (where they’re required to process the carbs).  It would be really stupid to die because of Pop Tarts™, but they probably kill more people than cookie dough (The CDC, Raw Cookie Dough, and Sexy Theocracy).

There are some cults where recruiting is easy, except for the heretic on the left . . . no respectable cult has maroon bikinis!

Phosphate balance (along with some other conditions) can kill you.  I’d try to be funnier, but refeeding really can be fatal and leave a really stupid headline like “Popular Internet Writer Killed By Eating Pop Tarts® After Not Eating On Purpose.”

But hey, if Al Sharpton can make it . . . .

First Meal in 96 Hours Update:

Three pieces of baked chicken, two handfuls of blueberries, and two hamburger patties from the nearby Sonic™ since Pugsley got the wrong order.  Still not dead.  I’m feeling as full as a French bloomer weasel on Thanksgiving Dinner.  But the French bloomer weasel is endangered . . . .