Day five, so far so good.

[crosswind 134]

So it's day five and things seem to be going okay. I check my temperature once or twice a day -- normal or low -- especially first thing in the morning. I dont have any pain but every once in a while there will be a kind of an ache on my left side near the drain incision site. I'm sleeping great. I lost about ten pounds maybe.

But I am hungry. Let me qualify that. I *feel* something in my general abdominal region that I used to think was hunger but I know that's impossible, First of all my belly has to be swollen from surgery and it's the size of an acorn compared to what it used to be, so what is this gnawing feeling there? Sometimes taking a few gasx strips helps but generally it feels like my belly is hugging my spine almost all the time.

I am really aware of my staple line and I could not imagine putting a single bite of food in my mouth right now, but it translates to a kind of restlessness and an ache, maybe like a headache only in my belly.

I was thinking about one reason I wanted to get this surgery. I was pretty healthy going in compared to some people, but I was getting sick. I was anemic, My Vitamin counts were low. I was smoking * a lot* more and I was depressed. I had no energy to get up and face the day. And I was 100 pounds overweight.

What people usually tell you to do in that case is improve your diet, right? Eat more meat. Get more Protein. Take a Vitamin supplement. Buy some miracle juice. Take Vitamin C. Go to a health spa and let them feed you. Or eat comfort food. Or eat wheatgrass. Or eat vitamin-infused Peanut Butter smoothies.

Take something and put it in your mouth seems to be the commercial solution to failing health.

But as I was lying in my bed one day this winter it occurred to me that what I really needed to do was to put *nothing else* into my body for some period of time. Like say a month. In alternative healthcare they put people on juice or Water fasts -- not to get people to lose weight but to reduce the strain on the internal organs so that they can regenerate -- ESPECIALLY the liver. If you are sick and overweight and depressed and nothing seems to work to help you...maybe you don't need medicine. Medicine goes through the liver. Maybe you don't need more fruits and veggies and complex carbs. Maybe you don't need Prozac. Maybe you need *nothing* in your mouth for a month.

Most people in the general population think this is a crazy idea -- it's starvation, it's a fad diet( lIke there is anything else left besides fad diets anymore.) It doesn't serve the commercial world for people to go on extended fasts because they can't sell you anything to fix your problem. I have bought thousands of herbal preparations over the years because I thought they would make me either thinner or happier. But basically they don't do anything because the body is a machine and the machine has to work right, and if your body is working wrong you're going to get sick.

This is, among other things, a medically supervised fast. It is actually a Protein sparing fast. I thought back then, a couple months ago that this surgery would solve two problems -- one that I was 100 pounds overweight, and the other that I was getting sick: and also that even if I took on this "crazy" idea of a longterm fast once I stopped fasting I would probably gain the weight back again.

There are studies coming out now that say that one way to extend the lifespan is to reduce daily calorie intake drastically. Why? Less wear on the system. Filtering and clearing mechanisms are in peak condition. Internally, you start to work better and better.

I am not entirely that excited about losing weight -- or at least not at this point when I have 100 pounds to lose. But I want to feel that way, light and energetic and alert and alive. I knew I could never do that without help. Now as long as I heal up correctly: it's inevitable.

I can't wait for that