Detox day 5

Thursday (Day 5)

Weight:            69.5kgs (whoa)

Food:                        none

Liquids:            approx. 5 liters 

I wake up only with my alarm at 0630am, the first night where I don’t wake up with insomnia much earlier!  Perhaps because I enjoyed my dreams so much.  This night I had a lot of dreams about food, including a festive buffett style dinner and a cruise where people were passing around a fantastic chocolate mousse cake.  I ate everything in the dreams, could taste the tastes of the food, and was quite happy.

 

I’m very bored by now.  I do some reading, work, have a massage, and chat a couple of hours with Jason and Gustav.  Jason is taking off today for Bangkok where he will stay for quite a while.  Since I will spend one night in Bangkok on Sat night, Jason and I make plans to going out large on Sat – Q Bar, Bed Supper Club, etc.  I have party withdrawal.  It also turns out that Jason hás a godfather in Rio de Janeiro and I give him the hard sell on Rio and Brazil in general, helped by Gustav, who reiterates his story of his first threesome in Rio. 

 

Today passes by quickly nonetheless, partly because I happen to have a lot of work.  I don’t even have my nemesis broth soup at night.

Detox day 4

Wednesday (Day 4)

 

Weight:            71.5kgs

Food:                        none

Liquids:            approx. 5 liters

 

I still have a lot of energy.  I even worked out today with weights for 30mins.  I really don’t get why this fast is so different than the other ones.  I’m starting to wander whether I secretly sleepwalk and have food somewhere.

 

But really I have zero hunger.  Today, Lisa finally broke her fast and Jason is sort of cheating, somewhat breaking his fast (on day 6).  Apparently Lisa and Jason already cheated last night and had a bunch of cashew nuts (I don’t think Lisa is really cheating given she hás alreasy been fasting for 8 days).  We all (I, Lisa, Jason, Eric and Vee) go to Long Beach for the afternoon, an amazing deserted, unbuilt beach on the southeast side of the island, which requires taking a ridiculous gravel road over steep hills and through the jungle to get to.  The beach has a couple of shack restaurants.  While I have a coconut (liquid only – Lisa scrapes out the flesh), Lisa has a great-looking som tum salad, Vee hás noodles, Eric hás a curry, and Jason – cheating – hás egg fried rice with red curry sauce on the side.  I really enjoy the smell of the foods and would really like to try them, but not because I’m hungry, just because I would enjoy the taste.  I realize that that is why I do sometimes miss food right now – for the taste, not because I’m hungry.  Also, while a lot of foods appear compelling (like the Thai foods in front of me), it is only a few specific foods that get my saliva really flowing when I think about them – they include eel sushi, foie gras, and marzipan.  Unfortunately, except for possibly the eel, none of those are really part of the initial post-fasting diet.

 

In the afternoon, Eric and Vee leave the resort.  We all swap details, I’m sure that I will be in touch particularly with my “mortgage buddy” Vee.

 

At dinner, with Jason and Lisa, I have to watch others eat again.  While Jason is being good and not cheating (probably due to the fact that the waitresses are like schoolteachers and know exactly who is fasting and who is not and chastise fasters who just even dare to ask about food on the menu), Lisa’s post-fasting eyes are significantly bigger than her fasting-reduced stomach and she orders three main courses – pumpkin salad, curry salad, and spring rolls – they all look great.  While no waitresses are around, Jason quickly steals a few bites.  Later during the dinner, he gets a massive stomach ache and leaves to go to his room – egg fried rice apparently wasn’t a good idea.

Detox day 3

Tuesday (Day 3)

 

Weight:            72.5kgs (what the hell??)

Food:                        none

Liquids:            approx. 5 liters

 

 

Huge surprise – I feel great, relatively full of energy.  I have no idea why – usually the morning of the 3rd day of the fast, I feel terrible and hit my low point.  I woke up early again, around 0630am and went onto the internet – given the time difference (+9hrs), it is one of the good times to communicate with Brazil   I have about 50 emails, but I’m actually thankful for that (see below). 

 

I decide to skip meditation and yoga (too soft) and channel my excess energy into a bike ride and by chance stumble across an authentic Thai fishing village, on stilts in a bay – you don’t get that in Koh Samui. 

 

I’m now officially bored.  Coming back, I spend part of the day dozing in the sun and having a massage, which is nice, but then again I do have an ADD tendency and addiction to multi-tasking and I’m not about to be cured of it.  I start processing my 50 emails and decide to do some marketing work for my company – I’m actually fairly efficient and have one good idea.  I will do some more work later today, but I also need to find more activities for the remaining days.  Usually I would go on long cycle rides around this beautiful island, or diving along near pristine reefs – but both options are probably not advisable in a semi-starved state (even though on the surface of it I do feel like I have energy).  I also notice that one of my initial thoughts in response to realizing that I’m bored is that I should go eat something – and not because I’m hungry (I have zero hunger), but just to pass time.  It makes me realize how often I (we?) probably eat purely out of boredom and/or habit.

 

Late in the afternoon, I hang out at the detox counter (where you get your detox drinks and supplements), which is also next to the steam room, and basically the Spa’s equivalent of a bar or Starbucks, in that it is the most social place.  Except of course that in bars or Starbucks people don’t talk much about colonics.  I pretty much run into everybody.  Eric went on a motorcycle ride on an abandoned road in the jungle – naturally, I talk to him about snakes.  Jason, as it turns out, used to be private chef for a number of ultrarich people including Carlos Slim.  One of his Russian clients just bought a 240meter yacht.  I think I’d like to break my fast in Jason’s restaurant!  In the steam room, I encounter a naked couple (usually everybody wears sarongs) which makes me guess they must be German – we have a nice chat in German for a little while.  Vee (on day 7, the last day of fasting), as it turns out, actually lives in the UK and, by chance, also has a mortgage broking business.  Clearly we instantly stroke up a 1hr conversation on mortgage broking, swapping all sorts of experiences.  We must seem like a couple of nerds, and a noticeably bored-looking Lisa (on day 8 of fasting) walks out on our conversation within 5mins.  Vee also writes a blog about the fasting and mentions he has even posted a picture of the, ahem, “outcome” of one of his colonics because people were asking so much about it – I won’t be doing that, sorry.  Vee’s and mine mortgage and colonic conversation only gets eventually interrupted by Gustav, the very nice elderly (I guess early 70s) South African gentlemen, who is curious about my story in Brazil.  I give him the rundown and his immediate response was “I love Rio, it’s where I had my first experience with two women at the same time” (ah, bless Brazil).  He also adds he gave up smoking after reading it affects sex drive.

 

Finally, notably, two things were missing today:

 

1. My French nemesis family did not annoy me (yet) today – I have to upgrade them to “minor nemesis.”  ADDENDUM -- I'm now sitting in the reception area trying to do emails and the two small kids are running around screaming, unchecked x-(

 

2. There were no conversations about food today.  I sometimes force myself to think about food, but I have no physical response to it, no feeling of hunger or appetite, the idea of eating seems strange.  Except of course the broth soup, which also could be upgraded to minor nemesis, as I realized that putting a bunch of garlic and coriander in it makes it much more tolerable. 

 

Day 4 tomorrow.  I wonder how I will feel.  If I have remotely the same levels of energy as today, I shall go cycling again.

Detox day 2

Monday (Day 2)

 

Weight:            72.5kgs

Food:                        none

Liquids:            approx. 5 liters

 

First an important addendum to yesterday’s entry:  after writing the blog and before going to sleep, I couldn’t help looking through websites a la “snakes of thailand” in order to find my reptile friend that I encountered on my jungle walk.  It turns out that he or she was a King Cobra (denoted on the website with 3 skulls and bones)...  I think I sort of knew it was a cobra, because I didn’t think there were that many snakes with those flary things around the neck (and they were flaring/extended, indicating that the snake was at least semi pissed-off), but I guess in the moment I just didn’t want to realize that, probably for the better.

 

Woke up at 0530am today (probably a mix of jetlag and the insomnia I tend to have while fasting), with still a lot of energy.  Surfed the internet and read until 0800am when I first did 30mins of meditation and then 1.5hrs of yoga, both with Lisa, Eric, and Vee (who clearly is only one letter away from having a very bad/funny name).  Not sure I will be doing either again.  They yoga is pretty soft, I think we just got through 4 or 5 poses, and not even very hard ones – just not enough downward facing dogs for me.  According to Lisa today was actually a much harder class than the previous days.  I think tomorrow I will go cycling again, minus the jungle walks clearly.

 

Around mid day, after the morning colonic, my energy level drops notably and I first sleep by the pool and then decide to take the shuttle bus to the main resort town on the island, where I sleep more on the beach.  The town itself is uninteresting – a way too narrow beach (albeit very nice), some bad shops, and even a couple of old guy tourists with Thai girls, the kind of thing I was hoping not to see on Koh Chang.  To make the trip even better, my only companions in the minibus (45mins ride each way) are my nemeses, the French family with the two small kids.  One of the kids decides to keep on singing french numbers, he gets to 119 before starting again.  The Dad makes no effort to calm them down except to interrupt and correct the way to say 31 – even I know that, stupid kid.  I’m having a headache, possibly detox-induced, but more likely from listening to too many chanted french numbers. 

 

There is no sign of Jason, the chef, today, hence no discussions of fancy food menus.  However, for some reason, Eric, Vee and Lisa decide to discuss their favorite fast foods:  Vee loves KFC, Eric is a big advocate for McDonalds as his company manages their supply chain and he claims their suppliers are much higher quality than e.g. Burger King (he even went so far to say that Chicken McNuggets have good meat – I made a mental note to try them again for the first time in probably 15 years), and Lisa seems to love everything, but above all some fried chicken shop in London.  I have zero appetite.

 

Eric is on his last day of fasting, so is Lisa, but she will probably continue for a couple of days (the fitting into the dress for the wedding thing...), Vee is on day 5.  I’m starting to worry I might be the only faster left in a couple of days, surrounded by french families with young screaming kids having full-on Thai meals.   Fortunately, in the afternoon, new fasters arrive, who I meet during my daily steam room session.  An elderly couple from South África – they seem very nice, albeit I worry that, if they show up at yoga, the yoga teacher might feel compelled to take the intensity down even more.

 

I’m writing this blog over dinner, the other nemesis, the broth soup.  I wonder what I will feel like tomorrow – if my past 3 fasts are a guide, I will wake up very weak on day 3 and hit the low energy point during days 3 and 4, before dramatically rebounding.  

First day of detox at the spa

Sunday (Day 1)

Weight:            74.5kgs

Food:                        none

Liquids:            approx. 5 liters

First day of the fast.  The first day is usually relatively easy, day 2 ok, day 3 quite bad as the body really starts detoxing and energy levels are low, and from day 5 onwards, I usually start having lots of energy as the body feels rejuvenated.

I slept like a baby, probably no surprise after 36hrs door-to-door travel, and woke up at 0630am.  I go for a walk around the resort, which is on the quite eastern coast of Koh Chang, Thailand’s second largest island, in the east of the country, and itself a relatively quiet place, so far fortunately not touched a lot by tourism.  It’s a far cry from overcrowded Koh Samui.  After the walk, I officially start the program, taking the first of many detox drinks, part of the daily ritual of detoxing:

0700                        Detox drink

(a mixture of clay and some herbs, meant to clean out your colon)

0800-0830            Meditation

0830                        Supplements (pills replenishing minerals, etc.)

0830-1000            Yoga

1000                        Detox drink; morning colonic (yes, really)

1130                        Supplements

1130-1300            Massage

1300                        Detox drink

1430                        Supplements

1600                        Detox drink; afternoon colonic (yes, really, again)

1730                        Supplements

1730-1900            Steam room

1900                        Detox drink

1930                        “Dinner” (clear vegetable broth, my nemesis)

2030                        Supplements

I quickly research the available extracurricular activities.  On a fast, I usually get through 2-3 books and various DVDs, but at some point you always get bored.  The options include

·      Kayaking in the bay by the resort (which I shall do)

·      Cycling – there are various fishermen’s villages and waterfalls within 10kms, and the island has virtually no traffic

·      Trips to deserted beaches (yes please) and to the island’s resort towns (no thank you – no need to walk around watching tourists eat in restaurants)

·      Diving (which I love, but with the slight worry on how well that would go with a semi-starved body)

·      Reiki, Tarot, etc. (I might do both)

·      Elephant trekking in the jungle (perhaps)

·      Dental treatments at the resort’s dental clinic (we’ll see)

Actual activities for the day – unfortunately it’s the yoga teacher’s day off...

·      1.5hrs cycling and trying to trek to a waterfall in the middle of the native jungle along a “trail”; frantically leaving jungle after coming across an approx. 3-meter long black snake flaring at me

·      2 hours of Thai massage to recover from snake incident

·      Hours of sleeping in the sun.  On a fast I always get the weirdest dreams and plenty of them, while usually I never dream or at least not remember.  Today’s prize for weirdest dream goes to a dream in which a bank collapses, but literally the bank’s skyscraper headquarters collapses, too, with a friend of mine deciding to work to the last minute and effectively killing himself with the bank.  As usual, I also dream about food, albeit that usually only happens on day 3 or 4 of fasting.  It’s always the same thing – I dream of eating a piece of chocolate or some other sweet and panickedly wake up thinking I ruined the fast.

Another (potentially) fun part of fasting is socializing with other fasters.   While in the Koh Samui resort, there would usually be 1-2 dozen fasters, here on Koh Chang right now there are only 5 including myself.  Except 1, all have done multiple fasts already.  There is Eric, a German guy from Dusseldorf and incidentally a Wharton grad; Lisa, an English girl trying to get to fit into her dress for a wedding in 2wks; Wii, a Singaporean who I haven’t met yet; and finally Jason, a chef from England.  In fact, Jason is a Michelin-starred chef (L’Escargot) and has a habit to talk a lot about food and recipes.  He says fasting inspires him to come up with new recipes and just before he pulled out a little notebook with ideas for a degustation menu – incl. avocado & crab meat starter, calf’s liver, turbot, and a chocolate-pistachio ganache with creme brulée.  Fortunately Lisa starts talking about tripes, I lose my appetite again, and go for my “dinner” of clear vegetable broth...   where a french family with 2 small kids is having dinner at the table next to me.  They are not on the detox program (it is not a requirement to stay at the resort) and are having a full Thai dinner, on top of their small kids ruining half the relaxation of the place.  I’ll add them to my nemesis list, besides the vegetable broth..