Fasting Insights Pt2

LESSONS LEARNED ON A 40-DAY GRAPE FAST: PART TWO

Lesson 6:
FASTING AMPLIFIES YOUR POWER

This is real. It really does.

Even with the mud-brain days, even with the fatigue, even with the moments where I felt like a damp dishrag with a heartbeat… fasting amplifies something. It amplifies your sensitivity, your intuition, your presence. It amplifies your awareness of what’s true.

There were days when I felt so unplugged from my old narratives that it was like watching my life from a balcony. I could see patterns more clearly. I could see how I talk to myself. I could see the sneaky places where I give my power away, where I bargain with my own potential, where I treat my body like a machine instead of a living ally.

And then there were moments—quiet, ordinary moments—where gratitude just swelled out of nowhere. Like my system had fewer distractions and suddenly had more bandwidth for joy. Not manic joy. Not “everything is amazing” joy. More like: I am alive, and life is mysterious, and I can feel it.

Without digestion hogging so much energy, it’s as if the body redirects attention to other departments: repair, cleanup, nervous system recalibration, emotional processing, spiritual inventory, etc. You’re not just “not eating.” You’re reallocating life force.

This is why fasting can feel like a hero’s journey.

It’s a test of strength and faith. A small daily choice that says: I believe healing is possible. I believe my body isn’t broken. I believe I can participate in my own liberation.

And let me say something clearly: even if you break a fast early, that doesn’t cancel the power of what you did. If your intention remains self-healing and self-respect, you’re still on the path. You still showed up. You still took action. You still proved to yourself that you’re not helpless.

Plenty of people suffer from reversible conditions and never act—not because they’re lazy, but because somewhere deep down, they don’t believe they can do hard things. They don’t believe their body can change. They don’t believe they can change.

So if you’ve ever fasted even one day—if you’ve ever made a radical choice for your own healing—I want you to know: that’s not small. That’s ancient.

Moral of the story: FASTING IS AN ANCIENT HERO’S JOURNEY. EXPECT TO BE CHALLENGED—AND HANDSOMELY REWARDED.

Lesson 7:
EMBRACE ALONE TIME (YES, REALLY)

EMBRACE. ALONE. TIME.

I cannot stress this enough.

During the fast, my energy felt tender. Like my skin had been peeled back, emotionally and energetically. I felt more permeable. More impressionable. More affected by people’s moods, opinions, judgments, and even casual “how’s it going?” check-ins that carried undertones I didn’t have the bandwidth to manage.

So I protected myself. Fiercely.

I declined social outings. I minimized contact with certain personalities—especially the abrasive, judgmental, high-voltage types. Even if I loved them. Even if they loved me. Even if they meant well.

And I also didn’t tell most people what Nikiforos and I were doing. Not because I was hiding, but because I knew I didn’t want to spend my limited energy explaining myself, defending myself, educating people, or absorbing their projections.

Because here’s the thing: food is social glue.

(In the case of gluten-laden foods, the glue is literal.)

So much of our social life is built around eating: brunch, coffee dates, birthday dinners, little plates shared in a group, “come over for a drink,” “try this,” “taste that,” “just have a bite.” It’s one of the primary ways humans bond.

And when you opt out of that ancient bonding ritual, you stand out. You become “different.” People can feel unsettled by that, even if they can’t articulate why.

Some people become curious. Others become weird. Some people become defensive. Some people subtly (or not subtly) try to shame you into normalizing their normal again. Some start waving the eating-disorder flag. Some decide you’re a hypochondriac. (I have… thoughts… and those thoughts deserve their own post.)

Even in supportive circles, you may feel waves of insecurity or shame or abandonment. It’s biological. Tribal. Food-sharing equals safety and belonging.

Declining food can register—on a subconscious level—as “I am not participating in the tribe.”

So alone time wasn’t just a preference. It was medicine.

What did I do with all that alone time? I tried to rest. I watched Dr. Morse videos and raw vegan videos. I watched silly TV series that made me laugh. I went very inward. I cocooned.

And I recommend it.

Make a list of the things you always wish you had time for. Let fasting become a permission slip to simplify your social obligations and retreat a bit. You can come back later. (And you will.)

Moral of the story: PEOPLE’S ENERGY AFFECTS YOU AS MUCH AS FOOD DOES. CHOOSE WISELY. OR BETTER YET—BE ALONE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN AND MAKE IT FUN.

Lesson 8:
DO WHAT’S SUSTAINABLE
(NOT WHAT’S “IDEAL”)

Just because you’re not cooking meals doesn’t mean fasting doesn’t take time.

It takes planning. It takes logistics. It takes repetition. It takes grape procurement, which, as it turns out, is its own spiritual discipline.

Finding the right grapes, at the right ripeness, in the right quantity, day after day… it’s not nothing. For us, Nikiforos was bouncing between growers and supermarkets, trying to find what was best on any given day.

And if you have weak adrenals—like I did—you may not have the same stamina you normally rely on. Things take longer. You get lightheaded. You have to sit down mid-task. You find yourself negotiating with gravity like it’s a personality.

So yes: make fasting as easy as humanly possible.

The routine needs to support you, not drain you.

At some point, about ten days into eating grapes, we shifted into mostly juicing them—maybe 65–70% of the time. It seemed like it would be easier to consume enough calories and keep digestion simple. Except… the juicer we had at the time (a Breville centrifugal high-speed juicer) was not ideal for tiny grapes. It extracted maybe half, maybe two-thirds, depending on the grapes.

Which meant we were constantly unclogging the thing. And then squeezing pulp by hand to get the rest of the juice. And then cleaning the kitchen like we ran a small, sticky winery out of our house.

There were days where it truly felt like all we did until Nikiforos went to work at 6pm was:

a) hunt down grapes
b) juice grapes
c) squeeze grapes
d) clean the crime scene of grapes

I started to dread the routine. And that dread mattered, because dread is stress, and stress is… not exactly the vibe when you’re trying to heal your nervous system and rebuild your adrenals.

So in the last stretch, we went back to eating grapes whole. It started as “we’re busy today,” but then it became: oh wow, we’re calmer. More spacious. Less irritated. More resourced.

And honestly? That shift may have supported our healing more than the juicing ever did.

You won’t always know what’s sustainable until you’re inside the experience. And that’s okay. Part of the fast is learning how to adjust course without self-attack.

Moral of the story: PLAN AHEAD SO YOU CAN KEEP IT SIMPLE IN THE MOMENT. DON’T MAKE A 40-DAY FAST HARDER THAN IT HAS TO BE.

Lesson 9:
YOUR BODY KNOWS BEST

We all say “trust your body.”

It’s such a lovely phrase. A bumper sticker phrase. A spiritual wellness phrase. But doing it—actually doing it—is way harder than we pretend.

My lesson during the fast was this:

I thought I trusted my body… but I was still trying to control the outcome.

I had an internal timeline. I had expectations. I had this subtle belief that if I did fasting correctly, I would “win” healing within forty days. Like my body was a math problem and fasting was the formula.

So if certain detox symptoms didn’t show up—if the eczema didn’t flare, if I didn’t have some dramatic purge right on schedule—I’d start to worry that my body wasn’t doing it right. That it was malfunctioning. That it was letting me down.

Looking back, I can see how much pressure I was putting on my system—psychologically, emotionally, energetically. I was trying to squish a whole healing journey into forty days.

And the thing is: that pressure itself can shut down healing.

If your nervous system is in strain, if your adrenals are in crisis-mode, if your mind is constantly monitoring and judging and obsessing, the body doesn’t feel safe enough to soften into deep repair. Healing needs safety. It needs trust. It needs time.

So yes: there is a place for discipline. And there is a place for listening. But I learned that my job is not to micromanage the intelligence of my body. My job is to support it, cooperate with it, and stop treating it like an underperforming employee.

Moral of the story: YOUR BODY KNOWS WHAT IT’S DOING. TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF THE STEERING WHEEL.

Lesson 10:
NORMALIZE WHAT YOU’RE DOING
(THE WORLD WILL TRY TO MAKE IT WEIRD)

Modern culture has a very specific storyline about fasting.

It says fasting is starving yourself. (It’s not.)
It says fasting is extreme. (It’s not.)
It says it’s unnecessary. (It’s not.)
It says it’s unsupported by modern medicine. (Totally not true.)
It says it’s hippy-dippy quackery. (Only if you call Hippocrates a quack.)

Fasting is ancient.

It exists in spiritual traditions, indigenous cultures, old medical systems, and animal biology. Animals fast instinctively when they’re injured or sick. Humans used to understand rest and abstention as part of the rhythm of life.

We’re the weird ones now—living in a world of 24-hour food availability, snacking constantly, rarely letting the digestive system fully rest, and then acting shocked when chronic disease explodes.

So if anyone tries to shame you or scare you or pathologize you for fasting, remember: their discomfort is not your truth.

You don’t have to convince anyone. But it helps to have a few grounded references ready when someone tries to frame what you’re doing as “abnormal.”

I love this quote attributed to Hippocrates, because it reminds me that fasting is not a fad—it’s part of the oldest conversation about healing:

Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness.

Whether you quote Hippocrates, or simply smile and say “this is an ancient practice,” the point is the same:

You’re not crazy. You’re remembering something old.

Moral of the story: DON’T LET ANYONE FRAME FASTING AS A MODERN FAD OR A PATHOLOGY. YOU’RE STANDING ON ANCIENT GROUND.