Reflecting on the 40 days

My 40 day liquid diet ended last weekend. Its primary cause - a personal tradition of marking the end of a season, and the beginning of another; my New Years' Day if you like. Coupled together with that were a slight 'spiritual' agenda and a curiosity as to how my body would react to a liquid diet of smoothies and soups (For the record, a little under a dozen solid-food meals slipped in for various reasons).

Here are some of the things I discovered:

1. It is quite possible for your body to shed a lot of weight in the process. The good news is that I lost close to 10kg's in those 40 days. The possibly bad news is that some of it might have been muscle mass.

2. So much of our social patterns revolve around food. Spartan eating habits and rare sit-down meal times took an obvious toll on my social interactions and the relationships formed around it. Fasting can very well encourage anti-social behaviours.

3. A good chunk of auditory stimulation actually comes from our mouth cavities. After 40 days of gulping down liquid, *crunch-crunch* sounds like a sweet symphony.

4. Fasting like this causes you to be more sensitive and responsive to the signals from your stomach, and less reactive about it. Now I get to drive my stomach, not the other way round.

Cute little facts aside, the thing that has been most unexpectedly meaningful for me was the conclusion of the fast - where I felt that old chapter has been completed and a new one ready to be written. Who knows what this next year will bring.