2026-04-13
Today is day four of my fast. I'm officially under 300 pounds.
This is basically a water fast. I'm allowing myself to drink water, coffee, and diet soda; I'm also letting myself chew gum and eat a few hard candies throughout the day. It's ironic to start a fast after Great Lent, but fasting is still something one can do any time of year. When I first considered doing the fast, I wanted to do it for spiritual reasons, but as I've been going through this process so far, my perspective is changing. Many of my physical ailments are due in large part to my obesity, and for the last several years, losing weight has been a difficult process. I struggle with gluttony, and feelings of hunger have always been difficult to push through. But as I've lived my life over these last few years, I've become so angry with everything.
This includes food. Food pisses me off. The industries that propagate addiction to it are horrible, and this whole idea of "healthy eating" has always felt like an immense cope to me. We need food to live, but it's so easy to forget how dangerous food can be. While thinking about health, I have come up with three basic pillars that dictate just about everything: what you ingest, how you move, and how you sleep. If there's some kind of deficit in any of those three pillars, that can cause health difficulties in the short-term and long-term. But even beyond that, I wonder to myself why I want to be healthy.
Life sucks ass, and being healthy might make it suck less. This feeling, on top of the general anger I have toward food, is what's propelling me in this fast. There have been many instances of obese people going on prolonged fasts to lose weight, most notably Angus Barbieri. He fasted for over a year and lost 276 pounds. What's more impressive is that he kept it off. This is because he totally rewired his relationship with food. Any fat person will tell you that they have a hard time saying no to food; a prolonged fast is the ultimate response to that. If I can refuse the pleasure that a big greasy meal gives me for an extended period, then I'll know that in the future, I can always refuse it.
I've also been more inspired by monastic saints and their dedication to fasting. Saint Anthony lived to be over a hundred years old and could go days without eating at a time. On the days he did eat, he'd only have a small amount of bread and oil. When his students would see him emerge from his self-built tomb, he didn't look emaciated at all, but healthy. The truth is that the desire for good food is laden in the same desire as so many other sins. Food, while needed to live, is still a pleasure of the flesh; it is important to me that I refute these carnal appetites.
There is a certain fear I have about engaging deeper in asceticism: that my practice of it comes from a place of pride. I think that many people are ascetic from a place of pride, to prove that they are tougher and more strong-willed than others around them. I came to that thought after reading Katabasis by R.F. Kuang earlier this year. It's a fantasy novel where two magic students go to Hell to save their professor. The professor is a super strict, arrogant asshole. He's a brilliant magician, but dedicates himself fully and totally to being the world's greatest magician. There was a section in the book where the two students are discussing his asceticism and how they'd all have to forego many necessities and pleasures in pursuit of their work.
I'm also reminded of the stories of different professional athletes like Jerry Rice and Kobe Bryant. Their feats of asceticism were in pursuit of their craft and their position within it. They worked so hard and sacrificed so much because they wanted to be the best in their field. When I think of my own desires for asceticism, I am wary of any sense of pride. When I think of doing all these things, I do them not because I want to prove anything to anybody; doing things for others' approval is a useless pursuit because you'll never get it. I don't even want to prove anything to myself. I am so sick and tired of trying to attain a certain sense of self I know I'll never find. There's no point in being tougher than anyone.
I want to engage in this asceticism because I've been exposed to the demons that prowl about this earth. I keep thinking about all the horrible hallucinations I've seen and the nightmares I've had. I came to this strange conclusion that I can't shake about them: these demons who haunt me—God allows them to do this because He knows I can handle it. And I think the reason why He's giving me this cross to bear is because in a sense, I am a sort of containment vessel for those demons. I can bear the weight of their presence and still maintain a soulful disposition. When I go about in the world, I am essentially a spiritual vacuum. There's a lot there that might not be right, and more than likely I don't have that much impact at all, but it makes me feel comforted in a way. It makes me feel like there's something I'm doing right, even if it's not a whole lot.
When I think through all of this, I can't help but consider myself some kind of fool. "Dude, you take your dreams too seriously. They're just brain farts," someone would say. Maybe that's true. Maybe there's nothing really going on and it's all in my head, and I keep allowing myself to get in my own way over all this shit. Many don't wish to think about why they do anything. It's difficult to handle the contradictions they allow themselves to live with. I don't like living with contradictions, but more than that, I hate hypocrisy. If I've come to a certain set of conclusions about how I should live my life, then I'm going to live by them, even if they're wrong.
Even if I can't stop getting in my own way, I'm going to keep pushing through.
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