My stomach sounds like a cross between a jackhammer and a slow draining sink.
From the next room, I hear my dog chomping away on her breakfast, consisting of the same menu — brown, beef-flavored nuggets — that she consumes every morning of her life. I’m envious.
It may be my imagination, but my social media feeds seem overly stuffed with photos of restaurant menus, tantalizing recipes and buffet spreads.
I open a phone app, which tells me I have 3 hours, 47 minutes and 29 seconds before I can ingest any nourishment other than water, unsweetened coffee or tea. The app is called Zero, which aptly describes the amount of enthusiasm I have for what I am currently doing to my body.
I am fasting. Although there is nothing even remotely “fast” about this new diet craze. If you want to experience how slowly time can tick by, try fasting.
The concept is simple: Rather than eliminate potentially unhealthy foods or food components from your body — be it carbs, dairy, gluten, soy, sugar, spice or everything nice — just eliminate EVERYTHING. For a predetermined amount of time.
For me, it’s 16 hours or whenever I decide to break into a Buffalo Wild Wings’ kitchen and help myself to some beer battered tenders. For journalism accuracy, I just googled “Buffalo Wild Wings menu” to make certain beer battered tenders existed on the menu. Don’t do that while fasting.
Golfer Phil Mickelson claims to have lost 15 pounds after a six-day fast. My wife and daughter fast. During an early morning weightlifting session at my health club, three members who overheard me talking about my new non-eating regiment revealed they, too, were fasting. If I owned a restaurant, I would be getting very nervous about now. It’s hard to make money when nobody is eating.
I’m not an obese person and I have never been ordered by any medical professional to lose weight or suffer the consequences. Still, the idea of dropping five or 10 pounds just by shortening my “feeding window” sounded intriguing. Also, the Zero app laid out the potential benefits.
“Why are you interested in fasting?” the welcome screen asked. Choices included weight management, improved mental clarity, increased daily energy and “live longer.” That one made me laugh out loud. If you’re not interested in prolonging your life, why fast? Why not just stuff your face with mozzarella sticks, onion rings and French fries and wait blissfully for the inevitable heart attack?
I am currently on my fifth day. I stop eating at 6:30 p.m. and don’t allow food to touch my lips until 10:30 the next morning. I learned quickly never to complain about my hunger pangs, for doing so garners not a lick of sympathy.
“Oh, you’re choosing not to eat?” a friend replied when I told her about my situation. “You know, there are a lot of people in impoverished countries who go days without eating. And they don’t have a choice!”
“Yeah, but those people don’t have Uber Eats and DoorDash on their phone,” I replied. Those people don’t live walking distance from a convenience store. Who’s suffering more here?”
I hoped she would see the humor in my response. I was mistaken.
Other friends have been more encouraging. One said she ate “whatever I wanted” during her allotted feeding time, still lost weight and is now a bona fide faster. Another fasting participant sent me “before and after” selfies and the results were astounding. And he lives in Wisconsin, where cheese curds are considered one of the four food groups, the other three being beer, light beer and microbrewed beer.
I’m willing to continue this diet even though I stepped on a scale today and have lost nary a pound. But I worry about the months ahead. The sun will shine longer, temperatures will rise, and I will want to sip cocktails on my patio until 7 p.m. before even thinking about dinner options. Right now, at 7 p.m., I ‘m thinking about going to bed so I can sleep through the hunger. That works.
As long as my dreams don’t include a visit to Buffalo Wild Wings.
