My 48-Hour Water Fast Experience

Curiosity got the cat! I did a 48-hour fasting journey out of pure curiosity, having heard about its transformative effects from clients and health professionals alike. Join me in this new episode as we dive deep into 'My 48-Hour Fasting Experience' to uncover the surprising insights, challenges, and benefits of this intriguing health regimen. Tune in now!

TIMESTAMPS TO HELP YOU NAVIGATE THIS EPISODE:
0:00  Intro
0:21  FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
7:06  Diving Into The Science of Fasting
14:36 Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25
16:36 Reflections on a Fasting Experience
21:59 Preparing for Mindful Activities
35:42 The Power of Support

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Diary of a CEO Youtube Video with Dr. Mindy Pelz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2mQOGzHtQc
• What to drink while fasting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ENWF4kbHo

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:21 FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
• 7:06 Diving Into The Science of Fasting
• 14:36 Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25
• 16:32 Reflections on a Fasting Experience
• 21:59 Preparing for Mindful Activities
• 35:42 The Power of Support

Transcript

Lunden Souza: 0:01

Welcome to Self Love and Sweat THE PODCAST, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host, Lunden Souza. Hey, have you grabbed your free self love and sweat monthly calendar yet? This calendar is so amazing. It comes right in your inbox every single month to help you have a little nugget of wisdom, a sweaty workout, a mindset activity, just a little something, something to help keep you focused and motivated and keep that momentum towards your goals. So every day, when you get this calendar, you'll see a link that you can click that will lead to a podcast episode or a workout or something that will be very powerful and quick to read. And then you'll also see, on the top left corner of every single day, there's a little check box in the calendar and what that is is that's for your one thing. You can choose one thing every month, or it can be the same, something that you want to implement and make this something that you can easily implement, like daily meditation or getting a certain amount of steps or water, for example, and staying hydrated and even taking your supplements. This can be something if you want to get more regular doing a particular habit and routine, you can choose what that check box means. So if you want your self, love and sweat free monthly calendar delivered right to your inbox every month on the first of the month, go to lifelikelunden. com/ calendar, fill out the form really quickly and you will have your calendar in your inbox within a few short minutes. That's lifelikelunden L-I-F-E-L-I-K-E-L-U-N-D-E-N dot com forward slash calendar. Go, get yours for free and enjoy this episode.

Lunden Souza: 2:07

Welcome back to the podcast. I recently did a 48 hour water fast and that's what I want to talk about today. I just want to share my experience, why I decided to do this, what I've been learning in my research and in my curiosity and, yeah, what my experience was like. I guess I'll pre frame this by saying I am by no means an expert in fasting. I also know that fasting isn't always for everybody and might not be suitable for you, but I've just been super curious about it. And to backtrack a little bit, I've been working really closely with a naturopathic doctor that I met through the NABA community. That's the company that I created my new course, my communication course with, and her and I connected at one of the first NABA events that we had, and she's been referring a lot of her patients over to me because she realized that there were a lot of things coming up for her clients throughout this healing process that they needed to process and learn how to integrate into their life. And that's what I do, and so she reached out to me to see if we wanted to work together regularly with her clients and patients, and so that's what we've been doing and it's been super wonderful. We've created what I call like this little triangle where her and I are both working with our clients and she's doing what she does best in her naturopathic doctor world and I'm doing what I do best as a master NLP practitioner, and so that's what we've been doing and it's really been super wonderful. And through that process she has been recommending some of her patients fasting, and so in that process, some of the clients that I was working with and in her patients that I was working with and we've been working with together have gone through this fasting process, and so that's initially why it came up for me.

Lunden Souza: 4:10

I had never done a water fast before. I've done a lot of days where I've done maybe just like bone broth very minimal calories, a lot of breathw ork, meditation, prayer, walking, journaling, all those types of things, but I had never gone completely without food, let's say, for longer than like an intermittent fasting day and things like that, and I'll talk a little bit more about what my whole experience and journey kind of was like. Anyways, just like with anything, I feel like I get so excited and I'm so curious about trying new things, anything that's going to optimize my health and well-being, whether it's physically or mentally, like I'm really on board for it. I love this kind of stuff, and so through this process, I was watching a lot of podcasts on YouTube, as I normally do. That's kind of like my form of TV. I hardly watch anything except for, like, yeah, the Huberman Lab podcast on YouTube or something like that, the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, really any long form content that he puts out, and so those are the types of things that I have running on my TV. I pretty much just put like YouTube on TV and watch those long form content. I just really love it. I feel like it's so much more nourishing than what we can find on television or Netflix, and I don't know, I'm not the type of person that likes to numb out by watching shows like that. I really like to learn, I really like to, yeah, just kind of fill my brain with more knowledge, and so, yeah, I watched a particular episode on the Diary of a CEO podcast, which is a podcast that hosts his name, Stephen. I really had never heard of him before, to be honest, but he has a very big platform, a very popular podcast, and he had a guest on there, Dr. Mindy Pelts, and she wrote a book called Fast Like a Girl, which I haven't read yet.

Lunden Souza: 6:08

I want to read it but I haven't read it yet. But I watched the interview, which is a couple hours long, and then I watched a few other interviews that she's done on impact theory with Tom Billu and I just really dove into a lot of her podcast content. So I haven't read the book yet, but the book is really about fasting for women and what that looks like with all of our different phases of our cycle. So it was just totally speaking to me because female hormones and metabolism is so unique, it's very underrepresented in the research and oftentimes there will be recommendations for what we should be eating and how we should be living or all these different things, but a lot of the studies are done on men, and so I love what she's done with her message and with her book is really making it very specific for women, but of course, also men can benefit from fasting too, right? So I was watching these videos, these long form podcast YouTube videos, just like, wow, this is wonderful.

Lunden Souza: 7:06

And she started sharing a lot about the benefits of fasting and what happens during autophagy, which is when our cells start to actually go in and heal themselves. So this fasting state actually puts us in a state where our body is like, okay, something might be wrong, we're without food, so it's our job to clean everything up and get as healthy as possible. That's kind of like the short version of what's happening internally in this autophagy process, and so I just became super interested in it because of the research and the facts surrounding what's happening in our body when we fast for 24, 48, 36, 72 hours and so on, and so I just got super interested in it and because I was coaching people who were actually doing it, I was super curious. I was like I wonder what their experience is like. I want to know what it feels like to feel how we fill those certain voids right, like when we're not eating, there's a lot of time that we're preparing for food, shopping for food, cooking for food, eating food, thinking about what we're going to eat, talking to others about what we're going to have for lunch or dinner. So there's like a lot of time that goes into that process and I knew that. So that was kind of the journey I was stepping into.

Lunden Souza: 8:27

And then also on a personal level, I have been doing a lot of work ins. I talk about this a lot like the workouts and the work ins. I was a fitness coach and a personal trainer for over 15 years and was just really all up in that space and so, yeah, now I think that the work ins are where it's at. I still definitely work out I am an advocate of that but I think that nothing can replace that internal work. And so through this process of doing my own work ins, I was like, okay, I really want to stretch myself a little bit more. I think I'm learning a lot about myself and I'll share a lot about those learnings as well where I think it might be beneficial to do a fast. And so actually, yeah, I decided not only to do it because of the curiosity and knowing that my clients were going through it. But I was like I think this will be helpful, I think this will be a powerful tool to help spiritually, mentally, physically and just help me kind of push through and work through some of what's been coming up for me and my work ins right. Because when we work in and things start coming up and traumas and old wounds and different things, we often try to avoid them and we try to mask them and we try to run away from those feelings that come up. And I really believe that when we move through, it's the better option, like let's move through Lunden and let's try to utilize this tool of fasting as you move through. So that was kind of my thought process.

Lunden Souza: 9:57

But yeah, I kind of decided to do this 48 hour water fast on a whim. I went to bed on a Sunday night and I had dinner about 8.30pm and then the next morning I woke up on Monday morning and I just decided you know what? I'm going to do a fast. So I had already been in a fasted state from 8.30pm that previous night. So I was like, okay, I'm going to go 48 hours. So Monday evening was 24 hours. Tuesday evening was 48 hours when I broke my fast at 8.30pm. And so, yeah, I just kind of woke up Monday just like, okay, I'm going to do it right. Which was kind of cool, I think, because I wasn't going to bed on Sunday night thinking, oh my gosh, this is my last meal, tomorrow I'm not going to be eating right. It was kind of cool just to wake up and decide to do that. So I was just like, okay, let's go for it, let's do it. So, yeah, that's kind of how it started.

Lunden Souza: 10:54

But to back up a little bit, I've been intermittent fasting for a while now. I've been doing it according to my female hormone cycle. So for me, I don't think that women in our different hormone cycles, I don't think it's always great to always be intermittent fasting. I think maybe other people have different opinions. Like I said, I'm not an expert in this, but what's worked for me and others that I know when it comes to intermittent fasting is just talking to a lot of my friends who are doctors and hormone experts and metabolism experts. Women are a lot different than men and so I've been intermittent fasting probably like one or two days after the end of my period, all the way up until about four days before the start of my period, because that's when I feel like I have the most energy.

Lunden Souza: 11:46

But during that luteal phase of my cycle going into my period, when I'm on my period, I just sometimes wake up and I want to make a super hearty breakfast and I want to be a little bit more snacky and just not need to be so regimented and just be a little bit more nourishing with food in that space. And so, yeah, that's what I've been doing for the last, I think, five or six years. I've been really playing with how intermittent fasting works for me, and so that's what Dr Mindy talks a lot about on these podcasts and I watched it and it's great, not just going with 48 hours, but to start intermittent fasting, like bump your breakfast down one hour and do that for a few days and then another hour. So before jumping into a prolonged fast, it's really smart to start working on shortening your eating window. And so I've been doing that, like I said, for the past four or five years where, yeah, I just kind of intermittent fast during those parts of my cycle and it's been working really well and I just feel like my cognitive function is so much better in the morning when I don't eat breakfast. I feel like I have a lot more clarity and focus to get a lot of things done. I feel like my brain performance is just so much better and so, yeah, my eating window is usually anywhere between 10am. I'll have my first meal and maybe two so just depending on the day and how I'm feeling and then my last meal. I usually eat dinner between like 6.30 and 7.30. So, yeah, it's kind of like an 11 to 7 setup, if you will, and sometimes I can go a little bit longer and sometimes I'm a little bit hungrier. It just depends if I've worked out or whatever. But that's kind of what I've been doing. So I felt like, leading up to the 48 hours of just deciding on a whim right, I had already been working my way up to shortening my meal window and I felt ready for it. So it wasn't like I just went from no type of fasting to a 48 hour fast, right. So, with that being said, I think you should experiment with shortening your eating window, especially if you're used to having breakfast, like right in the morning when you wake up, and dinner and then snacks on the couch and having longer meals in the darker hours of the day. I think it's helpful to shorten up those bookends. You know if you will Like, if you think of bookends, just like bringing in that eating window a little bit and then going into that fasting state, and you know, a lot of what Dr Mindy recommended to was maybe starting with 24 hours, and I don't know. For me, I was just like I'm going in, I'm going to do 48 hours, I just decided to put my mind to it and went for it, and I'll also say that I made a lot of mistakes. Hey, really quick.

Lunden Souza: 14:36

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Lunden Souza: 16:32

So I just told myself I'm going to do a water fast so I only had water. But I really forgot and really honestly, I should have known this. It's just so funny. You know, we all, yeah, we know things and sometimes we do otherwise or we just forget that we know things. But I didn't have any salts or mineral water or hydration salts, which I think would have been so helpful for my physical and cognitive function throughout those two days. Yeah, I just I had. I use element to the LMNT hydration salts. I love using those on my hikes and, from my research and learning, those are very helpful during a fast to help us have those minerals to, yeah, to still feel like we're good and we can continue to function throughout the fast. But I just didn't. I was just doing water and I just kind of forgot. I even had the element in my cupboard at home and, yeah, I just forgot to have these mineral salts within the 48 hour fast. So I think that was one of the major mistakes that I made.

Lunden Souza: 17:31

But I also didn't take any time off of work, so it wasn't like I woke up on Monday and I was like, okay, I'm going to fast, I cleared my schedule, I was still going throughout my day. So I think that's important to highlight too, because I think who's doing their fasting is most likely going to be going throughout their day and not like I mean, yeah, I think it's great to be able to have moments in time which I want to create for myself as well where I'm not working, I'm not doing anything, I'm just fasting, I'm just focusing on that reparation in my body. But, yeah, that's that would be a great experience, but that just wasn't the case for me, and so I was still seeing clients, I was still running my online business. I also work with a company called Brain Balance, where I'm working with young students children on their cognitive function and their attention and behavior, which takes a lot of energy and is wonderful, has been such a gift. But I also didn't take days off there either, so I was working with a lot of kids, doing a lot of work with them in the middle of this fast, and so, yeah, I was definitely a challenge, to say the least, and so, yeah, anyways, what really came out of this fast for me?

Lunden Souza: 18:45

I took some notes and, yeah, some of the things I learned I'll just share with you quickly they're very short about the timing, so, like what happens. So I took some notes about what happens during different hours, like what's happening in our body after 16 hours, after 24 hours, all those things. So when I was listening to the podcast the one that I was talking about on the diary of the CEO with Mindy Pells, I was kind of taking notes and listening and, yeah, I'll link that podcast in the show notes so that you can listen to it too. I think it's a great resource. And just to give you an idea on how I operate when I'm learning something, I listen to those podcasts all the way through like three or four times and I would listen to them and watch the videos and I'd listen to the podcast and go for walks because it's really a lot of information to digest and I really like that. Like that's my style of learning to hear it talk about it, experience it, listen to it again. So I was kind of like all up in this information during the process as well.

Lunden Souza: 19:51

So at 16 to 24 hours, that's when our body increases growth hormone and it goes into that phase of autophagy that I talked about. So I wrote down here auto means self, while phage means eat, and that just means self eating, because your cells eat the junk. The outcome is healthier and cleaner cells. Autophagy is a self preservation system which helps the body remove defective cells and recycle some of them towards cellular cleaning and restoration. It can also be interpreted as a phase where the body and the cells realize that food isn't coming, and this usually enhances the conversion of stored food even more. So that's happening between 16 to 24 hours, then after 36 hours, that's when belly fat burning is really turned up and turned on. After 48 hours you get a dopamine system reboot. After 72 hours your immune system gets a really powerful reboot. So those are just some of the notes that I took and that I would focus on during the hours that go by, because you're like doodado and like the time goes by and it's just nice to know and keep reminding yourself. Okay, I might be tired, I might be dreaming about food a little bit, but here's what's specifically happening in my body.

Lunden Souza: 21:10

So, like I said, I didn't take hydration salts or mineral water and I would highly highly recommend that. In fact, I also watched a video from Dr Mindy about certain beverages and apparently ginger juice and water with lemon. No sweetener, just juice. The ginger and lemon can also keep you in a fasted state while providing some flavor and nutrients. And she also recommends that you wear a continuous glucose monitor, one that you put on your arm. I've worn them a few times in my life for a couple weeks. The ones that you they, yeah, they stick onto your arm. There's like this little needle, you can't feel it at all and you put it in your arm and then you can scan it with the app with your phone, so you can see what spikes your blood sugar and what your body's actually doing, like what its response is to the food that you were eating.

Lunden Souza: 21:59

And so those were some of the beverages, the hydration salts, the mineral water, even lemon in your water and things like that. That I didn't do, and I definitely look forward to doing them next time I fast, because I felt like, oh, it would have been so nice to have some flavor, and I seriously just don't know why it didn't occur to me to take hydration salts. I knew this, but I was just so focused on the water fast that, like I said, I just didn't do it. So I even had some and I covered. I'm like hello Lunden, but hey, whatever you know. And so, yeah, but what I did is I just really prepared to meditate a lot and do breath work and things like that. So I was like, okay, I'm going to dive more into meditation, more prayer, more breath work, more journaling, more walking, which actually also became a little bit challenging.

Lunden Souza: 22:49

Like after a while I couldn't go on multiple walks. I ended up just kind of walking to a bench that's outside where I live and just sitting and relaxing in the sun a little bit. Because, yeah, a 10 minute walk really felt like maybe a 45 minute to an hour walk would have normally felt. And so I also listened to these binerial beats that my coach Scott sent to me. It's like this earth home and it was so wonderful I would put them on my headphones at night and listen to it for like 15 or 20 minutes before I fell asleep and it just felt like such a brain massage. It got me so relaxed and in those theta healing, restorative brainwave states and yeah, it just felt wonderful.

Lunden Souza: 23:32

I also cried a lot. You know I process through tears. Sometimes. It's not even something that's sad. I just have this feeling of like pent up emotions and I know I need to cry. So I'll like cry in the shower, I'll cry when I'm driving. It's just a part of me that I've learned to accept because that's me. And so I was like, okay, I know I'm going to be meditating, crying, praying, walking drinking water, fasting, right, a lot of inks. So yeah, a lot of tears, a lot of journaling, a lot of processing, and it was really wonderful, and so I just kind of went into it as that. I was like, okay, I've been doing some of these work ins. I want to use this as a tool, I want to process some of what I've been processing. I want to rewrite parts of my story that I'm not super proud of right now. I want to come back in alignment with my core values and who I really want to be and dive in super deep. And so, yeah, that was a little bit of my journey and experience and what came up for me.

Lunden Souza: 24:37

So in my work ins like while I'm eating food, just everyday meditation, the work in stuff I love to do with my clients and myself you know, in these work ins, I've really been auditing my emotions, if that makes sense. I've just been noticing, like, what type of energy every emotion takes. And so I started noticing like, oh, it takes a lot of energy to feel angry and to feel resentment and frustrated and pissed off and annoyed. And of course I'm getting energy right. I'm receiving energy from feelings like joy and gratitude and happiness and fulfillment and kindness and serving, and just in my meditations and in my everyday life, which I somehow try to kind of stay in. I don't know, I kind of tapped into that meditative present state, even when I'm awake.

Lunden Souza: 25:28

When I'm awake because I've been meditating for so long and just working on my inner world for a while that I just I started noticing what emotions were coming up and I would see this in my meditation and even in my waking state. I would see this like gas gauge come up, like the gas thing on a car, and it was just like whoa, this takes a lot of energy. And so, through processing a lot of things within my family and within my friendships, I realized that these feelings, yeah, can kind of take energy and so I would see this gas gauge kind of come up that would remind me, hey, Lunden, you know, that feeling is really emptying your tank a lot or that feeling is really filling you up. And so, yeah, some of these feelings I realized were just depleting a lot of energy and I was like no, these no longer need to be here. Not by any means needing to, you know, put them away and pretend like they're not there, but acknowledge them, acknowledge where they might be coming from and integrate them so that way they're not depleting a lot of the energy that I felt like they were. It was almost like, you know, give it a rest, it's time to allow some of what's been what I've been allowing to pull my energy. It's time to no longer let that happen, if that makes sense. And so in that work, in process of just noticing different emotions and the energy it takes from me or gives me, I was like whoa, that's pretty profound. And I just started noticing it and auditing what emotions and feelings were coming up, like I said, not saying that they didn't belong, but just noticing what energy is removed in those spaces and those times of feeling. So I could decide, okay, how long do I want to be angry, how long do I want to be happy, how long do I want to be frustrated, and just kind of noticing that gauge, if you will, of my energetic gas tank.

Lunden Souza: 27:30

And so, yeah, and then also the Saturday prior to Sunday, starting the fast, I did a psilocybin journey. So I took psilocybin mushrooms and went on this really long hike with a friend of mine and when I got to the top of this very strenuous hike and then we just had a great experience at the top and then we came down I started to really feel the physical energy that's exerted through movement and I started to really appreciate my body's ability to exert that physical energy and started to see working out differently as well. I'm like working out is not a means to lose weight and burn calories and look a certain way, Like working out is an opportunity to strengthen my physical body and working out is an opportunity to appreciate my body's capabilities, and so that psilocybin journey for me was super profound on Saturday. So then, going into this fast, yeah, I was just really able to feel like what everyday life takes in terms of energy, and so during this fasting process, I was writing emails and noticing it took the energy it would take my fingers to actually type out, especially after 24 hours of no food. For those of you watching this video or watching the podcast on video I'm very expressive.

Lunden Souza: 29:01

I'm using my hands, I'm turning my head, I'm looking around. I'm very usually expressive when I communicate, but when I was fasting and on calls with my clients and on Zoom meetings or whatever. I wasn't using my hands, I was sitting. I wasn't tapping my foot, I was sitting in a more relaxed position. It takes a lot of energy to hold good posture. It takes a lot of energy to use your hands when you talk. It takes a lot of cognitive energy to function on a day to day basis and you just start to notice all of that. So I just got really slow, even in my walks. I'm like, wow, each step takes energy, and so I don't know.

Lunden Souza: 29:42

The experience for me was really like a check, an overall check of myself, like a recalibration to be really appreciative of the energy I give every day, very mindful of the energy I give every day when it comes to thoughts and feelings and emotions, because some of those thoughts and feelings, like anger and frustration and resentment, like those were all repetitive thoughts and those were things that I was thinking and then anger would come up and it was like this domino effect and I was like, wait, hold up. Let me zoom in here and recognize these dominoes a little bit, because I don't want to default to some of these emotions anymore, because it takes a lot. And so, yeah, there was a lot of ownership in that moment of like it's me Hi, I'm the problem. It's me that Taylor Swift moment Like I needed to re-remember and redistribute, if you will, my energy, and so that's kind of really what came up for me. And you know, I didn't realize this was so interesting.

Lunden Souza: 30:44

I didn't realize what kind of state I was tapping into when I was fasting and healing. I mean, of course, there were moments that I was hungry and I just, yeah, I knew kind of what to expect when it came to needing to, yeah, to notice that like there's, like I said before, there's a lot of time spent thinking about food and a lot of those things. But I didn't realize kind of what state I was tapping into until I started reintroducing food after 48 hours. I had this chicken broth veggie soup that my neighbor made me and it was so delicious and I had it in my freezer and so I was like, even towards that 48 hour mark of breaking my fast, I was like I'm so tired, I don't even want to go to the grocery store to get food. And I was like, oh yeah, I have this soup in my freezer. So I defrosted it and I made that and so I was like eating and you know, taking it spoonful by spoonful and it was like so delicious and I started to get my energy back and it was really interesting the journey that my brain went on from being in this fasted state to a not fasted state.

Lunden Souza: 31:59

I just started to like those realizations that I mentioned about the gas gauge and the energy it takes to feel certain types of emotions, and appreciating the energy it takes to move my body and be active in this world. I was just like, oh yeah, it just makes so much sense from what I've been experiencing in my everyday life and what I experienced in the fast in terms of just checking my energy distribution and things like that. And that's when all of like the click, click, click, click, click downloads, if you will like, all those realizations came Because, yeah, I was making these new connections on my way from a fasted state into a fed state, if that makes sense. But I didn't, you know, scarf down a bunch of food that night because I didn't want to feel like crap. I just had a big bowl of soup. And then the next day I went out for lunch with one of my grandpa's classmates. She's 85 and her granddaughter and I my grandpa, connected us because we both live in Utah and so me and her and her granddaughter, we went to the Nordstrom Cafe and, oh my gosh, I had the best BLT ever with fries. So I definitely refed myself and had a good nourishing meal.

Lunden Souza: 33:12

But I was like, okay, I don't want to do it right in the evening after I finished my fast. Like I just didn't think that was going to help me feel good to go from not eating for 48 hours to then all of a sudden scarfing everything out. So just didn't think that was the point. I didn't think that was the point to go from no food to all the food. Right, I thought the point, at least for me, was to start to integrate nourishment, nourishing thoughts, nourishing food, kind of bit by bit. And yeah, I just didn't want to feel super stuffed, I wanted to feel satisfied and nourished.

Lunden Souza: 33:46

And then I went to bed and in my head I knew, okay, tomorrow I'm going to the Nordstrom Cafe with my grandpa's classmate and her granddaughter. I took a peek at the menu and I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get that BLT and I'm gonna get those garlic fries and yeah. So it was just such a wonderful experience and I think, yeah, I think that's kind of everything I wanted to share, but I think it's super cool and, like I said, it might not be for everybody Check with your doctor, figure out what works best for you but I just think it's super interesting to learn about what our body does to heal and repair itself. And I think it makes sense, because we're in a society where people just eat all day long, all the time, have convenience, be able to just eat whatever you want, have stop at a gas station, fast food, drive through a window and it's not always the cleanest and healthiest options and I'm down right, I love french fries. I'm not perfect, it's not like I'm eating perfect all the time and I think this is something that I'm gonna be incorporating into my life more often. And so what I thought just to share, kind of what I think I'm gonna be doing, moving forward, is like about every month or every other month, according to my cycle and also where I am in the world.

Lunden Souza: 35:04

Like I was working while I was fasting, but I was at home I don't know if I wanna be fasting while I'm on vacation or traveling abroad or things like that, just because I know that's already stress on my system. So I don't wanna cause even more stress. I don't want it to be regimented, my fasting routine. I want it to be welcomed, I want it to be helpful, I want it to be a space where I'm inviting in whatever needs to be at that moment, whatever needs to be learned, and so it can be easy to focus on food 24 seven when you're fasting. But I was like, okay, where's the growth, where's the learning?

Lunden Souza: 35:42

And I also shared with a couple of people that I was doing this fast because I felt like they had well, I know that they have my back Two very powerful, profound men in my life. I shared it with them Scott, my coach, my life coach that I've been working with for five, six years, and then also Kevin Subur. He was on the podcast before talking about leadership and he's become just such a wonderful friend and mentor of mine and I felt like both of those guys totally have my back and would be thinking about me, sending me love, praying for me and just being good people to go to if I needed it. So I actually told them beforehand, like I didn't post on social media oh my gosh, I'm gonna do this fast. Here I go.

Lunden Souza: 36:31

I just decided to keep it to myself and I told them beforehand, both Scott and Kevin, because I knew they would be in my corner. I was like I'm gonna be fasting and I'm probably gonna be crying and meditating and praying and processing and just loving myself. So just FYI, that's what I'm gonna be doing. And so, yeah, I think it's cool. I mean you don't have to tell anybody, you don't have to shout it from the rooftops, but I just thought for me it would be helpful because I might need some input or perspective or encouragement from them, and so I just kind of kept them there in the loop. But, yeah, I think, if you're interested in fasting, I'll put a lot of resources in the description and, like I said excuse me, this is something that I'm gonna incorporate more regularly in my life as mostly a spiritual and mental and physical reset and a modality for deeper healing and cleanup internally, and so I'll be talking about it much more on social media and perhaps again on the podcast. It would be such a moonshot to have Dr Mindy Pelts on the podcast, so let's see if I can get her on the show, but I think it's just wonderful.

Lunden Souza: 37:44

I think that, yeah, if you're interested and you wanna talk more about my experience, just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'm @lifelikelunden and I'd be happy to chat. And, yeah, just share more about my experience. And, yeah, check out some of those resources, do your own research, decide for yourself, check with your healthcare practitioner and decide what's right for you. And I guess I should also mention that I had all my blood work and my hormones and my thyroid and everything checked a month ago and everything was like pristine, which was great. So I knew I had done that check under the hood to make sure that I, yeah, I'm all good in a sense.

Lunden Souza: 38:29

But the cool thing about fasting and it's not the case for everybody, like I said, but it's a great modality of healing. So, even if you were to find imbalances in your lab work, I know that fasting could potentially be a good modality for healing. And for me I just yeah, I just shared that because I was thinking like, okay, I just spontaneously decided to fast and I know I'm in a good, healthy state. So I think I got this, you know, and now I know I can totally do 48 hours and, like I said, I just felt supported in my process by myself, by a couple others in my circle, in my close circle, and so, yeah, if you're interested or you wanna learn more, you wanna talk about it, just hit me up, check out those resources and, yeah, I'll see you at the next episode.

Lunden Souza: 39:21

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of self-love and sweat the podcast. Hey, do me a favor wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review. This really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help, we can really spread the message of self-love and sweat and change more lives all around the world. I'm Lunden Souza, reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose, fueled by self-love and sweat, and I'll see you next time. Bye, bye. This podcast is a hit spot. Austria production.