Well, I was going to post this last night. But the fact of the matter is that I was in no such state or mood to do such as I still felt lifeless.

I recently decided to create and and participate in my own adjunct study of poverty. It was not so much a fast, as fasting generally has some type of religious/spiritual association or at the very least some greater context in social consciousness. What I did was simply to find out how I was going to fare in an inevitable stint of poverty.

What I did was starting Sunday night after dinner, to Tuesday night's dinner (a total of 48 hours) I resolved to consume nothing but water. It went a lot better than expected and as a result I am slightly more empathetic towards global hunger. However I do acknowledge that two days in absolutely nothing in comparison to what thousands of people have to deal with in terms of hunger on a daily basis.

Day one: I really have to say that the first day was significantly more difficult to deal with than the second day. Through out the entire day I was consumed with that stomach churning type of hunger where it actually hurts when you haven't eaten. Fortunately by the end of the day this feeling started to subside but the fact that you haven't eaten really can't be escaped for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Day Two: Again, a lot easier than day one. There wasn't any more pain just this constantly reassuring emptiness. The chill that was now constantly following me was getting worse. It is something about you body not burning any food that just makes you feel a chill, the fact that I am in the middle of February in New England didn't help with this fact. Despite feeling better about the entire situation my motor skills were going to hell. During all of this it wasn't like I was taking time off. I was still up to eleven doing homework, dragging myself out of bed by six. Then going to school and work. These were the real tests. Sure I could sit around for two days on a computer, not eating anything, and I probably would have been fine. But could I actually function normally running on fumes?

Day Three: Although I was originally planning on shooting for three days of this experiment I eventually caved. La Salle had opted to cancel early for a snow-day (today)and I had to acknowledge the fact that I would have probably broken anyways sitting around a house all day surrounded by food. In addition to the fact that I didn't think I would actually wind up learning anything that I had not already figured out in the previous days.

One thing that bothered me through out the experiment though was the fact that I could have always had food if I really wanted it. I think that was the part that actually got me through it more than anything else. I always knew if it got too intolerable that I could just break and eat something. For people that are actually starving this mindset will never exist. It makes me curious if I would have went about everything the same way if this weren't an option.

Might try this again in the summer for a longer period of time. Should be a lot better when I'm not constantly freezing.