Fasting or Starving? Know the Difference

Somewhere down the road, the decision not to eat became a part of one's personality. They speak of their fasting window as if it is a badge of honor, and I do understand the appeal of having a rule to follow. There is something nice in being able to make a distinction between the things that you do and the things that you do not. But I think that many of us have crossed the border between choosing not to eat at the present time, and disregarding the fact that our bodies have a need for food.

What fasting is supposed to be

The practice of intentional fasting, as a rule, is only designed to be a structure. A period of time where you deliberately starve yourself, and outside of that period, you do not. It is a tool that some of us like to use, in much the same vein as meal prepping or eating at a slow pace, to give us a sense of control over our eating habits. That is absolutely fine, there is no shame in having a system that works well for you.

But the issue is when your schedule starts to override your body's natural rhythms. When your rules begin to feel more important than your needs. That is when it stops being a helpful tool, and starts to become an excuse for ignoring our bodies' signals.

What real hunger feels like

Your  body will often tell you when it needs food, if you are willing to listen. Perhaps your energy levels start to drop, or perhaps you start to feel particularly angry or irritable towards somebody or something without reason. Maybe your body will even start to feel weak or light headed, depending on how long you have gone without eating for. Other people might experience dizziness when rising too quickly from a sitting or laying position, and some of us might find that our brains feel a little fuzzy.

These are not things to be ashamed of, or to beat yourself up for. Your body is not weak for feeling this way, it is normal and healthy to be experiencing these things.

The difficult part is that diet culture has taught a lot of us to believe that these are things to push through, because discomfort is a good thing. The feeling of uneasiness that comes along with these symptoms is often reframed as a sense of accomplishment, as if you are being rewarded for making yourself suffer. It is important to ask yourself if you have crossed the boundary between choosing to delay eating, and refusing to eat altogether.

When a window becomes an excuse

The problem with the concept of a fasting window is that it serves as a convenient excuse that many of us can use to rationalize our behavior. To put it plainly, if you have an internal relationship with food that is already quite restrictive or diet-helixed, this can act as an out for ignoring your body's signals. I say this because I have seen many of my peers use this as an excuse to continue to ignore their bodies. "I'm just fasting" serves as an excuse that is much healthier than "I'm just ignoring how hungry and ill I feel because I do not want to take care of myself"

And the competitive nature of it all just adds insult to the injury, because comparing how long you fast for with other people is a harmful way to engage with this practice. This turns it into a sort of popularity contest, where it is more important to flex how much longer you can go without food than to actually care for your body in general. Your body does not care how virtuous you are, it only cares that you take care of itself.

The body is not your rulebook

None of this is to say that the practice of having a schedule or structure around your eating is inherently wrong. Many people do this and it works well for them, and that is not something that needs to be changed. But it is important to remember that your body should be the one that sets the terms of the relationship that you have with food, and not the other way around. So if you decide that you want to have a schedule around when you eat food, but your body tells you that it needs to eat outside of your designated window, your body wins every single time. There is no shame in that, and there is no failure, there is just a body that is doing what all bodies are designed to do.

It is also important to be completely honest with yourself about why you want to do this in the first place. Is it because you want to be able to have a system that works well for you, or do you feel as if you need to punish yourself for things that have already happened? Are you trying to control your relationship with food, or is it an attempt to control something else in your life?

Trust the signals over the streak

At the end of the day, none of us can know what's best for our bodies other than ourselves. So if your body starts to feel weak or ill because you have not fed it in a while, there is no use in fighting it. That is what the streak is for, to keep track of how long you go without feeding yourself. If you feel light headed or dizzy or like your brain is working improperly, that is not a reason to stop and reward yourself for suffering. It is a signal from your body that says you need to take care of it and feed it, and your job is to listen.

I think that fasting can be a great tool that many of us can use to help take care of our bodies, but it is important to know that starving is what happens when we fail to listen to our bodies. The difference between the two is subtle, as well as the place where one starts and the other ends, but it is important to remember that it exists.