Special guest column by Marina Robertson

Readers are accustomed to seeing Ray’s column in this space but this week he has asked me to write about a topic that elicits equal amounts of fascination and horror for many: fasting. I know this because, as his wife, I have been telling folks about the fasting Ray practices.

Over 40 years ago, I was stunned when at some random time Ray told me he “forgot to eat.” How can you forget to eat? I have never forgotten to eat—not once. Ever. If you look up “hangry” in the dictionary my picture is next to the definition. I was hangry before hangry was cool (or even a word).

I have watched Ray experiment with skipping meals for various periods. He has practiced intermittent fasting, which focuses on regular cycles of eating/not eating and has been shown to have health benefits. Despite his repeated invitations, I have never felt inspired to join Ray in a fast.

Well, not until last November. Ray has been practicing a Qi Gong discipline called Bigu fasting for a number of years. The idea is that food is not the only medium from which we can draw nourishment and that meditation and specific Qi Gong movements provide you with the energy you need during a fast. Needless to say, I had been skeptical.

Bigu fasting is generally done on a schedule tied to the seasons. Ray’s teacher, Dr. Kevin Chen, leads online and in-person fasting retreats. For years, Ray did the online retreat, using Zoom and WhatsApp to receive education and support from both Dr. Chen and other participants. Last year, Ray went to his first in-person event and when he decided to do another in-person retreat, he asked if I’d like to join him.

Actually, first he sent me a whole bunch of research about the physical benefits, the process, what to expect, how to prepare, etc. Many people focus on weight loss during fasting, but I was intrigued by the metabolic reset and cleansing toxins out of my system. Starting out, a 78-hour (slightly over three days) fast is the minimum and after that you can increase to five, seven, ten, or even 30 days of fasting with this program. Strenuous exercise is discouraged during the fast, but other than that, the focus is on living your life as you normally would, even finding time for fun things to make the experience more rewarding.

And you will have time because one of the first things I noticed was how much time opens up in your day when you don’t have to plan meals, cook meals, eat, and clean up after meals!

To prepare for the fast, Dr. Chen recommends that you eat lightly for a few days, reducing or eliminating meat. Three days before the fast, I made a big pot of vegetable soup. One day before the fast we exclusively ate a Napa cabbage soup designed to cleanse the digestive system. It’s the same soup you use during the post-fast recovery period.

By the time we arrived in Maryland, Ray and I had already been fasting half a day. I expected to feel hangry and my stomach to really start complaining. But that’s not what happened. Actually nothing happened. I felt fine.

If you think a Qi Gong fast is going to be based on airy-fairy concepts, you’ll be disappointed. The first thing we did at the retreat was go through an extensive PowerPoint about all the science behind the practice and the clinically proven benefits.

The next morning, I felt a bit tired, so I started taking the herbal energy pills that are part of the practice. Proper hydration is an important part of this fasting discipline so it seemed like there was always tea (caffeine free) brewing for someone in the group and endless bottles of spring water were available.

Another thing that surprised me was how open Dr. Chen was to the need for some folks to eat very tiny amounts of “cheat foods” at some point during the fast. Eating very small amounts of apples, bananas, raw almonds, or dates was acceptable if that was going to make it possible to continue. The goal is to use Qi Gong to help you cope with some discomfort. Suffering is not part of the plan!

For me, a big revelation was that while I did not experience a lot of hunger pangs, I was attached to the timing and rituals of food preparation and eating. Having coffee and a bagel in the morning, a coke and a salad at lunch, and eating dinner in front of the TV were all rituals aside from the nutritional value derived. These schedules and rituals were the hardest things to let go of.

Equally revelatory was that fasting was not about willpower—it was about having tools to deal with the challenges of fasting. Ray had always talked about how important the group support was, with folks shared tips that helped them. But also giving and receiving encouragement from others in the group was tremendously helpful.

When you break a Bigu fast, you don’t just jump back into eating whatever you want. However many days you fasted, that’s how many days you take to go back to eating your regular diet. And you eat a very specific Napa cabbage soup for that post-fast period. Then you can resume your regular diet, slowly adding meat and sweets.

Ray usually loses a few pounds during the fast, but I did not – many people don’t unless it’s a lengthy fast. I did find that at first I didn’t want to eat the same quantity of food after the fast as I had before.

When I agreed to do the retreat with Ray, I thought I would do it once just to have the experience and never do it again. But after it was over, I thought of ways to tweak the fasting experience for me and realized I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I didn’t lose weight, but I reevaluated my relationship with food. I remain intrigued with the idea of a metabolic reset and how it might help me as I age. Having experienced lots of hanger when I was younger made me anxious about going too long without eating. But now that I have fasted, I realized maybe the hanger wasn’t inevitable. Maybe I just needed a different way to deal with it.

Marina Robertson lives in South Boston and is retired from career as a non-profit executive director in Georgia.