Fasting

[Alexander PhiAlipson]

The pain goes away after a couple of days until you feel nauseated instead of hungry. Sometimes it's even difficult to start eating again at all: whole milk is really good then.

[C-Mag]

[Montegriffo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hunger_Artist

"A Hunger Artist" is told retrospectively through third-person narration. The narrator looks back several decades from "today", to a time when the public marvelled at the professional hunger artist, a public performer who fasts for many days. It then depicts the waning interest in such displays.

The story begins with a general description of "the hunger artist" and then narrows in on a single performer, the protagonist. The hunger artist performed in a cage for the curious spectators, and was attended by teams of watchers (usually three butchers) who ensured that he was not secretly eating. Despite such precautions, many, including some of the watchers themselves, were convinced that the hunger artist cheated. Such suspicions annoyed the hunger artist, as did the forty-day limit imposed on his fasting by his promoter, or "impresario". The impresario insisted that after forty days public sympathy for the hunger artist inevitably declined. The hunger artist, however, found the time limit irksome and arbitrary, as it prevented him from bettering his own record, from fasting indefinitely. At the end of a fast the hunger artist, amid highly theatrical fanfare, would be carried from his cage and made to eat, both of which he always resented.

Seemingly overnight, popular tastes changed and public fasting went out of fashion. The hunger artist broke his ties with the impresario and hired himself to a circus, where he hoped to perform truly prodigious feats of fasting. No longer a main attraction, he was given a cage on the outskirts of the circus, near the animal cages. Although the site was readily accessible, and crowds thronged past on their way to see the animals, any spectators who stopped to see him created an obstruction in the flow of people on their way to the animals. At first the hunger artist looked forward to the passing of the crowds, but in time he grew irritated by the noise and disruption caused by the people, and the stench, the roaring, and the feeding of the animals depressed him. Eventually, the hunger artist was completely ignored. No one, not even the artist himself, counted the days of his fast. One day an overseer noticed the hunger artist's cage with its dirty straw. He wondered why the cage was unused; when he and the attendants inspected it, however, they found the hunger artist near death. Before he died he asked forgiveness and confessed that he should not be admired, since the reason he fasted was simply that he could not find food to his liking. The hunger artist was buried with the straw of his cage and replaced by a panther. Spectators crowded about the panther's cage because the panther took so much joy in life, unlike the hunger artist.

[Speaker to Animals]

Pretty close to the 40 hour mark. I don't feel any hungrier than usual. Still considering extending it.

[DBTrek]

I'm surprised. I always heard the first couple days were the hardest.
Right on.

[TheReal_ND]

Who the fuck cares? Fat people lmao. Destroy your FB account to get away from diet posting and thy just track you down.

[Speaker to Animals]

I'm surprised. I always heard the first couple days were the hardest.
Right on.

I am still probably going to break the fast in a few hours, but it's not really that difficult. Maybe it gets harder from here? Don't know.

All that intermittent fasting might have helped by regulating my insulin.

The problem with fasting for a long time is that I would have to stop going to the gym and I am in the middle of a program. I think I will do this again next week, though.

[Speaker to Animals]

The weird thing is that all I really craved was those cookies you can get for 98 cents at Walmart. I haven't had them in a long time, but I definitely craved them.

[C-Mag]

Nice Work Doc !

[DBTrek]