Julia Winter

Hi Caroline, it's been a while, sorry your post got lost! I am not an expert but I will try to respond.  Hopefully someone else who knows more can chime in.

I'm not sure I can visualize what you are describing. It's a 6 foot high cob wall. How are you going to protect the cob from rain? I'm guessing there will be large diameter piping through the cob wall, to allow the heat generated by the rocket to warm the mass of the wall, and I know there are limits as to how many feet a particular sized system (size being based on the diameter of the J-tube) can service.

The most successful systems have the piping go out into the mass and then back again so that the chimney is near the barrel, this improves "pull" of the exhaust through the system. I don't think a normal rocket heater could drive 40+ feet of piping with a 180 degree turn in the middle.

Wow!

That's super cool.  I'm glad he watched some of your stuff.  I do think you should go visit him.

Good to hear about other's experiences!

I ate more than just kale paneer on Thursday.  The family got carry out food from Hoda's (a Lebanese family restaurant) and although I avoided the meat, I had muhumarra, hummus, a little pita bread, some very oily (and delicious) rice, along with the kale paneer (kale, onions, cream, paneer cheese).  I had no ill effects from this at all.  

On Friday the kids and I made pumpkin ravioli with sage cream sauce (like, roasting the squash, making the pasta dough, rolling it out, etc - we ate very late!) and I ate a fair amount of that.  There was just a tiny amount of meat, home cured prosciutto being used as intended - to enhance the breadcrumb topping - as flavor, not protein source.  There was ricotta in the filling and LOTS of eggs in the pasta.

Friday night I developed really bad heartburn. Like bad enough that when I rolled from my side to my back, there was the constant burning pain of the lower half of my esophagus and then an extra OW when the esophagus flattened on to itself.  Most of Saturday I had some pain in my "chest." I had to work all day and when I came home around 4:30pm I drank baking soda in water since I didn't have any Alka Seltzer (and from my very faint memory of tasting Alka Seltzer, that's basically what it is.)

Saturday night I ate a ridiculously large steak from our farm, mushrooms, a lot of roasted brussels sprouts with peppers, and had more than my usual one glass of wine. For dessert I had a Swedish cardamom cream/almond paste bun made by my younger kid, who made friends in Sweden during the lockdown.  I think I had two glasses of wine, but that was enough to make me woozy (I don't drink much). When I woke in the early morning I had a pretty terrible headache, and only then realized I hadn't done my usual thing of force drinking mass quantities of water before sleeping. Seriously, this was the first hangover of my life. Most of a hangover is dehydration. I drank two glasses of water, took two Excedrin and was able to fall asleep.  When I woke about an hour later, the headache was gone.  Thank goodness!

So, I may try an antacid after my first significant meal following an extended fast.  I think 10 days sounds like a good goal for next time.  

OK, here I am, day 7 of the fast.  I had a bit of beet ginger cardamom sauerkraut last night, and I'm planning to have some kale paneer tonight. It looks like I'm down 14 pounds, which corresponds to my experience back when my fancy scale was working (I lost 2-3 pounds of fat every 20 hour fast, and regained it overnight after eating). A lot of people report rapid regain of the weight lost on a one week fast, so we'll have to see how it goes.

Two days ago I went to the farm, and in the late afternoon while I was gathering spent hay to scatter on the muddy cowpath, I felt a little dizzy/lightheaded bending over and getting up.  Yesterday a similar thing happened while gardening in the late afternoon.  I think my stamina is decreased, although it could also be just low blood pressure.  So I've been scheming that *maybe* I could work shortened days through a fasting week.  Generally I feel OK during the day.  Like, I haven't been going on the treadmill, but I've been active. If I took 2.5 hours off each day for a week, that's one PTO day (because our PTO days are 10 hrs).  Maybe 2 hours at the end of the day and 1/2 hour at the start? Just spitballing here. It might be easier the second time.

If my college freshman daughter hadn't come back last night for spring break (she's doing her last final online today) I think I might have extended the fast longer.  I have to say, though, all the reports of it getting "easy" after day 3 seem a bit overblown.  It's true that it doesn't get harder and harder and harder, but I can't say it got easy.  Staying at home with two people (now three) who are preparing and eating food every day has got to make it a little harder.  I think it's good, as an exercise.  I also can't really say that I felt an increase in mental sharpness (many people report this).  I know I'm in ketosis (I have test strips) but I'm not cognizant of a change in my thinking.

One interesting thing is that I've been allowing myself more than my usual 8 hours of sleep (I am a stickler for 8 hours of sleep, I haven't had a cold sore or a bad migraine since I started prioritizing sleep maybe 10-13 years ago) and on the two longer nights, I had a lot of dreams that I remembered. And, fasting figured heavily in all the dreams. I think it's time to wind this down.  My daughter wants my cooking.

I’ve been making beet ginger sauerkraut, and it’s really delicious! There’s probably three times as much cabbage as beets, but due to the strong magic of beets the whole thing ends up very deep red pink. Adding cardamom seeds gives it a really nice flavor, at least in the bites with the cardamom seeds in them. I used a fine grater for the ginger, and even after fermentation there’s some bite to it. Overall a really nice ferment!

It’s already been said, but I want to repeat the advice about eating a gas producing food frequently, in small amounts. This way you develop a population in your gut that can handle the inulin.

Ok, I’m trying a longer fast.  My office manager was fussing at all of us hired pediatricians to use some vacation days earlier in the year, but I’m on call during spring break.  So I took next week off.

Back in late 2018 when I was researching fasting, I read a researcher who said that everyone over the age of 50 should do an extended fast once a year as an anti-cancer strategy. My usual one meal a day plan creates a daily caloric deficit. After 12 hours of fasting, I’ve burned up all my glycogen and I start burning fat.

If I do an extended fast, I develop a protein deficit. When your body is low in protein, and you’re not eating anything, you engage in autophagy. I get this mental image of guys with clipboards walking around and pointing at things, saying “what is this? Is this doing anything? Do we need this? No? OK, we’re taking this.“ People describe losing skin tags on extended fasts. People who lose large amounts of weight by fasting do not require plastic surgery to tighten up their skin. They just seem to shrink. The idea is that the body will munch up little baby cancers during an extended fast.

So, I was planning to take this week off for a staycation.  Then I saw a video message from Amanda Palmer, where she said “I just finished a six day fast, and I feel amazing!“ And that reminded me that an extended fast was some thing I was curious about.

So Wednesday night, three nights ago, was my last meal.  I had about a half cup of beet ginger sauerkraut Thursday night, and last night I had another small serving. I’m having bulletproof coffee in the mornings, and I also made some beet Kvass, so I pour about a half ounce of this deep red salty liquid into a glass and then fill it up with cold water.  I’ve also had some herbal tea.

Last night I watched an episode of the Netflix series “Unwell“ that was about fasting. They were going for drama, so they concentrated on water only fasting. They followed a very overweight and unhealthy woman who did at least a three week fast at a seriously medically supervised fasting place in Santa Rosa California. There was also kind of a crazy place in Costa Rica run by a guy who thought that you can cure absolutely anything, if you fast long enough. One of the most interesting stories was of a man who combined fasting with his chemotherapy . The plan was for six rounds of chemotherapy, but he had a scan after two rounds, and they declared him to be cancer free! It makes sense to me that the stress of fasting will increase the punch of chemotherapy on cancer cells, which are pretty primitive and tend to run on sugar. Anyway, from my research it makes sense to take in salt during a fast, to avoid feeling faint and having headaches.

My main point for this fast is protein deprivation. I’m also curious to see how I do on an extended fast. I’m wondering if I could manage to fast and go to work at the same time. I can report that yesterday I did normal things: I rode my bike to the yoga studio and did a rather intense yoga class followed by a restorative yoga class, and then rode back home and I don’t think the fast affected my ability to do those things.

This morning there was a permies staff meeting, and I was *perhaps* a little edgy and irritable. Of course these things start before 7 AM my time, and I hadn’t had any coffee yet, so who can say? Right now, I am frustrated that I still feel pretty darn hungry. Writing this post was a strategy to distract myself! It’s working pretty well.

So, I will try to post again to let y’all know how I am managing with this extended fast. My on call week starts Friday at 7 AM, and I’ll just have to see how I feel with respect to when I want to end the fast.

Living in community is highly rewarding, but can also be difficult.  Humans tend to be human at least some of the time.  If there were no exit clause, that wouldn't be community, that would be something very bad.

I like the BBsomething as an entry hurdle, I might go lower on the number.  That said, I might go higher on the Boot camp commitment, like two weeks.

I do think requiring a person show they have some ability to get things done could really help weed out dreamers who *think* they've got big plans but are more likely to need rescuing when it snows.