Funny there is a post here about a 5-day fast, and I really like Golthing's (water fast forum)response, that you really can do it though you might not think so. I KNOW this is true for me!!! I know I can do it, I just need to believe this. This is a harder obstacle than people perhaps realize. It's probably, for me, about getting support. I am trying to start a 5-day fast and really know in my process right now that I need a fasting partner!!! Fasting WITH someone else makes ALL the diffeerence for me. This is just my need; I am not generalizing & don't want to speak for anyone else. So ... I was coming onto the forum to post for a fasting buddy for a five-day fast, and it turns out there may be someone interested. To this poster (sorry to have forgotten your screenname temporarily): I will e-mail you if you allow it.

My message to the forum: is there anyone else here who wants to take a five-day fast? I am ready to commit to one, with a little advance warning.

My fasting update is that I still am primarily committed, in my life, to learning fasting, for my healing, which is taking first priority now... I've taken time off from school to be very serious about learning to fast. It's been really difficult for me to learn, but I have made progress, most notably by posting here about the emotional process for myself. I mean to thank the frequent respondents on the forum for their wonderful support of me; last time I posted I was really supported and defended and that felt great. I have the past 2 months come through a period in which I relapsed into processed foods, to, now, a new commitment to raw foods only. I had been raw only for a period from November to about February, then I relapsed. I need some support with raw-only -- I am thinking of starting to go to a daily AA meeting or something -- but my commitment feels pretty solid. I think I am making it more solid by posting about this here (I even successfully made today a viable substitute, raw, for the terrible poisonous sugarfree frozen yogurt that has been my nemesis in my struggle to stay on a raw diet: I froze coconut milk in an ice cube tray and then blenderized that. It worked!!!! Raw, harm-reduction frozen dessert.)My body just needs this particular, pure, safe diet. It is serious with me. i can't fool around with non-raw food. I am SO MUCH BETTER on raw only. Also, I've bought a sprouter and actually am using it... I had a breakdown in my sprouting this past week but today have gotten it all up and running again... sprouts support fasting for me more than anything. For me it's easing my body away from its attachments to food.

I have been doing fasts of around 36 hours lately, a couple a week. My latest one (ending Monday night, AFTER I'd gone to bed with the best intentions, arrghh) I could so easily have made a 48-hour fast, but I just lacked that crucial little, tiny bit of positivity and support. It's pretty frustrating not to be able to continue longer, on account of not being "emotionally" strong enough (I'm seemingly very emotionally dependent on food; fasting is never physically hard for me... so maybe the healing through fasting will be primarily emotional... which is fine with me... though all the emotional/neurological stuff seems so clearly to me to be based in the physical, which is to say, in the condition of my large intestine.... an additional help, I feel, will be in a great new therapist I have just started with... this guy is really helping me accept my feelings, which is so what I need and makes me feel so much more able to fast)
Also in my fasting process I have been seeking professional help with fasting. I have found a number of retreats and professionals-who-supervise-you-by-phone, many through

http://www.fastingconnection.com.

Taking this step is very serious for me -- it will be a mark of a real breakthrough when I finally go on a retreat and actually take a fast of like a week (longer if possible, but I really need to be realistic in my goals). I have a big financial-need obstacle, but this does not seem insurmountable. Writing this is helping me get into the mindset of "just doing it!"
... And on that note, I will repeat my belief that I CAN do it, take a fast of several days, that is, and I can do it even all on my own, but I need to reach out here for some help just to pull me into it. i need that little push. So i am posting for a fasting buddy for 5 days. Would love to hear from anyone, on forum or e-mail,
Lauray