“‘Food shock’ may be more dangerous than fasting itself.” This story was filmed by Netflix

At the end of the first week, I begin to have serious doubts when at 1am I wake up feeling like having a heart attack. It’s sharp, stabbing pains in the left side of the chest that eventually turn into small but very disturbing throbs. Is it bad enough to go to the hospital? I google “heart attack”. Yes, I can move my arm and count backwards from ten, but this feeling moving through my chest is unlike anything I’ve experienced in my life. It is very unpleasant, as if some electronic device has been implanted in my breast and it is not working properly.

Despite my fears, another emotion dominates: embarrassment. I imagine showing up in the emergency room and telling them I haven’t eaten in six days. No, this is not a political manifestation. And I’m not mentally ill. I don’t suffer from an eating disorder. This is for a magazine assignment – I’m a gonzo wellness journalist! I’m beginning to wonder if what I’m doing is a form of self-harm. To lower my anxiety, I practice deep breathing and don’t go to bed until dawn, I’m too afraid to fall asleep in case I don’t wake up. I text Dr. Liu in the morning. She replies right away that it’s nothing to worry about, I should just come in for my usual hour-long therapy. So I do, disheveled, anxious, mad-eyed, unsure whether I should trust my instincts or the doctor.

Despite the chest pains that startle me, I push on. I feel that since I’ve come this far, I might as well continue. It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m lying in a jacuzzi in the garden in Newtown. Baby Otis is sleeping upstairs, his parents are having a party at the harbor. The sounds of welcoming the New Year can be heard from the surrounding streets. Fireworks burst out, then the sky freezes, ready for something, as if a storm might tear it apart at any moment. I can smell eucalyptus from old trees in the intoxicating, heavy, rain-scented air. Around midnight, I open the fridge and see a week old, still succulent Christmas ham wrapped in cloth, mince pies and chocolates. “Happy New Year”. I close the fridge. I open the fridge. I close the fridge.

Then hunger and boredom draw me back. “I’ll just have a look,” I tell myself. The light is on, and my hand is elbow-deep in the refrigerator, deep in the middle shelf, like a surgeon working through the cramped organs in my belly. I see a box of hummus, take off the lid and stick my index finger inside. It’s been six days without food. On my tongue, the hummus is unlike any I’ve tried. This simple supermarket hummus is creamy and nutty, fluffy and oily. Saliva floods my mouth. As Seneca wrote to Lucilius in 65 AD: “You will show off that you are full for two pennies.”

I keep my finger in my mouth long after the hummus has melted on my tongue until all that remains is the memory of the taste.

So it happened.

***

Life goes on around me. My book is coming out. First novel. It took me eight years to write it. I get a call from a publisher, very excited: the director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Jemma Birrell, is interested in putting a novel on the festival’s agenda. But first she wants to meet me – I suppose it’s to see if I’m normal and she can put me on the panel without risk of incident. I don’t tell my publisher that I haven’t eaten in a week or that I haven’t approached a coffee shop for fear of breaking my fast.

“Food shock” is something the fasting community fears, and it may prove to be more dangerous than fasting itself. Take a casual approach to your first meal and it could be your last.

An Associated Press report of August 28, 1929, reported the death of forty-year-old Chris Solbert after a month’s fast, which he broke by eating several beef sandwiches. I find other anecdotes on wellness sites – about people who broke their hunger on chocolate biscuits and got terribly sick, about a guy who ate a meal of steak, potatoes, bread and butter, and coffee after twenty-seven days of fasting. He was seized by violent bouts of vomiting.

During fasting, the body undergoes various biological changes, including slowing down the production of digestive enzymes. The slow introduction of food allows the body to resume the production of enzymes, as well as the formation of a mucous lining in the intestines.

With that in mind – and aware that I’m about to enter a bacon frying shop – I take a taxi to Jeds in North Bondi. Jemma orders breakfast and three lattes (not all at once, she doses her order). I try to act normal, talk about my book. I can’t look her in the eye when she eats; it would certainly be too much for me. I tell her about my novel – about a group of teenage killers from an elite college – “whatever, blah, blah, blah, stuff like that,” I say, but I glance at the door. I can smell her food. I smell her coffee. I wonder if the scent of my detox reaches her. I hope she has a cold or stuffy nose. I wonder how everyone in this coffee shop can eat so much. Mostly sedentary people indulge in huge plates of bacon and eggs, toast and avocados. As if they were nineteenth-century farm workers who have to use scythes and plows on vast tracts of land. But what are these people really doing? Maybe they go to yoga, maybe they go for an eco-bazaar from time to time, but they don’t farm.

Jemma turns to order herself a third cup of coffee. At this point, the reptilian aspect of my brain takes over. It’s pure biology, a basic and pressing need to hunt, kill, and eat. I just need to eat something. Jemma orders, “Latte, very hot, with soy milk, to go,” and I reach for her plate with my hand folded in the shape of eagle claws. My hand lands in the dish and I scoop a handful of tomatoes, some eggs, a crust of bread and jam into my mouth. Jemma turns around and is horrified to see it all in an instant—her half-eaten food in my hand, barely making it into my mouth in my haste, bits smeared across my chin, some falling onto my collar, then a groan of pleasure as I finally swallow after a week of fasting.

A fragment of the book “Wellmania. In an unhealthy pursuit of well-being” by Brigid Delaney, translated by Anna Klingofer-Szostakowska, was made available by the publisher, Wielka Litera.

Wellmania. In the unhealthy pursuit of well-being – cover promotional material Capital Letter