> Sun"it's gonna be a looooong day"dragyn.

I did the 30 hour famine when I was in my first year of college, and a similar experience to yours. I seem to remember we drank fruit juices from juice boxes for that one.

On two separate occasions since then, I have voluntarily fasted for religious reasons. The first was as part of a church-wide fast, and the second was a personal fast. Each fast was targeted for 50 hours, although the second one ended up being something like 52 or 53. During my first fast, I made the mistake of agreeing to go and play basketball for an hour or so. This probably wouldn't have been too bad if it was near the end of the fast, but I did it about 12 hours in (IIRC) and by the end of the fast I was physically shaking, and FEELING the hunger. I will never make that mistake again.

On both of the longer fasts, I drank only water-- I had decided to go as minimalist as possbile. Doing things this way does make you feel much weaker. You might not think that the sugar in fruit juices is significant, but it is.

The last point that I would like to make is that both of these long fasts were more than two years ago now, and I have no plans to fast again any time soon (barring something like the 30 hour famine, which I WOULD do again if the opportunity presented itself). The reason is simple. Everything I have been taught about fasting for reasons of faith says that the purpose of fasting is to give an opportunity for more prayer. The general idea is that you take the time you would normally spend preparing and eating meals, you spend in prayer, and you try to replace other aspects of your daily routine with additional prayer if possible. This does not work well for me, though, because I almost never just eat, or just cook. Most of my meals are quick and easy to prepare (putting a frozen dinner in the microwave does not chew up much time) and during any downtime periods that I may have, I tend find other things to do, such as read. Hence, cutting out meals just means that I read without having a plate in front of me and a fork in hand, or that I find something else that desperately needs doing. I have thus decided that if I want to spend more time in prayer, fasting is not the place to start (at least not until I am cooking and eating like a normal person). Instead, I look for other things to cut out of my life. This post is far longer than I intended it to be, and far more boring. I suppose I should stop typing now.

Don "I have a lot of boring posts at times" Monkey