An experience without food

An experience without food

Slowly but steady, our adventure feels like a regular life to us. Time for more adventure and new experiences! Just kidding. But honestly, we figured that now is the time for us to try new things where we need time and peace for. As I teasered here, in the previous post, we wanted to try fasting. A few days without food. Sounds crazy. Well, it doesn’t only sound that way. Especially, for people who love food as much as we do – not only eating it but also preparing nice food, trying new dishes and taking the time to eat together.

We could not imagine how it would be, just not to eat. So, we thought we need the perfect setting for this experience. A warm week somewhere in the South of Europe would be ideal, we imagined.  As I mentioned, we fell in love with Portugal. It still felt like summer. Now or never, we thought and decided for “now”. If it was a good decision – we’re not quite sure. Well, it was definitely no bad experience, but I would not necessarily call it a great experience, either.

We prepared for not eating with easy digestive food the day before the whole adventure should start.

We got ready for the fasting days here.

In my head, I felt well prepared for the following days to come. I knew, I wouldn’t eat for a while and was even a bit excited. For the fasting, we found this spot on park4night and immediately fell in love:

Amazing spot right at cliffs with an easy access to the beach.
Oswald and other vans.

Besides fasting on food, we decided to forgo social media too. That actually felt good.

First day of fasting

It felt really strange, not to have porridge for breakfast. That’s what we usually have every morning. It is quite delicious, easy to pimp up with apples, jams or whatever you like. Plus, it’s really cheap food. Instead of having porridge each of us had a glass of orange juice, a cup of tea and a glass of Epsom salt (for getting rid of all the food we still had in our bodies). A disaster, it tastes so horrible, I nearly had to throw up. Great start into the first day, you could say.

Anyways, we were still pretty energetic. We played frisbee, beach ball, read a lot, were hanging around in our hammocks and listening to podcasts.

Tim and Felix setting up the beach ball net.
Tim and Felix playing beach ball.

Besides the not-eating, we decided that we will do yoga and meditation every day of the fasting together. The plan was, yoga in the morning and meditation in the evening. First day, we did that.

Second day of fasting

The three of us woke up after a non-relaxing night. I had to pee several times at night since I was drinking a lot the day before. We all had strange dreams. In one of the many dreams I had that first night, I accidentally ate something. I cannot remember when I last dreamed about food. In those days of not eating, it happened every now and then.

The day wasn’t good in general. I felt weak and a little sick. I couldn’t even do yoga in the morning because of a slight feeling that I have to throw up – fortunately, it did not happen. At least in the afternoon it got better, and we did our yoga session and the meditation afterwards. And I had a lot of time for reading books again which I always enjoy. Usually, I do not take the time for reading anything besides newspaper in my normal everyday life.

The second day in pictures:

Feeling amazing.
"Yeay, so much fun here!"

Third day of fasting

The third day of not eating was way better than the second one. I did not feel sick anymore but there was a slight feeling of hunger. Permanently there. Maybe it was because we were talking and thinking about food so much those days. I do not know if I can say that the third day was better for all of us. Felix was in a bad mood the whole day, not that he was taking it out on us, but he was just depleted of motivation.

Fourth day of fasting

That was the day, I was not in the best mood. It is a strange feeling that comes along with not eating. On the one hand, I guess it is great to experience that your body is still active even though you do not give it any energy. On the other hand, you are less motivated to do things and feel more powerless than usual and in a weird way slightly depressed. So, it did not feel entirely right for us – the whole experience. But strangly, it was a great experience to make and it was definitely interesting. The hard part was, that all the other campers around us had barbeques at night, it smelled deliciously all the time, people were drinking beer together and you saw food and others eating all the time – that did not make the whole experiment any simpler. It is really hard to summarize this experience, I’m not quite sure yet what to think about it myself. I would say, we had better ideas than this one in our lifes and on our trip but I do not regret it, either.

All in all, we still had some fantastic days at that spot. On the forth day, we went for a walk at the beach during sunset and realized once again that we are able to enjoy so many breathtaking scenaries:

Another sunset over the ocean.
Taking a walk on the beach while sunset.

And, we got to know some other van-lifers who were telling us about their life, their experiences on the road and their plans for the future. It was super interesting to stay at one spot for such a long time (for us) and get more and more familiar with our surrounding – the nature and the people.

Fifth day of fasting

Cancelled. We decided to eat again! And we celebrated it. We went for a little walk to the next supermarket, bought fruits, vegetables and all the others thing we needed. It was amazing not to only phantasies about food anymore but to prepare food and enjoy eating again. Also, to get rid of that slight negative feeling that you accidentally eat something (for example the ginger in your tea). So, we had lots of fruits and fresh food and in the evening, we decided to finally take the chance, make a bonfire and bake homemade bread on sticks. It was delicious!

The next day, we were on the road again. Back to our regular, everyday life. Unfortunately, that meant to say goodbye to that very special spot.

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5 Responses

  1. Guten Abend, Ihr Drei Abenteurer. Ich habe im Hamburger Abendblatt Eure Artikel gelesen und nun habe ich Eure wunderbaren Landschafts-Aufnahmen und den Text genossen, vielen Dank.

    Die Beschreibung über das Fasten war für mich auch interessant, denn ich fastete vor Jahren einige Male für längere Zeit.

    Ich war vor langer, langer Zeit ein Jahr als ‘Mothers help’ in Birmingham in einem normalen Familien-Haushalt mit 2 Schulkindern. Es war das Jahr der Krönung von Queen Elisabeth.

    Ich bin nicht mehr so firm im Englisch-Schreiben, aber ich verstehe alles. Ich hoffe, es ist ok, wenn ich deutsch schreibe.

    Ich freue mich auf Eure nächsten Berichte.

    • drivingeurope says:

      Hallo Erika,
      vielen Dank für deine liebe Nachricht.
      Das freut uns sehr zu hören!
      Du kannst dich auch für unseren Newsletter anmelden, dann bekommst du immer direkt mit, wenn ein neuer Bericht erscheint.
      Wir wünschen dir einen schönen Advent!

  2. Kurt says:

    Mahlzeit
    Bon appetit
    enjoy your meal
    buen provecho
    Buon appetito
    🙂
    It’s great that you’ve lasted four days of fasting.

  3. […] time was really exciting for us as you can read in our earlier blog posts (here about our week without food and here about our time in Portugal). A while ago, we decided to […]

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