Fasting - does it change reality?
Fasting is extremely common this time of the year. We recently celebrated Navratri, where many people fasted or ate one meal a day.
But have you considered the possibility that how much you eat can affect your perception of reality? Yes reality!
These past few years, I have been reading fascinating research on how we perceive reality. Reality, it seems, is a construct of our mind. By construct, we mean that your brain is interpreting the world that it experiences.
Which, by definition, means that the way one person perceives the world can be different from the way another person does. Research suggests that one set of people listening to something cannot make any sense of it until prompted by its actual meaning.
After the prompt, suddenly, the same sounds made complete sense. Your perception of reality has changed.
So what does food or how much you eat have to do with all of this? It turns out that your brain, along with your liver and spleen, are the largest users of your daily energy requirement.
If you are on a fad diet, say one that is 30% of your daily requirement because someone persuaded you that is the only way to lose weight.
On such a diet, your body is starved for energy. Sure, you have a ton stored, but getting to it is not simple, and in any case, your body goes into self-preservation mode.
Your body will slow down your brain. It will also affect the way you perceive reality. Research is now showing that your brain fires fewer neurons when in an energy deficit. Apparently, doing so affects the way you perceive the world around you.
You may have already experienced this in a manner of speaking. When you are hungry, your mood, energy, motivation, and discipline all change. Isnt that just another way of saying the manner in which you are perceiving your reality has changed?
