Optimal Deprivation
Building a *fasting mindset* in life
Hello there,
I often feel very grateful after taking the first bite of my favorite food- like the greasy roadside Vada Pav that later gives me diarrhea or the parathas that declare war on my waistline.
It’s one of the greatest joys of life. Pure bliss.
But you know what trumps it all?
The joy of taking the first bite after fasting for a day.
I remember the time I ate a banana after a 24-hour fast. The combination of joy and gratitude that pulsed through my being hasn’t been surpassed yet.
When I ended the fast, I didn’t long for my dream food items or a sumptuous meal. A few simple bites felt like the best ones I’d experienced in a long time.
Applying this framework to other spheres of life, I’ve realized that the joy of experiencing something after a period of optimal deprivation produces very high levels of satisfaction.
Not pleasure. Satisfaction and contentment. Pleasure is ephemeral- a simple dopamine rush that is designed to make you crave it once again. But being content and perfectly satisfied is different.
It feels great without producing the craving for ever-increasing levels of sensory stimulation. It lasts longer and fortifies one’s sense of gratitude. And most importantly, unlike the damaging spiral created by the consumerist/luxury treadmill, it’s cheap and repeatable.
But it’s not just about food. The fasting mindset applies to more things in life than you can imagine.
Meditation
Conditioned to seek stimulation every second of the day, we can’t help but succumb to restlessness and feelings of boredom in the absence of something that can constantly provide fodder for the mind. Unfortunately, our phones have become the source of that stimulation- so much so that they’re the first things we look at when we get up in the morning. Not our spouses, not our kids- but push notifications from brands and stupid emails from colleagues. (Btw, if smartphone addiction is an issue, you might want to read my recent article on combating it)
The funny part is that the more you mindlessly engage with your phone, the greater dissatisfaction it tends to produce. The dopamine threshold keeps rising, and what we see has to be more and more outrageous or unusual to be able to produce further stimulation.
A much better way to resolve this problem is to step out of this arms race and do the exact opposite: practice restraint. When your mind abstains from ANY sort of stimulation for 30 minutes, the moment it breaks that fast and does something- just talking to someone or reading an article- it feels like a very big gratification. For some, it might be good enough that they stop demanding endless amounts of it.
I got this feeling in its most vivid form when I came out of my first 10-day silent meditation course. The happy feeling of being back in the real world was so immense that for the first day, I didn’t feel the need to do anything at all. I just walked around and spoke to my friends and family. It was good enough.
Entertainment
The same goes for our relationship with TV shows and movies.
Exposed to too much of that stuff, the mind gets dull and incapable of feeling the joy that we get when we engage with these experiences in a measured way.
My approach, therefore, is to never binge-watch and only consume OTT content sparingly. The few times that I carefully pick up a show or movie, it feels great.
But in those moments of pleasure, I realize, warily, that if I were to go on a spree, I’d be denied this satisfaction- the joy felt by the beginner who is free from the conditioning produced by a binge.
So when you’ve reached a level of saturation with entertainment, take a day-long fast. Or make it 7 days. Getting back will feel great and you’d saved a shit-ton of time by avoiding it for so long.
Exercise
Why is it that we fall asleep much faster after an intense workout, even if we’ve been having trouble getting sleep?
Maybe because the body has experienced energy deprivation and is in a tired state, it can now savor the resting period. Perhaps the mind doesn’t lapse into a web of thoughts because it’d much rather enjoy some moments after being put through all that work.
The very act of resting becomes many times more enjoyable when it comes after a period of vigorous exercise.
By exercising, we’ve denied our body the resting state that it is in all day long. The moment it’s experienced again, in the form of a nap or just relaxing on the couch, it achieves a sense of novelty, just like eating out after 10 days of eating meals at home.
Exercise is a fast from the state of rest (and laziness).
The trick, in all cases, is to aim for an optimal amount. Not so much of it that you’ll break. Not so little that it doesn’t even qualify.
You don’t need to meditate in a cave till the afternoon or ban all forms of entertainment permanently. Take the optimal middle path and let the results follow.
Like many counterintuitive ideas in life, fasting appears to cause harm but actually leaves us better off. It is nothing but a practical application of the principle of minimalism in everyday life- a practice that produces outsized benefits when cultivated over time.
The next time you confront dissatisfaction, opt for less instead of more.
Undertake a planned fast, because the road to contentment passes through deprivation.
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