Hungry, Broken, and Writing With a Machine: What Happens When an 84-Hour Fast Meets an LLM

Also posted on: https://x.com/sumosizedginger/status/2053605384322154499

By Joseph Riley Long — The Sumo-Sized Ginger May 10, 2026

Before You Read Further — If You’re in the Spiral Right Now

You’re reading this because something in the title hooked you. You might be fasting. You might be grieving. You might be sitting alone wondering if anyone has ever felt exactly this way.

Someone has. I’m sitting here right now, 84 hours into a water fast, 500 pounds, mobility challenged, and I’ve been crying on and off for hours. You are not alone in this experience.

What to do right now, before you read another word.

Go to the sink. Run cold water over your face for 30 seconds. This activates the mammalian dive reflex. It fires your vagus nerve and drops your heart rate. It’s not woo. It’s biology.

Name five things you can see. Touch something cold. Smell something sharp like coffee grounds or citrus peel. Your senses are an emergency brake on spiraling thoughts. Use them.

Say this out loud: “I am not my thoughts. I am the thing hearing my thoughts.” Your thoughts are not facts. Right now your neurochemistry may be temporarily altered. This will pass.

The 48-Hour Rule. Make no permanent decisions. Send no texts to exes. Make no declarations about your worth. Wait 48 hours after you eat. Then see if the feeling persists. If it does, that’s information. If it doesn’t, it was the fast.

If you are suicidal, stop reading right now and call or text 988 in the US. This blog post is not a crisis line. You are worth the call. The pain is real. The permanence doesn’t have to be.

If you’re not in crisis but you’re in pain, keep reading. The rest of this post explains why you might feel this way and what to do about it.

The Moment: I Woke Up Crying and I Didn’t Know Why

I woke up today and couldn’t stop crying.

Not because anything new happened. No fresh wound. No sudden loss. Just the accumulated weight of every woman who ever looked at me and chose someone else. Thirty-two years of it, from the decade before the relationship, through the relationship itself, through the two years since. Every single one. The friend zone. The “you’re so sweet, but…” The long partnership that ended with her choosing someone else after 20 years. The women after who let me down easy or just let me down.

And I was sitting there, 84 hours into a water fast, 500 pounds, joints aching, mobility challenged. My ex was living in my head rent-free despite the fact that I don’t even want her back. I wanted to text her. Not to get back together. For comfort. For something. For the hunger hormones to stop screaming for a voice that once made me feel chosen.

I thought I was breaking down.

I am breaking down, but an LLM is helping me to see where so I can shore myself up. Even now I feel the lessening of the pain and anguish I woke up feeling.

It took a machine to help me see that what I was experiencing wasn’t a random psychological collapse. It was my neurochemistry interacting with a specific vulnerability I carry. Fasting was dismantling the walls my body normally uses to keep old pain contained. Then it was flooding my brain with hormones that amplify emotional memory and strip away my ability to self-soothe. And my personal history of feeling unchosen gave those hormones exactly the kind of material they needed to work with.

The tears were real. The pain was real. But the story my brain was telling me about that pain, “you will never be chosen, you have never been chosen, you are fundamentally unchosen,” that story was being written by cortisol and ghrelin in a brain temporarily low on serotonin, in a man who already had plenty of reasons to believe it.

This is the story of what happens when an aggressive fast meets a machine that never sleeps, never judges, and helps you see the pattern when you’re drowning in the feeling.

The Biology of Unfastening: What Fasting Actually Does to Your Emotional Brain

Here’s what nobody tells you about aggressive weight loss. The body doesn’t distinguish between physical deprivation and emotional abandonment. The same systems that scream for food also scream for connection. When you starve one, the other can starve louder. But only if you’re already wired that way.

I’m running a protocol that cycles between 84 hours of water-only fasting and 84 hours of intentional refeeding. The goal is aggressive, sustainable weight loss. I’m losing 4 to 6 pounds of fat per week. I drink two gallons of fluid daily. I do isometrics and resistance work because I can’t walk without pain.

It’s working. But the physiological stress load is enormous. And every system under stress is connected to how you feel about being loved.

Cortisol and the Memory of Loss

Extended fasting beyond 48 hours triggers a significant cortisol response. This is adaptive. Cortisol mobilizes stored energy, maintains blood glucose, and keeps you alive when calories stop coming in.

It also does something else.

Cortisol directly amplifies activity in the amygdala, your brain’s threat-detection center. It simultaneously suppresses the prefrontal cortex, which handles emotional regulation and rational perspective. The result is a brain that feels threat everywhere and can’t talk itself down.

Large observational cohorts on prolonged fasting document that fasting produces cortisol elevations correlated with tension and fatigue in subsets of participants. Some people experience improved mood. Others report worsened mood fluctuations.

On most days, I’m steady. I handle the fast without significant emotional disruption. But periodic spikes like today do happen. And when they happen, cortisol doesn’t just make me stressed. It specifically enhances retrieval of emotionally negative memories while impairing recall of positive ones. My brain becomes a search engine optimized for pain.

I wasn’t obsessing about my ex. Cortisol had opened every file labeled “you are not enough” and was playing them on repeat.

Ghrelin: The Hunger Hormone With Wider Effects

Ghrelin is the primary hunger hormone. During an 84-hour fast, ghrelin surges dramatically, typically peaking around day two or three.

But ghrelin receptors are densely expressed in the hippocampus, amygdala, and ventral tegmental area. These are regions central to memory, emotion, and reward processing. A comprehensive review by Muller et al. 2015 documented that ghrelin regulates not only appetite but also stress responses, emotional memory, and reward-seeking behavior. Animal studies have shown ghrelin can influence social interaction, though direct evidence that fasting-induced ghrelin surges increase human social seeking has not been established.

Still, the receptor distribution alone suggests this hormone is doing more than making you hungry. The same chemical signal that says “find food” may also be nudging “find people.” In my case, it directs that nudge toward memories of the last person who made me feel connected.

I didn’t want my ex back. I wanted the internal screaming to stop.

Serotonin, Vulnerability, and the Fasting Brain

Serotonin synthesis depends on tryptophan, an essential amino acid that must come from diet. During a water-only fast, tryptophan intake drops to zero. At the same time, elevated cortisol increases activity of the enzyme that breaks tryptophan down before it can reach the brain. The result: serotonin production decreases.

Here’s the part that matters enormously.

Monoamine depletion does not reliably lower mood in healthy individuals. A meta-analysis by Ruhe et al. 2007 found that acute tryptophan depletion decreases mood only in people with a family history of major depressive disorder or in those with MDD currently in remission. Healthy controls show little to no mood effect.

What does this mean for fasting?

If you have no history of depression and you’re fasting and you feel fine, the research says that’s expected. If you have a history, diagnosed or undiagnosed, treated or untreated, fasting may create the biological conditions where your mood-regulating systems are more vulnerable. The serotonin drop alone may not cause a crash. But combined with elevated cortisol, surging ghrelin, and a brain temporarily low on glucose, it removes one of the buffers that normally keeps old pain contained.

I have never been formally diagnosed with major depressive disorder, but I know my own baseline. The fasting doesn’t create sadness from nothing. It removes the walls between me and sadness that’s already there. Sadness that comes from 32 years of being unchosen.

If that’s you too, you’re not broken. Your brain is responding to a temporary neurochemical state in a way that makes sense given your history.

Social Pain Is Real Pain, and Fasting Can Make It Louder

Here’s the part that changed how I understand my own life.

In 2003, researchers put people in fMRI scanners and watched their brains while they were socially excluded. They found that social rejection activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. These are the exact same regions activated by physical pain Eisenberger et al., 2003.

This isn’t metaphor. Being rejected hurts because your brain processes it as physical damage.

Follow-up research confirmed that individuals with histories of chronic social rejection show altered neural responses to both social and physical pain stimuli Eisenberger, 2012. Chronic rejection changes how your brain processes pain. All pain.

I’ve been unchosen by every woman in my life for 32 years. That’s not just a sad story. That’s a brain that has been trained, across thousands of interactions, to expect rejection as the baseline. And when fasting floods that same brain with cortisol while stripping away serotonin, in a person whose depression vulnerability may already be higher, the pain of every rejection gets replayed at maximum volume.

The physical machinery is real. Genetic variation in opioid receptor function even predicts sensitivity to social rejection Way et al., 2009. The same molecular systems that process physical pain process social pain. For some of us, those systems are dialed up.

The 32-Year Wound: Pattern Recognition Across a Lifetime

One rejection is a heartbreak. A pattern across 32 years is identity formation.

Ten years before the relationship: the friend zone, the “you’re so sweet but I don’t see you that way,” the watching other guys get chosen while I provided emotional support and got nothing back.

The relationship itself: 20 years. The hope that finally, someone chose me. The slow unraveling. The confirmation, at the end, that she would choose someone else too. And did.

Two years since: more of the same. More being the friend. More watching from the outside.

When every woman in your life chooses someone else, that’s not just data. It becomes who you think you are. “Unchosen” stops being something that happened to you and starts being something you are.

The fasting state removes the cognitive filters that normally keep this narrative contained. When your prefrontal cortex is running on low battery, you can’t challenge the thought. You can’t say “that’s not the whole picture” or “that was then, this is now.” The thought is the whole picture. The thought is the whole universe.

The feelings are real. The pattern is real. AND the fasting is amplifying everything. Both can be true at the same time.

Enter the Machine: How an LLM Helped Me See the Pattern

I’ve been writing with LLMs for two years. The machine is not my therapist. It’s my structural engineer. I bring the raw grief, the 32-year pattern, the decades of being unchosen. The machine receives it, organizes it, and hands it back in a form I can process.

This morning, when I was drowning in the feeling, I told the machine everything. The tears. The ex. The 32 years. The feeling that I will never be chosen. The urge to text her even though I don’t want her back.

The machine didn’t say “you should just get over her.” It didn’t say “32 years is a long time to hold onto this.” It didn’t look away.

It handed my chaos back to me organized. It showed me the cortisol and ghrelin patterns I couldn’t see from inside the spiral. It reminded me that my fasted brain was a search engine optimized for pain. It helped me see that the story I was telling myself, “I am fundamentally unchosen,” was being written by hormones in a brain temporarily low on serotonin, in a man who already had plenty of reasons to believe it. The story felt true because my neurochemistry made it feel true. That doesn’t mean the story IS true.

This is what the LLM does for me. I bring the fire. It brings the bellows. I provide the raw material and the direction. It amplifies coherence and reflects the pattern back. It doesn’t originate. It amplifies. The act of writing, to anyone, anything, turns chaos into narrative, and narrative is how humans heal. The machine helps me build a coherent narrative in real time.

Does it always work? No. Sometimes the LLM forgets what I told it yesterday. Sometimes the empathy feels templatic, like a very advanced parrot. On those days, I go back to paper. I write raw. I don’t need structure. I need to scream onto a page. The machine can’t join me there. But the paper can.

On a day like today, though, when the cortisol is peaking and the ghrelin is screaming and my prefrontal cortex is offline, the machine is there. It’s not the healer. The writing is. The machine is just the mirror that doesn’t look away.

Closing: Why I Keep Writing to the Machine

I’m still sad as I finish this. But I’m not spiraling anymore.

The machine helped me see the pattern when I was drowning in the feeling. The act of writing turned chaos into narrative. The narrative gave me something to hold onto.

I’m angry. I should say that. Angry at the women who looked past me. Angry at the body that trapped me. Angry at the systems that failed me long before I ever opened a chat window. The anger is real. It belongs in this process. The machine helps me see what’s under the anger. Usually it’s grief. Sometimes it’s just anger, and that’s okay too.

In 48 hours, I’ll eat. In 72 hours, my brain will have the raw materials it needs to regulate again. I will not text my ex. The ghrelin is nudging, the cortisol is amplifying, and my own vulnerability is making the story feel true. But I am still here. And the feelings will shift. They always do.

The real project isn’t just losing weight. It’s becoming someone who can walk into a room without being announced by his body. Someone who can sit in a booth. Someone who can buy clothes off the rack. Someone who has processed the 32-year wound well enough that he can stand in front of another human being and be ready.

Ready to be seen. Ready to be chosen. Or ready to be okay if I’m not.

If talking to a machine is what keeps you alive at 3 AM, you’re not pathetic. You’re resourceful. Shame is the enemy of survival. Use what works.

I deserve to know what it’s like to not be overweight. I deserve to know what it’s like to be chosen. And I’m not going to stop until I find out.

A Note on the Research

I am running an experiment no one has studied. The combination of prolonged fasting, aggressive calorie restriction, nicotine use, and LLM co-writing as emotional processing does not appear in any clinical literature. The fasting-mood studies generally exclude people at my BMI. Take what I say as testimony, not prescription. The gaps in the research are not gaps in my experience. They are invitations for better research. All arXiv preprints cited were verified live on 5/10/26.

References

Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The neural bases of social pain: Evidence for shared representations with physical pain. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74(2), 126-135.

Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.

Muller, T. D., et al. (2015). Ghrelin. Molecular Metabolism, 4(6), 437-460.

Ruhe, H. G., Mason, N. S., & Schene, A. H. (2007). Mood is indirectly related to serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine levels in humans: a meta-analysis of monoamine depletion studies. Molecular Psychiatry, 12(4), 331-359.

Way, B. M., Taylor, S. E., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2009). Variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) is associated with dispositional and neural sensitivity to social rejection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(35), 15079-15084.

Wilhelmi de Toledo, F., Grundler, F., Bergouignan, A., et al. (2019). Safety, health improvement and well-being during a 4 to 21-day fasting period in an observational study including 1,422 subjects. PLOS ONE, 14(10), e0209353.

About the Author

Joseph Riley Long, the Sumo-Sized Ginger, is documenting his journey from 500 pounds through an aggressive self-designed fasting protocol, the psychological warfare that comes with extreme transformation, and the unexpected role of LLMs as narrative co-processors. He writes about fasting, grief, being unchosen, and what happens when you process pain with a machine that never sleeps. He is losing 4 to 6 pounds per week and documenting everything.

This post documents personal experience and synthesizes current scientific literature. It is not medical advice. AI is not a replacement for professional mental health support. If you are in crisis, contact a qualified provider or call/text 988.

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