NADF CEO follows fasting routine

Nishnawbe Aski Development Fund president and CEO Harvey Yesno still gets in a regular walk even though he has a collapsed arch and a bad ankle.
“I used to jog quite a bit,” Yesno said, explaining he used to jog six days a week as well as lifting weights. “It’s more cardio (now) and I watch my diet. Food is good but I try to balance that with exercise.”
Yesno also tries to walk whenever possible instead of driving his vehicle.
“The other aspect, which I didn’t do when I was younger, is I fast, both for health and spiritual reasons,” Yesno said. “It’s good for the body in terms of detoxifying, because of the foods we eat.”
Although Yesno just completed a short fast at the beginning of the year, he has also completed extended fasts up to 40 to 50 days.
“The first three to five days is usually pretty rough,” Yesno said. “But usually when you get on to about 10 days, you start to feel like you don’t need anything to live on. But you need to maintain your fluids and nutrients.”
Although Yesno’s exercise and fasting routine may be working well for him, others are encouraged to seek medical advice before undertaking any exercise or diet program.
Yesno said he sleeps “very well” while on the fast.
“You can have six to seven hours of sleep and you will be fully rested,” Yesno said. “And of course the other aspect of it is you lose a lot of weight, almost a pound a day.”
Yesno usually drinks fluids such as water, orange juice, grapefruit juice and vegetable broths during his fasts.
“I usually start off with (orange juice) and later on I start to water it down, because later on those become very sweet as your body adapts,” Yesno said, explaining he avoids juices that contain pulp. “My wife boils about eight or 10 different kinds of vegetables and I just drink the broth.”
Yesno usually adds some cereal fibre to his juice later on in his fasts to keep his bowels moving and he drinks hot water to keep his body warm because he has a tendency to get cold while on a fast.
“You kind of have to watch that you don’t do anything too strenuous because you’ll find you don’t quite have the energy,” Yesno said.
“If it’s a short fast, it’s no problem. There are people who can still work in construction that have done 10 or 15 day fasts and they can function very well.”
Yesno feels mentally sharper and more at attention after his fasts.
“I think a lot of that has to do with detoxifying your body,” Yesno said.
Yesno usually does a few fasts per year. Last year he did a 40-day fast which began in January and a couple of shorter fasts later on in the year.
“The most I ever did in one year is 95 days, but not all at once,” Yesno said. “You just need to maintain your fluids.”
Yesno said the danger in fasting is that people have a tendency to think they don’t need anything, but once the body has consumed whatever they’ve eaten as a source of energy, the next energy source is the fats stored in the body.
“What you’ve got to watch is once the fat is gone, (the body) looks for another source and that is protein, that’s your organs and that’s the danger,” Yesno said. “That’s why you have to maintain your fluids and nutrients.”