The Yom Kippur fast is a sneaky one. The Jewish people were smart and decided to ease us into it by celebrating Rosh Hashanah the week prior. It’s almost like they assumed the more food they could provide us with during that holiday, the less painful the lurking fast would be 10 days later.
Turns out it’s not really less painful, because, like the hangover you’re enduring in your 10 am lecture Friday morning after a Thursday night out, we all knew this was coming. How is it that just 10 days ago we were all blissfully enjoying endless amounts of challah, consuming more jars of honey than a drunk Winnie the Pooh and now we’re fasting for 25 hours?
Yes 25 hours — not 24, because the Jewish people weren’t satisfied with the limits of a “normal” day, and thus, the extra hour of “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” nonsense resulted in a 25 hour fast. Talk about going above and beyond.
If you’re looking for someone who feels your pain, I’m sure you have several friends enduring the same gnawing hunger inside of their abandoned abdomens. However, if you need a greater sense of communal misery beyond your usual circle during this hangry time, we turn to the only woman who can provide a voice of sanity and reason in crises like these: Amy Schumer.
Stage One: Extreme Confidence
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This is gonna be a freakin’ breeze. You’ve juice cleansed, cabbage dieted and gone an entire day eating only, like, one Chipotle burrito and four pretzels once, so you’re basically a pro. It’s hour one and with g-d’s blessing and your insane willpower, you are feeeeeeelin’ it.
Stage Two: Lying to Yourself
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You’re totally fine. Like, seriously, totally fine. You’re not even hungry. Actually, you’re full. You definitely woke up this morning and had breakfast and not just gulps of air. You’re totally okay, you’re more than okay — you are absolutely great.
Stage Three: Irritability
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You’ve been sitting in services listening to the rabbi drone on in a language you still haven’t mastered despite 13+ years of Hebrew school and being bar mitzvah’d. You thought perhaps ~prayer would save you~, but the food that should be satiating your craving is instead being replaced by the annoyance filling you up inside.
Stage Four: Exhaustion
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You’ve stuck it out at synagogue for as long as humanly possible, and you’re finally headed home to LAY. You have no food, no energy and nothing keeping you alive at this point. You feel like a limp noodle. OMG noodles. The couch looks inviting. Ugh, but your bed is also your bed. Honestly, at this point, the floor will do just fine.
Stage Five: Hysteria
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LOL THIS IS SO FUNNY IM SO HUNGRY AND LITERALLY CANNOT FEEL THE LIMBS OF MY BODY OR ANY PART OF MY FACE JUST LIKE THE WEEKEND SAID! LOL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT. YES, MY COFFEE TABLE IS DEFINITELY EDIBLE. MMMM THE TASTE OF MAHOGANY.
Stage Six: Defeat
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You’re heavily debating grabbing the pint of ice cream in your freezer and trying to repent for this sin on the next Yom Kippur. You’re currently convincing yourself that you were planning on being a sh*tty human the entire year any way to justify this decision. You have the rest of your life to be a better person. No point in starting now.
Stage Seven: Random Burst of Endurance
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NO. STOP. You’re not eating the ice cream, you’re lactose intolerant anyway. (Tell yourself this — it will help.) You know you only have a couple of hours to go, and you’re feeling like you can push through. You’ve made it this far. If you quit now, you will have tortured yourself for nothing. NO PAIN NO GAIN, SON. Let’s finish this off strong.
Stage Eight: Excitement
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Someone needs to get you an adult diaper, like yesterday, because you are currently peeing of excitement. You’re smiling so hard that your cheeks are more numb than when you pose for 3 minutes while your mom insists, “she knows how to turn the flash on,” as she endless stabs at her iPhone camera.
Stage Nine: Blacking Out
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Food is literally everywhere and it’s entering your body from every corner. Things are very blurry. You’re knee deep in 2.5 onion bagels and there is a piece of lox dangling from your scalp like a hair wrap. This is worse than your 21st birthday, you have no idea what’s happening and you’re positive you will remember none of this.
Stage 10: Comatose
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You were right; you remember nothing. Did you consume 2 bagels or 14? Did someone serve you, or did you literally face dive into the tuna salad? All of it is as unclear as the point of hysteria you reached 5 steps ago. If you move any inch of your body, the basketball sized food-child that has grown inside your abdomen will be born out of your mouth in liquid form. (Apologies for this grotesque mental image.)
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You made it out alive, but just barely. Good thing you’re given a year to forget how truly painful this process is. Like most topics in life, shout out to Amy for explaining it all better than any of us ever could.