Despite taking a long time to write this, here are my concluding thoughts on this experiment:
In the USA, it almost seems as though people are afraid to spend any time in any form of discomfort. A/C, food, beverages, pain killers, entertainment - some form of cure is just waiting to be engaged to displace any sense of possible misery.
As a result, I think we may have lost touch with allowing ourselves to toughen up just a little bit.
Try being willing to be hungry for a bit once in a while. It should be okay to be a little less than perfectly content.
This one surprised me. I thought that hunger was a sensation that would accumulate, like a rock in your shoe causing a blister to get ever bigger.
Instead, it's a bit more like cardio. At first it is unpleasant, but after a while, you get used it.
I didn't think about in the start that without food, I wasn't taking in salt. Without salt, all the water I drank would eventually flush out my salt causing me to get dehydrated. Once I realized what was going on, I started to take in electrolytes. For anyone going on a long fast, I would say this is one area of safety for people to definitely learn about.
In a past job, not only was I working full time, but also part time. At one point, a rhythm formed where the part time work could be done with (relatively) simple implementation of problem solving I had already done. This allowed me to work in times where I was quite tired, but still bill for productive hours.
After about 3-4 days, fasting was a bit like this. I wouldn't encourage trying to solve abstract math while fasted for 5 days, but many tasks can easily be done. For some problems, you will actually get more work done. Because if you recognize you want the work done, but don't have the energy for recovering from risky actions, you'll naturally seek out the known solutions which definitely will work.
I pretty much guessed this would happen, but it still surprises me how consistently people say I'm a bit out there for trying such a thing. I would say there are some countries where a week without food is a part of normal life. We must be blessed to have that kind of thing be out there.
Would you consider a 48 hour or longer fast?