Woman Gives up Food, Living off Water and Sunlight for Six Months

A Seattle woman is endeavoring to live without food for six months, and sustain herself with only water and sunlight in an experiment she calls "Living on Light." She has been documenting her journey to survive as plants do on Facebook and YouTube.

Navenna Shine, 65, began the diet on May 3 and so far has lost 30 pounds in 5 weeks. However, her aim with this experiment is not weight loss, but she wants to prove that humans don't actually need to eat food in order to survive.

"Can you imagine, if we did not have to eat, just how free our lives would be?" Shine wrote on her website. "A vast amount of time, effort and resources go into merely putting food on the table. If humans did not have to eat, we could turn our planet back into a place of beauty. Our land could return to its pristine state, used for pleasure rather than need."

"This is a paradigm for living in which we as human beings do not have to ingest any kind of food whatsoever into our stomachs in order to thrive," Shine added. Shine was inspired by ancient Yogic practices and New Age philosophy, and says she will quit if 'not thriving.'

However, the strict dietary regiment has already left negative effects on Shine. She shared on her Facebook page symptoms including weakness, throwing up bile, dizziness, and frozen hands.

Shine is not the first to live on such an extreme dietary restriction. This practice is associated with the religious movement called "Breatharianism," which claims that the only necessary sustenance for human life is "prana" (the "life force" of Yoga), of which sunlight is believed to be a major source. Advocates and practitioners of this belief system have been repeatedly exposed as frauds, including "Jasmuheen," an infamous advocate of Breatharianism whose teachings were linked to a number of deaths.