I'm sorry but going that long without eating just doesn't make any sense. Did you/your family only have the ability to buy/acquire one meal at a time or what?
I am not trying to claim that fasting doesn't work, just noting my personal experience. For me it certainly worked in the sense that I saw the fakeness of "if you don't eat for X days you get super hungry or weak/sick/you die", I was perfectly ok.. but not amazing.
That would be great news to the lower 1-2 billions in the developing world.
Even if you have to survive on little money, I don't understand why you would go that long without food and not at least have some ultra cheap foods like rice and beans in your fridge.