I have some data points that may interest you, or maybe not, just wanted to share.
I found fasting before I found you, and I've already spent years working up to it, and it's infinitely easier to me to eat absolutely nothing instead of quite a lot of other diets.
8 months ago, I performed a 24 day complete water fa…
I have some data points that may interest you, or maybe not, just wanted to share.
I found fasting before I found you, and I've already spent years working up to it, and it's infinitely easier to me to eat absolutely nothing instead of quite a lot of other diets.
8 months ago, I performed a 24 day complete water fast, after that, I started eating as much as I could intentionally, for as long as I could. Keto, but fairly high protein (19.8% on average, most of the fat being drinking heavy cream)
That turned out to be 3500 - 4500 CAROLIES a day.
Biggest thing I noticed was being able to go outside by freezing temps with a tshirt, and not feeling like I was gonna freeze to death, I did gain weight, but a lot of it was muscle.
I'm 5'8, I started that fast at 178 lbs, and dropped to 160 lbs. (Before refeeding, which instantly adds approx 7.5lbs from digestive residue and water retention)
During the eating period afterwards, I went back up to a bit over 183lbs (in about 4 months, the months after, my weight was obscenely stable, +-4lbs at most)
I'm 9 days into another fast right now, and I'm losing weight like no tomorrow, about 1.25lbs a day, compared to 0.77lbs a day during the previous fast.
I'm not sure whether it's losing the unsat fats I had stored, or because I ate a ton of CAROLIES, but my weight loss has shown zero signs of slowing down, even though I'm at 170lbs right now.
Planning to go for at least 25 days this time, if I remember, I'll try to send you my weight graph if you want it.
I had to abort both fasts because of the side effects: I couldn't sleep. I wasn't hungry at all (especially on the second one) but I just couldn't fall asleep, pretty bad.
I do wonder why some people can seemingly fast much longer than others, I've never managed past 7 days (lots of willpower!) water fasting.
One theory I have lately is that the fasting jacks up my caffeine sensitivity, I was still consuming quite a lot of caffeine during the fast. Do you take any caffeine on your fasts?
I could try again but wean myself off of the caffeine before. Maybe I can last longer that way.
I found that increasing salt intake helped me sleep better while fasting (never had trouble the first two nights, but would quit after little or no sleep the third night). ... That said I've abandoned total fasts for my heavily modified version of the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD). I'm in the process of writing up my experience with (modified) FMD.
It took me a long while to be able to manage 3 days, let alone a week, so I definitely understand 5 days being torturous.
I personally still get hunger pangs all along the fast, they calm down significantly after day 4, but they never entirely go away.
As far as caffeine goes, fasting seems to jack up my sensitivity to absurd levels, while eating, I can drink 200mg of caffeine around 2pm and sleep soundly around midnight, but when fasting, my cutoff is at 11am, and it still harms my ability to fall asleep, pushes it forward about an hour or so.
And as to why some people can or can't fast for long _naturally_, I've noticed that most of the people who tell me they "sometimes forget to eat" are all naturally lean (some, even shredded), whatever the root cause of obesity is exacy, It seems to either make ghrelin depletion slower (as it should disappear within 3 days) or it activates another mechanism unrelated to it.
No, that's it - the 5 days weren't torturous AT ALL. I felt zero appetite or hunger the entire time, especially the second time.
Then I didn't sleep that night at all.
It's a very weird sudden cliff that none of the people for whom fasting works long-term seem to get.
But that your caffeine sensitivity goes way up could explain this; I pretty much megadose caffeine habitually (often 1g/day) and obviously increased sensitivity would massively fuck with my sleep.
I do think that "ability to fast" is basically a symptom of "good fuel partitioning." I think 5 days w/o ANY symptoms is quite a good sign in my case, and even on day 5 I didn't get "hungry" or anything very much. It was just the sleep.
Hey man, love the content
I have some data points that may interest you, or maybe not, just wanted to share.
I found fasting before I found you, and I've already spent years working up to it, and it's infinitely easier to me to eat absolutely nothing instead of quite a lot of other diets.
8 months ago, I performed a 24 day complete water fast, after that, I started eating as much as I could intentionally, for as long as I could. Keto, but fairly high protein (19.8% on average, most of the fat being drinking heavy cream)
That turned out to be 3500 - 4500 CAROLIES a day.
Biggest thing I noticed was being able to go outside by freezing temps with a tshirt, and not feeling like I was gonna freeze to death, I did gain weight, but a lot of it was muscle.
I'm 5'8, I started that fast at 178 lbs, and dropped to 160 lbs. (Before refeeding, which instantly adds approx 7.5lbs from digestive residue and water retention)
During the eating period afterwards, I went back up to a bit over 183lbs (in about 4 months, the months after, my weight was obscenely stable, +-4lbs at most)
I'm 9 days into another fast right now, and I'm losing weight like no tomorrow, about 1.25lbs a day, compared to 0.77lbs a day during the previous fast.
I'm not sure whether it's losing the unsat fats I had stored, or because I ate a ton of CAROLIES, but my weight loss has shown zero signs of slowing down, even though I'm at 170lbs right now.
Planning to go for at least 25 days this time, if I remember, I'll try to send you my weight graph if you want it.
Nice! If you haven't seen, I recently water fasted for 5 days twice: https://www.exfatloss.com/p/ex_fast-5-day-water-fast-down-2lbs
I had to abort both fasts because of the side effects: I couldn't sleep. I wasn't hungry at all (especially on the second one) but I just couldn't fall asleep, pretty bad.
I do wonder why some people can seemingly fast much longer than others, I've never managed past 7 days (lots of willpower!) water fasting.
One theory I have lately is that the fasting jacks up my caffeine sensitivity, I was still consuming quite a lot of caffeine during the fast. Do you take any caffeine on your fasts?
I could try again but wean myself off of the caffeine before. Maybe I can last longer that way.
I found that increasing salt intake helped me sleep better while fasting (never had trouble the first two nights, but would quit after little or no sleep the third night). ... That said I've abandoned total fasts for my heavily modified version of the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD). I'm in the process of writing up my experience with (modified) FMD.
LMK when you've written it up, interested!
I've previously water fasted w/ salts and this time without, that didn't seem to make a difference re the sleep.
I have (finally) completed my article on the Fasting Mimicking Diet:
https://theotherendofthegalaxy.substack.com/p/improving-body-composition
I'll check it out, thanks!
It took me a long while to be able to manage 3 days, let alone a week, so I definitely understand 5 days being torturous.
I personally still get hunger pangs all along the fast, they calm down significantly after day 4, but they never entirely go away.
As far as caffeine goes, fasting seems to jack up my sensitivity to absurd levels, while eating, I can drink 200mg of caffeine around 2pm and sleep soundly around midnight, but when fasting, my cutoff is at 11am, and it still harms my ability to fall asleep, pushes it forward about an hour or so.
And as to why some people can or can't fast for long _naturally_, I've noticed that most of the people who tell me they "sometimes forget to eat" are all naturally lean (some, even shredded), whatever the root cause of obesity is exacy, It seems to either make ghrelin depletion slower (as it should disappear within 3 days) or it activates another mechanism unrelated to it.
No, that's it - the 5 days weren't torturous AT ALL. I felt zero appetite or hunger the entire time, especially the second time.
Then I didn't sleep that night at all.
It's a very weird sudden cliff that none of the people for whom fasting works long-term seem to get.
But that your caffeine sensitivity goes way up could explain this; I pretty much megadose caffeine habitually (often 1g/day) and obviously increased sensitivity would massively fuck with my sleep.
I do think that "ability to fast" is basically a symptom of "good fuel partitioning." I think 5 days w/o ANY symptoms is quite a good sign in my case, and even on day 5 I didn't get "hungry" or anything very much. It was just the sleep.