I’m a accidental faster. I typically do OMAD and if I skip a meal for whatever reason, I see how long i can stretch it out.
My record is a 3 day water+electrolyte fast. I end up doing this twice a year, since I’m not trying to schedule it.
What are your experiences?
Live, fast, die young…
Hey new community. I only do extended fasts. Ideally I’d never fast again except for autophagy a couple times a year, which only needs a few days straight until diminishing returns kick in. Realistically it’ll probably be a couple times a year but less extreme. We’ll see, things change now that I’m weight training and I’m new to it.
For weight loss I did three extended fasts of equal length spread out over half a year. So my record is 21 days in a row with no food. I had to lose 60lbs, which I did.
That’s awesome! What kind of prep did you do for a 21 day fast?
Besides initial research and Dr. Fung books?
Just ate keto a week beforehand so I didn’t get the brutal hunger pangs you’d get coming off carbs. Solid advice turns out, and makes perfect sense since then you’re already in ketosis when you start the fast. I had tried and stopped too early a couple times before I got in the groove. The hunger urge in the hardest days (day 2 and 3) would overwhelm self control.
All I’ve really done post-weight loss is:
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drop all junk food and sugar soda no cheat days. Zero or Sparkling is fine.
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try to eat balanced, and I care more about protein now.
I think I was successful this time because I had a number of external reasons added to the pile recently to get into shape thanks to a certain mad king to the south. Honestly, the last fast the motivation was “I don’t want chronic heart burn while possibly rebelling.” lolol.
Thats a really good motivation. I haven’t read the fung books.
When you finished 21 days, how did you refeed? broth for a few days?
1st day was exactly that yep, home made too. Chicken.
2nd I started solids with a hard boiled egg and small garden salad both meals.
After that I basically just had smaller portions of what I wanted for a few more days. Felt fine.
This is not advice of course, I just did it my way while being aware of the dangers.
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Normally do omad and have my only meal at 5 pm. Normally do a 3 day broth only fast 2-4 times a year.
If it’s a busy day I might forget to eat
Due to how much talk there is here about omad I got suddenly inspired to just do it. Nothing I plan to do when I woke up but I haven’t eaten breakfast except for having myself a coffee with some oat “milk” in it. So it algins well with keep on OMADing 😁
Posting again just to answer your question.
I have been water fasting for 6 days straight. I had a bad experience ending my fast where I overloaded on carbs and therefore had a huge insulin spikes which in turn demolished me, made me bedridden puking, could not eat. Thing is I didn’t think it through enough to do it wisely. What’s my daughter’s birthday at the day I ended my fast. And I was so tempted to nibble on that cinnamon bun that we had for her birthday. And after that I just had a rush to eat, so I ate a lot in a short time window.
So I had not eaten for 6 days and then I ate like 2.5 meals in the span of 3 hours.
Now I’m much more smart about it. Next time I will water fast I will lay down the carbs. And when I end my water fast I will slowly accelerate the eating. The body had a lot of days to adjust to me not eating. It’s super important to give it time on the way back to eating as well. Lesson learned.
