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…
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 😁
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
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:
-
drop all junk food and sugar soda no cheat days. Zero or Sparkling is fine.
-
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.
-
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.
oh yeah! you have to be careful coming off a prolonged fast. glad you recovered!