6-day fast that won't satisfy the purists

(Barbara Greenwood) #1

I’ve been doing keto for a year and IF for almost as long. 18:6 most days and usually a 24-40 hour fast once a week. I’ve long wanted to do a longer fast, but whenever I’ve mentioned it my husband, who joins in with the 24-hour fasts, has objected. Not that I couldn’t do it without his support, I just prefer not to.

But tomorrow he goes away for 6 days on a course…

I also recently got into making kefir - and it is so delicious, and so good for me, that I’ve decided I’m going to do a kefir fast. I’m producing about half a litre per day, and I’m going to drink that or maybe a little more (since I have a stock) split over 2 or 3 glasses. I’ve also got some strawberries and avocado to use up, so I anticipate smoothies the first few days at leat.

Whole milk has 4.7g carbs per 100ml, but kefir should be half of these or even less, as I double ferment it. So I estimate I’ll be having around 10g carbs per day, with around 20g protein and 20g fat.

I’ll update daily on how I’m doing.

My objectives for this fast are:- break through a stubborn stall; teach myself that I can go without solid food for extended periods; heal insulin resistance

(KCKO, KCFO) #2

Sounds like a fat fast of sorts. Keep us posted. Good luck on busting out of the stall.

#3

I’ll be following this one… good luck!

(Barbara Greenwood) #4

For background: My starting weight in July 2016 was 283.6lb.

Between January and July this year I bobbled around between 224.5 and 237.7lb. That last figure was when I got back from holiday 10 days ago, since when I’ve returned to strict keto and dropped to 229.8.

The measurements I’m going to track are: whole-day average blood glucose (recorded by Freestyle Libre); breath ketone (ketnonix) at 6pm; and weight first thing in the morning. And present them in a table, Ron Coleman style :slight_smile:

I would love to get under 224lb (16 stone) in this time, but that may be a little ambitious

(Barbara Greenwood) #5

Well, day 1 is underway. The last solid food I ate was around 10pm last night - a sudden urge to finish off the last bit of the nice cheese before my fast, along with a few olives and almonds.

This morning my weight was inexplicably up at 16st 7lb (231lb) - so that’s my official fast starting weight. This morning so far I have had a mug of peppermint tea, two of black coffee and one of ginger tea. I was planning to have my first kefir at 1pm, which is my usual lunchtime, but I’m not actually feeling hungry at the moment. Though I dare say I could make myself hungry if I think about it too much!

Instead, then, I’m going to carry on listening to the cricket till the lunch break starts at 1pm. I will put out a measured quantity of salt to be consumed over the day, and then go and do some work. I’ll have my kefir when hunger nudges.

(Teresa) #6

How much salt to you intend to consume?

(Barbara Greenwood) #7

About 2 teaspoons per day… I I can stomach it

(Cristy Lucke) #8

I’m looking forward to following this! I used to make my own kefir, but fell out of it after a cross-country move. I’d love to get back to it!

(Ben) #9

I hope your fast is going better than the cricket

(Barbara Greenwood) #10

The first day went fine. I had an avocado kefir smoothie about 2.30pm, and then a strawberry kefir smoothie some time after than 7. Both were tasty and very satisfying. I also had black tea and coffee, and water. Only a little bit of salt, though, as I really couldn’t persuade myself to consume the 10g I had measured out.

Hunger wasn’t an issue, though I did think about food - or, rather, not eating - during the evening. I slept very well last night.

I’ve some work to do to export the spreadsheet in a way that works for display purposes (I exported to PDF, but lost the grid lines), so I’ll just tell you that on day 0 (before the fast) my all-day avaerage BG was 5.3 and on day 1 was 5.1. Ketones measured with Ketonix at 6pm were 5.9, then 6.7 on the first day of the fast. That’s really not a significant difference.

But the most amazing thing to me was that when I weighed this morning I had lost 3.7lb since the previous day! Granted I had somehow gained 2lb over the previous 3 days, so let’s not get too excited. I’m hanging on to Dr Jason Fung’s figure that a typical fat loss while fasting is half a pound a day. We’ll see how we go from here.

Right, I’m ready for some kefir!

(Paula Green) #11

Great start!

(Barbara Greenwood) #12

And here we are now half way through day 3 and going well. I had some mild hunger this morning, but nothing too drastic. I had a meeting to get to, so there was none of that sitting round the house wondering whether I ought to eat something lark. Instead I had another of my kefir smoothies at ‘lunchtime’, plus several cups of tea/coffee of various sorts through the day.

I’m excited to think that at the end of today (it’s 4.30pm now) I will have completed 3 full days of my six-and-a-bit!!

Here’s my statistics so far. I can’t see how to get the gridlines to appear when I export an Excel spreadsheet to PDF - maybe @ron-coleman can help me?

image.png595×842 6.05 KB

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #13

I use the Windows Sipping tool to capture a section of the screen. You can also do an alt-PrtScrn (print screen) to capture the current application and then trim the resulting picture.

For the graphs I simply copied and pasted.

(Barbara Greenwood) #14

Now why didn’t I think of that? Here’s today’s data again, hopefully more legible:

(Barbara Greenwood) #15

So at the beginning of Day 4, here’s the latest data:

A further 0.8lb off today, which is pleasing. With another 3.5 days of this fast to go I am hopeful that I will get under 224lb (16 stone) by the end, although of course there is the inevitable rebound to consider. I will be eating a light meal on Friday evening when my husband returns from his trip, normal keto meals (to appetite) over the weekend, and then back into my usual weekly fast (just for one day) on Monday. I also have the opportunity to fast on Wednesdays as well at the moment as he’s out all day then. So I am hopeful of retaining most if not all of what I’ve lost, indeed to carry on downwards.

The other notable effect of the fast is the reduction in blood glucose levels. As mentioned above, these numbers are from the Freestyle Libre, and the number I’m giving is the all-day average BG. For comparision, when I was on my holiday a few weeks ago and got back into the carbs, my average BG rose from low 5’s, peaking at 8.3 on the day we travelled home. Four days later (after resuming strict keto) I was back in the low 5’s again.

Keto really does work for type 2 diabetes. Eating carbs doesn’t!!

I’m a little surprised that my ketones haven’t changed much - these numbers are Ketonix ppm values, where nutritional ketosis is defined as 4-30 ppm. So I was already (just) in ketosis before I started this fast. Again - a bit surprised I haven’t gone much deeper, but I suppose it doesn’t matter really since I am seeing the results I hope for in weight - and BG too. BTW, I think this Libre sensor may be reading on the low side, which sometimes happens (or high!) but I will see in the next day or two because this sensor finished later today and I will see how the readings look on the new one.

I was up very early today. I struggled to get to sleep and then woke around 4.30 - not sure if that is to do with the fast or because of having stuff on my mind from yesterday. We’ll see! In general I feel good, and able to do everything I want or need to do. I am still a little tired, but that is because I’m recovering from the chest infection. Getting stronger every day, so I don’t put the tiredeness down to the fast.

That’s it for today… nearly at the half way point and feeling quite pleased with myself. I wonder if it would have been as easy to do a water/tea/coffee fast without the kefir. Part of me thinks I’m a wimp for doing it this way… but if I get good results, why not? Trying to persuade myself, really.

#16

I say if it works for you, why not. Be proud.

I think it is interesting that you only fast when your spouse is not around. Honestly I have a husband and a number of children who still live at home most of the time. Only my teenage daughter noticed when I first started fasting and it took her about a month! As Fung says, don’t tell friends unless you have a real reason to! She was adorable, she was so worried about me she made me go out for chinese food in the middle of a fast (obviously ended it but found what to eat). I have done 5 and almost 6 day fasts with nothing but broth and coffee with cream AND NOBODY NOTICED! Unless your husband is super observant or you eat out alot, he will not notice as long as he has something to eat!

(Barbara Greenwood) #17

He joins in one-day fasts, but doesn’t want to go longer. I’m not hard enough to tell him to fend for himself when I am around, I guess. (It’s fine when I’m out)

#18

Part of the reason no one noticed is I still made dinner for the rest of the family, I simply did not eat it! This is not a huge problem for me since I make their favorites rather than mine!

With the kid’s schedules we often do not eat together. Also now I am doing a fat fast (under 1000 calories and 90% from fat), neither my son or my husband noticed even though we ate together. I took a tiny piece of meat with a larger serving of fat

(Barbara Greenwood) #19

I don’t have any kids. I don’t have a problem with preparing slightly different food for my husband (since he’s not keto), although I try to make as much overlap as possible. But I draw the line at cooking for a grown man when I’m not eating!

(Barbara Greenwood) #20

Here are the statistics at the beginning of Day 5:

Ketones: I saw that jump I had been expecting yesterday. Previous experience using Ketonix on my usual keto diet has me in the range 5-15 almost all the time. Fasting didn’t seem to make much difference - but I’ve only ever fasted for 40 hours before. Finally, after 4 days of the kefir fast, I jumped from the bottom to the top of “my” usual range. It will be interesting to see what today’s reading is. More of that later.

Blood glucose - dropped again to 4.3. Remember that is the 24-hour average, and personally I don’t believe it. What I think was happening was that my Libre sensor, as it approached the end of its life, was giving false low readings. Witness this graph, in which the graph was the one hour period when the new sensor was warming up and you can’t get any data:

The new sensor came in with a significantly higher reading, but then went south overnight… witness today’s graph so far:

I also don’t believe I spent most of the night in a hypo state, I think that’s new sensor instability, they sometimes do this and then settle down. We’ll see, but I suspect today’s average reading will also be artificially low. What we can trust, though, is that I saw a decline in average BG over the first few days of the fast, as you would expect, even if we can’t be terribly confident in the absolute numbers.

And finally to weight. Only a 0.3lb reduction yesterday. That would be because I cracked last night - don’t know why, as I wasn’t hungry - and had a snack of olives, almonds and cheddar cheese. And then I had a strong urge for cream, and I didn’t have any in, so I actually got in the car and drove to the 24-hour supermarket to buy a tub of extra thick double cream and polished it off. Oh dear.

So later I thought to myself… I made 4 days minus 2 hours without solid food. Way longer than I’ve ever gone before. So, although I’m a bit disappointed in myself, I am also proud of what I’ve achieved. I considered whether this meant I might as well give up the fast - but no, in the cold light of morning, I want to carry on - another 2.5 days should mean another pound or two off, get me below that threshhold which means a new low weight since I started keto.

Plus - while I quite enjoy cooking, I do not enjoy all the clearing up, and it’s lovely to have so little of that - only what’s required from attending to my kefir. I’ll have me another couple of days of that, please.

Digestive wise, I had no BM’s on day 2 or 3, and then a normal one yesterday morning. Last night after the cream excess I felt full but not uncomfortable, and I noticed a fair bit of gut noise as I lay in bed. This morning I had a slightly more urgent BM, but not too bad. Overall, I feel very well :slight_smile:

So - onward into Day 5. It is a positive experience so far, for someone who loves her food with a vengeance.