Also, Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday, is the day before Ash Wednesday and people would fill up with fat as a final indulgence before Lent.
I was raised Episcopalian and we had a big spaghetti dinner each year on Shrove Tuesday. Many happy memories from that!
It finally dropped today! 85 this morning then down to 66 this afternoon! Feeling great too-finally seem to be moving in the right direction @DaveKeto ?? Thanks for this info-good to know!
We knew it was coming! Waiting on our readings to be what we expect can often be frustrating so I try to be patient and keep doing what I know is correct.
Thanks @DaveKeto for the help!
Depending on the version, use the =na() formula where you donât have updated data and it wonât show on charts, once data is picked up again Excel will just connect the 2 like those donât exist.
Not a big deal or anything, just thought Iâd mention it!
I can never emphasize this enough â the energy system in our bodies isnât like a score card. There are many overlapping systems with an absolute imperative to keep energy available to every cell that needs it, whatever form that takes. Donât worry as much about the energy quantity itself, worry about the degree of spikes and drops which can suggest dysregulation.
And always, always, always listen to how you feel most of all.
I donât have anything to support it yet, but I suspect that this is one of the reasons that Dr. Valter Longo developed the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) - there is something more therapeutic in some ways having some incoming calories. Perhaps it involves Richardâs 
information about a limitation on the amount of calories that can be liberated from adipose tissue (31 kcal per pound of body fat per day). Perhaps the reduction in the consumption of body fat also reduces the toxins that are normally stored there that would trigger a stress response that raise glucose and lowers ketones.
Anyway, youâre an inspiration @ron-coleman, keep up the good work!
I was protestant at the time, Episcopalian, but we abstained from meat on all Fridays of the year as well.
Hi @ron-coleman - can you briefly explain Real Salt vs. other salt you use? I did buy some of the Real Salt (from Whole Foods), but I am still not sure when to use that vs. my pink himalyan salt. I think you said you use Real Salt too from time to time.
Real Salt has more sodium per serving 520mg vs. 450mg for Himalayan Pink salt. The pink salt has more minerals so I vary the salts during the day and track the sodium to keep my levels between 4,000 and 4,500mg.
Serving size is 1/4 tsp. and 1 tsp is about 2,000mg. My wife mentioned that my eyes look sunken and I appear to be emaciated so I may work harder at getting all of my sodium in today as I did not track it while on vacation over the weekend.
Great, thank you so much for your reply!! I have started my extended fast, so weâll see how I do. Thanks to you and all of the folks that paved the way with their fasting stories.
You have truly been giving back to this community, not only with your degree of reporting, but also by adding in those tidbits of information that help us stay current on keto/fasting info.
Day 34 and 805 hours fasted on water, coffee, bone broth, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. Dropped weight nicely fasting on my visit to Tennessee! Here are my numbers for today:
An interesting thing happened in the Nashville airport yesterday: I felt full, satiated, like I couldnât eat anymore! This is the first time in many, many years that I have felt this way! I have always been able to just eat and eat: my father used to say that cats eat until theyâre full but dogs eat until they burst! I always thought of myself as a dog!
So what happened? No, I did not break my fast, I did it with my heavy cream! I had a Starbuckâs venti decaf Americano with heavy cream about 9:30 in the morning. MyFitnessPal rates it at 231 calories or just over Âź cup of cream. Then I had another at the airport about 3:00 and I couldnât finish it! I was astonished and pleased that I may not be leptin resistant anymore.
Leptin is the satiety hormone. It tells the brain that weâve eaten and are not hungry anymore. If not for leptin we would just keep eating and eating. I remember that people would talk about how rich certain desserts, like cheesecake, were and how they could only eat so much of them. I didnât understand as I could, and did sometimes, go back for a second or third piece. Yesterday I had to stop as I hit that proverbial brick wall and said âenough is enoughâ before I made myself sick!
So, how do we become leptin resistant? That is a fairly short road as it takes us back to insulin and fructose. Fructose is the sweet part of sugar and, as Dr. Robert Lustig likes to say, is one substance that humans are born to crave.
It seems that our ancestors only had fructose available to them in season, early fall when the fruit ripened. People would go and find the fruit and feast on it as they are addicted to the stuff. The fructose would block leptin from reaching the brain so people ate and ate until they were stuffed with the sweet fruit. Why are we designed this way? Well, fall is the season when we need to fatten up for the winter season where we need to keep warm and store fat for the food sparse season coming. We had to fatten up just like all of the other animals in nature do!
Fructose is not burned for energy like glucose, it is stored as fat by the liver so overindulging in fruit, as we can tend to do, is a natural, and timely, way to fatten us up to survive the cold winter. Today, fruit is available 24/7 in westernized countries and people eat fruit all day long because we are told it is âhealthyâ for us. Most dietary guidelines say we should consume 3-4 servings a day. Then we wonder why our waistlines are bulging!
Insulin also blocks leptin from getting through to the brain so the brain cannot send out the signal to stop eating. When our blood glucose is high then our pancreas releases insulin to clear the glucose from our bloodstream and this also means that we probably didnât eat the kind of foods that our body needs because they would not raise the glucose like this. All carbohydrates raise glucose and therefore stimulate an insulin response especially processed carbs! Whole vegetables still break down into glucose but they contain natural fiber which slows the break down and the absorption of sugar.
Processed carbohydrates are very different from whole foods as all of their ingredients have been stripped of any wholesome goodness. Since all of these carbs break down into sugar letâs see how much sugar is there: I have a box of Corn Flakes, a box of Rice Krispies, and a box of Almond Thins out of our pantry.
To calculate total sugar from these foods we need to do a little math but it will be easy I assure you! First find the Total Carbohydrates and subtract the Dietary Fiber (which is less than 1g for 2 of these foods and 0g for the other.) Told you it would be easy! Now, there are 4g carbohydrates to a teaspoon of sugar so divide the net carbs from earlier by 4 to find the number of teaspoons of sugar in a serving.
Corn Flakes: 1 cup (28g) : TC=24g, Fiber=<1g, Net=23g: Sugar = 5.75 teaspoons!
Rice Krispies 1.25 cup (33g) : TC=29g, Fiber=0g, Net=29g: Sugar = 7.25 teaspoons!
Almond Thins 8 pieces (29g) : TC21g, Fiber-<1g, Net=20g: Sugar = 5 teaspoons!
As I said 34 days ago when I started fasting that I was doing this to improve my health and it seems to be working. By keeping my glucose low, which therefore keeps insulin low, it seems to have had a positive affect that leptin is able to do its job once again. A couple of weeks ago, still during the fast, I was able to have 3 cups of coffee with cream with no feeling of fullness but not anymore! A small success in my journey to health and I will try to work better with my body as I learn more about these new signs I am seeing!
Love this thread. Iâve been trying something very similar, calling it my âLent 2017 Spring Cleaning Fastâ. Iâve intended to get to the point of just water, or at least minimal coffee and cream, but have found that harder than I thought it would be - and not that I donât know it gets easier past the 3-day hump, but because work and life stress is pretty high right now, and I just havenât been able to bring myself to do it and put my family through it.
To give context, my wife and I have a 9 year old son and weâre foster parents with 2 baby boys (currently 8 months and 14 months) and Iâm in the middle of a major project at work. So, my life is almost constant stress (if youâve ever done foster care, youâll know what I mean) but itâs extra now. And honestly, in the long run, this is my main motivation - since Iâve had fasting and keto as part of my life (steadily since last July) Iâve felt a much deeper emotional calm inside. I want to get deeper though.
So how do the rest of you deal with high stress seasons and fasting? Do you just not fast during that time? Do you try to listen to your body and adjust as needed? Iâve been mostly in fat fast land, with a couple days here and there where Iâve pretty much broken the fast with a meal or two. My intention is to get to the end of my stated time (Easter) having at least done 7 days water only, but weâll see, honestly. Iâm wondering if itâs just not the right time or if there are things I could do to adjust.
Stress is always tough to deal with. Great thinkers of the past always used fasting for clarity when they were dealing with issues but they had trained themselves to fast just for those occasions. Do you feel prepared for this emotional turmoil?
You said you have been fasting since last summer so you have some experience with it and know some of the benefits but as with every thing else you need to fit it into your work/life reality. I like to set rules for myself that although I am fasting I try to have all meals with the family. I may be drinking black coffee or water while theyâre eating but I am spending good quality time with them.
This helps me to keep a calm head as well as family time can be very relaxing and because you are not eating you can also help with the younger children so your wife can get a break. This last weekend while visiting my granddaughters I always cut up the 3-year oldâs food and kept up with her so everyone else could eat their own meals before they became cold.
Look at your fasting and if you can fit in extended fasting then just go for IF for now. You have plenty of time in the future to fast!
Love this: [quote=âron-coleman, post:199, topic:8415â]
If you donât like to cook, you can fast; if you donât like to shop, you can fast; if you donât like to wash dishes, you can fast; if you are short on funds, you can fast; if you want to improve your health without going to see a doctor, you can fast!
[/quote]
day 34, fantastic Ron !
My longest was 5 days. If you get tired of explaining fasting 101 to people then feel free to send them this 
http://breaknutrition.com/benefits-fasting-diet-lifestyle/
Chiming in a bit here (NOTE: This is primarily based on Catholic practice, but if we are talking over 500 years back that doesnât really make a difference, not sure if it even makes a difference now for those groups that practice Lent):
Lent actually is 46 days, though we talk about the 40 days of Lent. Sundays of Lent are still in Lent. I had learned at some point previously that they did not count for various reasons as well, but this always raised questions, particularly in regards to how the Liturgy is structured during that time (at least for Catholics). Learned more recently that Lent really is just 46ish days (technically, it ends midway through Holy Thursday, so ish). In certain places, at certain times, either Sunday or both Saturday and Sunday were excluded from the âfasting daysâ so that there were 40 fasting days in all (and the start date could be variable by the differences, it was a while before Ash Wednesday developed as the definitive start day in the West), but the whole period is technically Lent. At certain times and places (actually particularly in early centuries) this sometimes simply meant â40 [or other amount] of days during which fasting takes place some of the timeâ without necessarily meaning they were doing any kind of fasting the whole time or even every weekday.
Many people follow the practice of excluding Sunday from their âthings they are giving up for Lentâ time. Since these things are voluntary (other than not eating meat on Fridays and Fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday [for Catholics], which obviously are not on Sundays anyway), you can make up the rules you want for them, so itâs fine to do it that way if one so chooses (itâs just obviously more of a sacrifice to include Sundays). So, perhaps people are trying to carry it over from some very early centuries where Saturday and Sunday, or in some places just Sunday, were excluded, but during those times they didnât necessarily do a fast every weekday either (thereâs a lot of variety, and itâs a bit convoluted in some places). Eastern Rite Catholics (and I believe Eastern Orthodox) actually start âGreat Lentâ a few days earlier as well, so the numbers would never have synced up for them.
As for Fasting the whole time, as far as Iâm aware âFastingâ had rather different criteria then (current Catholic practice is far from what we here would consider much of a fast, but itâs been around a while, and even the old practices were not usually even 24 hour fasts, though sometimes). Holy Week supposedly had a more severe fast in many places, which means, of course, that the rest of Lent couldnât be a complete fast (you canât get more severe at that point). Again, depending on when and where, fasting usually meant 1, maybe 2, meals a day, often in the evening, and usually several foods excluded. We might actually call what they did for all of Lent, when they did it for all of Lent, Intermittent Fasting, rather than an extended fast.
Thatâs all to say, you appear to actually be doing a much more severe Lenten Fast than was ever observed as far as I can tell, though there may have been a few ascetics or monks that voluntarily did a complete fast. Now, I suppose if you counted your bits of broth and cream as the 1 or 2 meals a day they did, then maybe it does sync up, though I get the impression most days they ended up eating more (maybe not Wednesdays and Fridays in some places, or maybe not during Holy Week).
Also side note, in the U.S., even Post-Vatican II Catholics are supposed to abstain from Meat every Friday of the year. There is just a provision added that, outside of Lent, one has the option to substitute a different sacrifice in place of abstaining from meat that day. There is some dispute about the wording of that allowance (it may have only encouraged such a setup but not obligated such a setup), but thatâs the basic rule regardless still.
I was only able to make it to day 33âŚwoohoo! Wow!