Ok, I recorded a podcast with @carl and @richard this morning and they said it should be available on Tuesday. It was fun to do and I hope that it is helpful to everyone that has followed along on my journey! Thank you dudes for helping me share my journey and what I have learned!
A really extended fast: going for 46-days!
richard
(Richard Morris)
#384
And your status on the forum has now changed to show you were a guest 
(itās the little mortarboard icon)
ron-coleman
(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!))
#386
Day 52 of my experiment, completed 46 days fasting and am now 6 days feasting. Itās a bit strange that I am starting to feel like I felt more normal while fasting as everything was comfortable and I did not have to worry about controlling my eating. Here are my numbers for today:
I have gained 9.2 pounds back in the last 6 days but I knew that I would not keep all of the weight off. As of today I still have a 25.2 lb net loss from my fast. I have been eating between noon and 8:00 each day so I can call this a 16:8 IF schedule. It is a mental game: there are so many tasty foods to choose from that I feel like I am at a buffet and tend to select a bit too much of each thing during my feeding window. I need to work on that control!
When I was completing my fast I was considering moving directly into doing some feast/fast cycling where I would have begun a 48 hour fast after a business lunch yesterday. Well, I had some stomach issues the past few days most likely from the volume of food I was taking. I had an occasional pain in my stomach almost like food had trouble moving from my stomach into my intestines. This is what I imagined based on apparent timing from when I ate to when I felt the discomfort. The discomfort was very short-lived but did occur in what seemed like every few hours.
I have had no issues evacuating as Iāve had 2 bowel movements a day, every day since I began eating. Again I am assuming there was material in my colon from the detoxing process of the fast but due to no food the peristalsis was not there to move the waste along. Once I began eating again, the rhythms began once again and things have been moving right along. Often when I felt the pain after eating, I could go evacuate and that really helped with the issue.
I am now over that discomfort and seem to have a bit better control over my eating so I do not eat as much volume at each meal. I will give myself a few more days and will then do a 2 or 3-day fast next week as it feels like what I need to do. I mentioned that fasting was very comfortable and I found that I could have continued on with the extended fast with no adverse effects. I have learned from previous fasts that with each one I learn more and handle the entry and exit of the fasts better each time. This is another goal to the feast/fast cycling. Short term fasts should be easier for me to handle and not necessarily have eating issues when I finish and I will test the better ways to end a fast.
My non-keto wife asked me this evening, when I told her about the F/F cycling, āWhat is the difference between that and yo-yo dieting?ā I answered her that yo-yo dieting is based on calorie restriction, which has been shown to lower the basel (or resting) metabolic rate (BMR), for weeks to months and then going back to the same eating pattern that put on the weight in the first place. Whereas fasting is the taking few, if any calories (normally < 500 kCal/day) and this has the opposite effect, from calorie restriction, of raising the BMR and increasing human growth hormone (HGH) production which has very significant rebuilding properties in the body.
My blood glucose has risen about 20 points since I began eating and is still very well controlled. My blood ketones have remained fairly high and I contribute that to greatly restricting carbohydrates for keeping the glucose in line and eating 75+% of calories from fat for keeping the ketones so high. In fact of the 5 feasting days that I tested my blood glucose and ketones, 3 of them have shown a glucose/ketone index of < 1 which is still in the prime therapeutic range for healing my body.
I have an appointment to see my Doctor on Tuesday and it will be interesting to see how my blood work comes out. @DaveKeto Feldman of CholesterolCode.com has shown in n=1 experiments from quite a few people, not a scientific trial, that fasting for 3 days before a lipid test can, and often does, raise cholesterol levels. Also, eating a lot of fat, he ate 5000 calories/day, the 3 days before the blood test actually lowered the serum cholesterol and improved all of the lipid numbers.
I am interested in seeing just how my numbers will look as I had my blood after 45 days of fasting! More to come!
ron-coleman
(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!))
#388
Day 53 of my experiment, completed 46 days fasting and am now 7 days feasting. Had a great meat-up with some other keto folks for lunch today in Gainesville, FL! Here are my numbers for today:
Even though my carbs are up near 60 grams they arenāt affecting my insulin which is showing as my glucose is still well controlled as well as my blood ketones are staying around the 5.0 mmol/l range. I am feeling great and am hoping that my weight will steady out soon!
Busy day today as I took in a delivery of 15 yards of mulch and then drove 2 hours each way to the meat-up with some new friends and we talked keto for almost 2 hours. The other guy, user name BillJay, has lost half of his original body weight and is looking great at 160 lb! Iām am in awe and am very proud of him for his accomplishment. The lady who met with us and I are still on our journeys and his success helped strengthen our resolve to continue on this lifestyle and get healthy.
After I returned back home I had about 30 minutes and then off to my usual work at bingo this evening. I really like working there as most of our customers really know how to have fun!
I took advantage of the time in the car to listen to some podcasts from 2Ketodudes.com, FastingTalk.com and KetoTalk.com. I will make some comments on some of the things I learned in my update tomorrow when I have more time.
ron-coleman
(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!))
#390
He posted a picture in the Community/Meatups/North Florida Meatup, April 2017 thread:
Sara_S
(Sara S)
#393
Already looking very much forward to it, @ron-coleman!
Just wanted to drop one line, in order not to spam this thread with āemptyā appreciation lines. But you deserve it, truly admiration speaking from my side. Youāre great!
Guess we all wished to have someone in our vicinity and friend circle who could just do what you did and really see it happening live. This episode will definitely make this up at least partially by bringing your story nearer to all of us :)! Youāve been such an inspiration, thank you!
Buttonwillow
(Jane Reed)
#394
Ron, I think you should replace your avatar photo with one taken more recently. You hardly look like your old self anymore.
ron-coleman
(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!))
#395
Thanks @Buttonwillow, the picture I used was a head shot they did at work a year ago as I didnāt look like my previous picture due to losing weight.
Maybe Iāll have to get another soon!
ron-coleman
(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!))
#396
Day 54 of my experiment, completed 46 days fasting and am now 8 days feasting. Keeping busy and spent a couple of hours preparing stuff to eat this coming week! Here are my numbers for today:
No MFP post as we are having a late supper! Will post separately!
The weight gain has slowed as I expected. I knew that I wouldnāt stay down the 34.4 lbs (15.6 kg) I lost during the fast so that was not a surprise but I tend to be impatient and want to know where things will end up! Waiting a couple of weeks is not always what I want to do but Iāve been doing the morning readings and recording them (and posting them) for so long that I sometimes donāt notice what the readings were until I plug them into my spreadsheet and look at the graphs. I am looking at this as an experiment and I know that there are many factors that go into the state of my body so even monitoring my eating very closely doesnāt always say what caused the change in the readings.
One of the things that stood out for me in the FastingTalk.com podcast episode I listened to yesterday, was the mention of Dr. Fungās comment that on an extended you lose about 0.5 lbs a day although your scale will show more weight loss as you lose weight from water and other things that your body is tossing aside. The key though is that when you start eating, given you are eating correctly, you should not be putting the body fat back on but retaining water and other things like that.
Just some rough numbers from this experiment: as Dr. Fungās comment was estimation and speculation, I fasted for 46 days which would equate to 23 lb (10.4 kg) of loss from adipose tissue (body fat.) So, it is interesting that I lost a total of 34.4 lb and with the recent gain I seemed to get back to 23.4 lb net loss. Right in the zone where Dr. Fung predicted! So we will see where this experiment takes me from here!
The biggest surprise with my readings was my glucose jumping to 101 mg/dl and my ketones dropping down to 2.7 mmol/l which really destroyed the glucose/ketone index that I had held at < 1 even for the first 7 days of feasting. I know that home meters are not always the most accurate and some people have found that the strips are not consistent so multiple readings at the same time could vary quite a bit. I didnāt have the time to retest this morning so I just accepted the readings as they were. If only one of the readings had changed significantly then I would be worried but both of them changing, in opposite directions, tells me this could be a valid result.
One possible cause can be the Chocolate Mousse I eat uses Erythritol, a sugar alcohol, which does have a lot of carbs although not sugar. It is supposed to have a very low glycemic impact and should not raise glucose or induce insulin: well, I donāt know! The person who gave me the recipe only ate the mousse about 1 spoonful at a time and I like to sit down with a bowl of it: probably Ā½ to Ā¾ cup, and sometimes 2 bowls. This may be too much for my system! So, I will investigate using liquid Stevia instead and see how that turns out and how I react to it.
A non-scale victory (NSV) today is that I got to go shopping for new business clothes. My favorite store had a good sale so I went and bought some really nice sport coats and 3 great shirts. They were trying desperately to sell me some slacks as well but I am not down to the size I want to be when I invest that much money. Dockers has nice looking slacks for 1/3 the cost!
I did learn something new though: the sport coats were the same chest size as I had before but these fit me very well so I had to ask. The new jackets are āslimā fit! I almost had to sit down for a minute, I canāt ever remember wearing anything āslimā in my life. With the slim fit the shoulders sat where they are supposed to and I canāt pull out the front the 6-8 inches that I could in my older jacket with the āExecutiveā cut. I guess Executive cut is the fancy name for more roomy: it used to be called āportlyā but that is considered rude these days I guess.
When I started this journey I wore dress shirts with 20 inch collars and some of those were tight. I was very proud last summer when I donated 12 shirts with the 20ā collars as I could fit into some 15-year old shirts with 18.5ā collars! Today I can almost fit my entire hand through the collar opening when I am wearing a tie and the shirt looks like a tent. I bought 3 shirts, āslimā fit, and a 17.5ā collar and they are very comfortable; not the least bit tight!
{Cue music} I feel good!
Audrey
#397
@ron-coleman I enjoy your updates so much, thank you. Please keep them up. I read them like a novel while I was doing the April Zornfast. Much motivation!
Barbara_Greenwood
(Barbara Greenwood)
#398
Fascinating to see where your weight goes from here. Iāve been stalled since mid January, and when I have done daily weighing during that time, I can see changes as much as 3lb from one day to the next, though within 1lb is much more common (up or down).
Overall, though, I have stayed within a 3lb range almost that whole time, there a just a handful of readings outside that range. That builds my confidence that Iām not going to regain what Iāve lost as long as I stay ketoā¦ but it does seem that I need something else to get the scale definiteively moving down again.
Fasting is going to be part of that, no doubt.
roxanne
(Roxanne)
#399
Me too, Barbara. Iām pretty much where I was in January (lost about 32 pounds from July to January, then stalled). I need to get back to IF and perhaps longer fasts to get things moving. But Iām happy that despite all of the stress of the last few months, Iāve remained keto have havenāt gained weight, and for me that is still huge!
ron-coleman
(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!))
#401
My podcast has been published: Fasting for 46 Days with Ron Coleman
I hope you enjoy it!