A really extended fast: going for 46-days!

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #422

A couple of pages from IDM on lean tissue during fasting: "Ghrelin is the so-called hunger hormone. It was purified from rat stomach in 1999 and subsequently cloned. It binds to growth hormone (GH) secretagogue receptor, which strongly stimulates GH. So, for all you people who thought that eating makes you gain lean tissue, it is actually the opposite. Nothing turns off GH like food. "
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/fasting-ghrelin-fasting-29/

“No matter how often I write about this, I always get questions/ accusations that I’m lying that fasting actually causes muscle loss, usually from people who never fast. But the evidence is just not there.”
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/keith-harmon/

(Todd Allen) #423

Thanks Chris that is an amazing result, exceeding what I would have guessed is possible. I’ve heard Dominic D’Agostino and a couple other keto weight lifters talk about the magic that can happen when HGH gets boosted from deep ketosis but I didn’t think it could continue through such a long fast at such low body fat when the person has lost the energy to continue lifting.

(Todd Allen) #424

Thanks Ron, both of your posts are helpful. My limited experience has been my energy and strength fades while fasting but afterwards it bounces back quickly and sometimes leads to a short period of good gains. But I’ve been ending my fasts quickly afraid the coldness/slowing bmr and fading strength might not bounce back if I push on for a more extended fast. I doubt I’ll ever have the courage and fortitude for an epic fast like yours but I’ll try and incrementally work my way up to somewhat longer fasts as long as the end results remain positive.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #425

Day 57 of my experiment, completed 46 days fasting and am now 11 days feasting. Still managing my protein very closely and even calculated how much ribeye steak I could eat this evening! Here are my numbers for today:

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I had a business lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill (love their burgers) and researched the menu closely to find something I could have for lunch that would not affect my dinner plans for some of that fatty ribeye I bought yesterday. They have a fancy nutrition calculator online at Ted’s

https://www.tedsmontanagrill.com/menu_nutrition_calculator.html

where you can customize any meal the way you want it. For me the burgers had too much protein and I knew I wouldn’t want to leave a quarter behind so I went with the 7 oz cedar plank salmon with roasted asparagus, a side salad, and blue cheese dressing. I knew the exact macro values before I walked in and had a great time!

Planning for dinner, I knew that an ounce of lean beef is 7 g of protein. The fatty ribeyes I estimated to be 60% lean so a little math had me on my way. One steak was 23 oz, 60% of that is 13.8 oz, I split the lean portion into thirds and came up with a generous value of 5 oz steak or 35 g protein for my dinner.

With all of that math, done in my head as I am a numbers person, remember? And the tracking of the other odd items I had—Yes, I am working really hard to be very honest in my tracking, and I came away with 92 grams of protein for the day. A bit higher than yesterday but still less than my ceiling of 96 grams!

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After limiting my protein yesterday, my weight did drop a bit but my glucose rose and my ketones stayed the same. Ketones at 0.7 mmol/l are still in the ketosis range of 0.5-3.0 but I’d like them to be a bit higher. This experiment of limiting my protein will last a few more days so I can get a better idea of how my ketone readings track to this one macronutrient. I am excited to see where it leads me.

I am planning on starting a feast/fast cycling pattern next week. I will finish out this week controlling my protein and working on keeping my calories up by eating more fat. Sunday we are taking a road trip to visit our granddaughter at college before she goes home for the summer. We are planning on having dinner so I will be eating then. That means I will begin a feasting/fasting cycle on Monday.

I am looking forward to fasting again, it is so much easier than feasting, and I will go for a 3-day fast. Fast Monday-Wednesday and begin feasting again Thursday. On the fast days I will still do heavy cream a couple times a day as I did before but that is only fat with no carbs or protein. On feast days I will probably IF where I will skip breakfast, except my coffee and cream, and then eat between noon and about 6:30 where I will get my full complement of food at a level of about 2400 kCal/day.

The feast/fast is just that: when you feast, FEAST; when you fast, FAST!

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #426

Day 58 of my experiment, completed 46 days fasting and am now 12 days feasting. Didn’t get my update out yesterday so will do it first thing now. Here are my numbers for yesterday:

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I blew the heck out of my protein macros and really pigged out. I could tell when I woke this morning as I was hot and a bit sweaty. I remember 9 years ago when I was working on a large project and there were 9 of us onsite each week from all over the country. We went out to eat each night and some of the younger would comment when we went to a Brazilian steak house about how they had ‘meat sweats’ the next morning. I never noticed it then but I can tell when I’ve had too much protein now as I wake up very warm!

(G. Andrew Duthie) #427

Interesting. I’ll have to pay attention to that. I tend to like it pretty cool for sleeping, and I don’t sleep well when I’m warm, so perhaps I may try limiting my protein in the evening and see if that makes a difference.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #428

Interestingly, I never noticed the ‘meat sweats’ before, only since after my long fast! Plus, I had 80 g of protein just in the evening which is close to what I was supposed to go for in an entire day. I need to plan much better!

(G. Andrew Duthie) #429

When I first dabbled in IF, I tried eating just breakfast, since I love bacon, and eggs are easy to cook. But I found that the social aspect of having my OMAD be breakfast was problematic, since I would not then want to sit down with my family for dinner. Similar issues arise when fasting. I suppose one solution would be to do what you did and sit down anyway, perhaps with a small bowl of broth, or decaf coffee. But having breakfast be the OMAD would certainly eliminate protein as a cause for night sweats.

(roxanna) #430

What is the reason for the night sweats? I notice on zero carb I get them sometimes and will pay attention to how much protein I’m eating (I’ve been trying to show a little more moderation with my protein lately). I am curious why it occurs.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #431

I believe that @richard has mentioned numerous times that protein takes more internal energy to burn which is good and bad. Using more energy also means generating more heat so, especially eating too much protein before bed, could lead to all of that protein causing too much warmth at night!

I have seen a direct correlation, now that I am tracking EVERYTHING I am eating, that when I exceed my protein amounts, especially when eating late, I get the ‘meat sweats.’

#432

It’s called the thermic effect of food, which is separate from generalized thermogenesis.

The thermic effect of food has to do with the digestion, whereas thermogenesis is caused by an uncoupling protein in the mitochodria of mostly brown fat (Brown Adipose Tissue, aka BAT) and to a much lesser extent in white fat (White Adipose Tissue, aka WAT).

Protein is often quoted as 4 calories per gram, but in fact protein contains 8 calories per gram - it’s just that 4 calories is being burned to digest the protein, so the net is 4 calories.

In other words, 50% of the true calories from protein as being burned off just to digest it and at some point (YMMV), that is noticeable as heat.

I’m another one of those who doesn’t do well eating protein in the evening and it even disrupts my sleep as well as keeping my heart rate higher until later in the night as shown by my Oura ring’s data logs.

(roxanna) #433

Thanks all! I don’t find it disruptive because it isn’t heavy sweat, but good to know the reasoning.

#434

@BillJay you say > but in fact protein contains 8 calories per gram
Do you have some links with more details?
I poked around a bit but it appears that the 4 cal / gram is swamping out this bit.

#435

Richard just addressed this in a recent post. It’s not quite 8 as I had read in the past, but it is a lot more than 4.

The energy of combustion of protein is not quite 8, but it is a lot more than 4.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #436

Day 59 of my experiment, completed 46 days fasting and am now 12 days feasting and now onto feast/fast cycling as I begin a 2 to 3-day fast today. My attempt to control my protein blew up so I have to rethink my plans! Here are my numbers for today:

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I mentioned earlier that I was having ‘meat sweats’ from having too much protein too late in the day as protein tends to generate extra heat when being metabolized especially when it is excess protein not needed to rebuild tissues. My weight also shot up from that faux pas and that did not make me very happy.

So now I’m back to a very comfortable area of fasting for a few days just to let my system get back to normal. I was planning to fast next week but our plans for dinner with our granddaughter have been moved to Tuesday because of her finals schedule. That means I can actually fast 3 to 4 days if I really want! We will be having a late lunch with her before she drives across the state to go home for the summer.

A nice thing about using MyFitnessPal for tracking what I eat is that I can now go back and review all of the foods I’ve been eating and see which ones I can get more fat and less protein from. For instance: eggs have a fat/protein ratio of about 1:1.1, bacon was 1.1:1, whereas the breakfast sausage was 2:1. My ribeye steak had a ratio of 1:2 which was a lot of protein.

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The hard cheese I like to snack on is protein heavy at 1:1.4 but Carl’s Chocolate mouse is extremely fat heavy at 12:1. Another favorite is macadamia nuts that measure at 12:1 as well but they have a bit more carbs so that is something else I will need to watch.

All in all, I think that if I plan to have beef for 1 meal a day and do eggs and bacon or sausage of another meal I may be able to keep my fat high while keeping protein in check.

One of the other mistakes I made yesterday was thinking I could add some cheese snacks (Grok’si) which I love but it turns out that a serving is half a bag, (Gee, where have we seen this before?) and being a hard cheese it is protein heavy. That and a 5 oz burger patty had my supper almost at my protein limit for the entire day! I need to plan ahead!!!

(đ૯αท ʍ૯ઽƬѳท) #437

It’s good to see the ketones are going back in the right direction.

(Barbara Greenwood) #438

All the best to you, Ron, as you get back into fasting. Did you find the first few days of your long fast difficult? It will be interesting to see if this feels harder or easier. I think most people would assume it will be easier because you know it’s only a few days, but I just wonder if knowing you had committed to the 46 days helped your resolve in the first few days when you were experiencing hunger.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #439

Barbara, the first few days of the long fast were a bit easier as I was committed to the long fast. I did have ideas about options for how to do the fast circulating through my head like, technically, Lent does not include the Sundays or it can be seen as Lent ending on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter.

I decided to just go with the flow and see where it took me and it ended up being easier than I originally feared once I got going!

The very beginning of the fast, the first few days in March, there wasn’t any physical hunger but just the breaking of the habit of eating. As I said in one of the early posts, I had a bad habit of snacking during the day even on mostly keto things like macadamia nuts and I had put on about 20 pounds.

In my 12 days of feasting after the long fast I am amazed to see the changes in my eating patterns up to and including snacking once again. Yesterday, the first day of a 3-day fast was again, very easy with no physical hunger.

(Adam Hagen) #440

That’s incredible!

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #441

Day 60 of my experiment, on my second day of a 3-day fast. I previously completed a 46-day fast and then 12 days of feasting; now onto feast/fast cycling. I was really surprised by my blood numbers this morning as my glucose was the highest I’ve seen since the first of the year! Here are my numbers for today:

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My first blood glucose and ketone reading this morning was 127 mg/dl (7.1 mmol/l) and 0.4 respectively. Knowing that the home meters do have an error range, and more importantly, the test strips can sometimes vary quite a bit, I decided to do another test with a different finger and different strips. The new numbers were not as extreme but the glucose was still the highest I’ve recorded this year. Glucose: 118 mg/dl (6.6 mmol/l) and ketones: 0.6 mmol/l.

I fasted yesterday, technically a fat fast as I did have 2 coffees with ¼ cup of heavy cream in each resulting in about 400 calories from fat for the day. I had the second cup about 8 PM and am not sure if that may have had an adverse impact on my numbers. Today, I am going just water and black coffee with no cream to allow my body to relax and settle into fasting a bit better. We will see what happens tomorrow morning.

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I am not very active as I work from home and don’t have a gym membership. I do get out maybe 2 to 3 times a week for a 20-30 minute walk but not much exercise on a normal basis. This morning was different. We had about 11.1 cubic yards of mulch delivered last weekend and have been working on it a bit at a time. This morning we tackled about 89 bags or 6.6 cubic yards of the total: with our son’s help to distribute the bags, my wife and I dumped and spread mulch for about 3 hours! We finally stopped when the full Florida sun warmed things up enough to make it miserable!

I do feel a bit sore and stretching is helping but I felt this way last weekend when I spread 31 bags by myself and was amazed at how fast I healed. I really felt much better the next day! I have to work at bingo tonight and will keep stretching so my muscles don’t stay too sore.

Someone on the forums asked me if the first couple of days of my long fast were any more difficult than the first days of other fasts? I replied that the commitment I had made to complete the fast made the start a bit easier and I even had plans on how to modify the long fast if I needed to. Technically since it was a Lenten fast there are numerous ways of observing Lent. It is typically 40 days long but there are 46 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday so there are 6 days to play with. Many people look at the Sundays in Lent as feast days so I could have eaten on Sundays. Others claim that Lent ends on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, so Holy Week would not be included in the Lenten observance. Yet others say the Holy Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday the 3 days before Easter are not part of Lent.

I decided to make it easy and just fast for all 46 days! My only rule was “If I didn’t feel good, I would end the fast!” It worked for me.

My current 3-day fast began yesterday and I didn’t have any problem going without eating. I had no hunger and it felt a bit comforting as my body obviously remembered how I felt on the long fast when I had no hunger as well.