A really extended fast: going for 46-days!

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #62

I travel with a sea salt grinder plus about 2 small bags with 1 tsp of Real Salt each. The bags are meant for pills so they are rather small and easy to put in a jacket pocket.

#63

well…let’s just hope the authorities don’t think the little baggies in your pocket, filled with white crystals, is something else :wink:

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #64

Real Salt is pink to red but you never know what they are looking for.I travel frequently so I go through the TSA Pre:Check line where I don’t have to take things out of my pockets. Well, except the steel lined security wallet my wife bought me for Christmas!

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #65

Day 8 and 183 hours of fasting on water, decaf coffee, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. Feeling great with tons of energy! I am travelling and I want to use my own scale for weight, to be consistent, so I will carry my previous weight forward for a few days. Here are mu numbers for today:



My glucose seems to be settling down at a very good level thanks to not eating any carbohydrates and that means that my insulin level will be low. My ketones continue to rise which means I am going through lipolysis which is that I am using my body fat as fuel; when fat is burned by the liver ketones are created for use by the rest of the body.

One of the differences between burning glucose and fat is that with glucose there are reactive oxidative species (ROS) created which are highly inflammatory; with fat there are no offensive outputs so fat can be considered a ‘clean’ fuel. Sort of like the difference between the soot from burning coal compared to burning natural gas with no soot. Our bodies were created to burn mostly fat and it is only in the last 50 years, when the government in all its wisdom, told us that we should eat more grains, sugar, starchy foods and avoid fat.

I won’t go into details but all of the studies since 1920 on diets, especially the ones since 1977 when the food guidelines came out, have failed to show that decreasing fat and increasing carbs prevents heart disease—no difference! Why do we have a food pyramid that tells us to eat 6-9 portions of grains each day? Because the food pyramid is put out by the US Department of Agriculture, the department shat promotes the production and selling of grains and other plant foods!

A very good friend from high school called me yesterday and was questioning me about my fast. He was concerned about my health and wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing. We have talked on a few occasions, when I make it the Tampa area, about my diet but not about fasting. I assured him that I have my doctor’s approval and I am keeping in touch with him and that I have done a lot of research over the last year on fasting. I can’t say that I am any kind of expert but I have done 5 or 6 fasts of 3-9 days so I do have some experience. The research shows me the medical studies of people who have been in fasting programs and their outcomes: thankfully no one has ever died from fasting in any of these studies and they studied thousands of people!

On a lighter note, I was able to hook up with some family last night for dinner in Seal Beach (I had 3 cups of coffee with about 2oz of heavy cream between them.) My Uncle Al is doing really well and my cousin Steve is his typical joyful self, always with the great stories. I got to meet Al’s grandson Josiah, his wife Sarah, and their 2 boys. I hadn’t seen Josiah in about 20 years or so and I was impressed with the man he has become.

Enough for today, work calls! My update tomorrow may be a bit late in the day but I will try to get it out! Have a great day and Keto On!

#66

Multi-week extended fasting has been going on for centuries. Very old practice with several religions. It outlasted centuries, because it is not an impossible thing to do.

(Zack F) #67

You didn’t carry on the scale! You didn’t want to put your bathroom scale in the overhead compartment? Seriously, great work.Congratulations on reaching a GKI < 1.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #68

Day 9 and 206 hours of fasting on water, decaf coffee, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. Feeling great with tons of energy! I am travelling and I want to use my own scale for weight, to be consistent, so I will carry my previous weight forward for a few days. Here are my numbers for today:



The mental challenge is getting easier! One of my goals with this long fast is breaking my snacking habit; I work from home and could literally snack for most of the day—and the snacks were not always the best choices! I could easily eat 6-16 ounces of peanuts a day; an ounce or two would be acceptable but at the volume I was eating it had adverse impacts with my health that I could feel and see in the blood test I had drawn the first day of fasting. I am hoping this long fast will help me to learn to not snack and steel my will against shacking.

I spend most meals with others where they are eating and I have coffee and water. I can look at their food, like the 16oz bone-in prime rib my colleague had last night, and see how delicious it looks but I don’t have any physical urges to eat it. On the mental side, early in the fast I was thinking very seriously about having a bite—you know, that one bite that won’t hurt—but now I don’t think that way any more.

I am free! free from HAVING to eat, free from hunger, free from the distractions when my stomach growls, free of dependence on food. Give me water or decaf coffee and I am perfectly happy! What a great feeling.

My numbers still look very good! Someone mentioned that my glucose/ketone index (GKI) was less than one (3.9/4.5 = 0.87 yesterday). This is actually the therapeutic level that doctors use to treat cancer patients. Yes, the Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) diet is used to kill cancer cells! As I said in an earlier post 99% of the cells can burn either glucose (sugar) or ketones (fat.) Cancer cells can only burn glucose so lowering the GKI to less than 1 is very beneficial for cancer treatments: thousands have killed their cancers with diet alone.

I will be travelling all day tomorrow going home from the west coast, again, pretty easy to fast while travelling for me; plenty of water and coffee available!

7 day fast with daily numerical posts & 1 week post fast update
(chris.coote) #69

Back in now after a good visit with my cardiologist this afternoon :blush:

(Zack F) #70

Yep! Nice on the GKI score. I’m chasing you as “fast” as a I can. Sorry couldn’t help myself, must be the ketones. :laughing:

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #71

Can’t wait to hear the news!

(Zack F) #72

I clocked in at 1.3 GKI tonight. I have a feeling tomorrow is the day!

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #73

Keep it up! Be careful of chasing numbers there can be a lot of disappointment that we don’t need.

(Zack F) #74

You’re right. Five days with GKI < 1 was the only concrete numerical goal I set for that very reason. I should smash that if things keep going. The rest of the categories I left as mere “improvements” of which I’m happy to say I am!

(carl) #75

According to @DaveKeto, your LDL and total cholesterol goes up when you restrict calories and inversely go down when you load up on calories (keto ratios). He doesn’t see that as a marker for heart disease. Cholesterol is much more dynamic than we thought. I’ll let him chime in.

(Dave) #76

To be sure, I don’t have a lot of numbers regarding total and LDL cholesterol for a long term fast. The closest we have right now is with Tom Seest experiment, which does show that past three days it actually starts to decline again.

That said, and I can never repeat this enough… if you are drawing lipids from your fat cells (due to fasting) they will reach your hungry cells either by ketones or by LDL particles. And in the case of the latter, that means higher overall “trafficked” cholesterol. But this makes sense as triglycerides and cholesterol always travel together in LDL particles.

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #77

Here are my numbers as of last week:

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I am not sure what the NMR is saying; My LDL size is in the large category but the ‘Small LDL-P’ number is high! I have been following keto for 20 months and my numbers last August were much better. Can you give me any insight into these?

Also the Insulin Resistance Score is HIGH (84)! I know I was cheating, especially on nuts, for a month or two but would that have that big of an affect on me! I checked my fasting insulin last August and it was 8.2 so I didn’t expect to be this IR!

The my CRP also went up, it was 1.2 in August 2016 and is now, March 2017, at 1.45.

I guess this may show that just an excess of carbs, and not the sugar, grains or starchy ones, can change your numbers very quickly.

(chris.coote) #78

From a conversation I had with my cardiologist yesterday:
Me: My PCP complained about my LDL. Do you have any concerns with it being elevated? (Ready to talk about additional tests i.e.NMR)
Him: Why would I complain about your LDL? Your numbers are great!

So, at least some folks out there are no longer chasing LDL numbers…

(Dave) #79

@ron-coleman I have some comments on your labs, but I want to first understand the context – was this blood draw before or during your fast?

(I am a Dog (Dog's eat until they burst!)) #80

Drawn on the first day of my fast, 13 hours fasted.

(Dave) #81

My notes below assume the diet you had in the 3-5 days before your blood draw was a typical average in both macros and calories. In other words, you didn’t have a lot of unusually high or unusually low calorie days as this will impact the cholesterol test.

A few things—

  • Your LDL-P and -C are not uncommon for a ketogenic diet, though you are likely a hyper-responder (like me)
  • However, your lower HDL-C and higher Triglycerides are unusual for a ketogenic diet

This particular combination I’m seeing with people (this includes my family) who have “leaks” where they are eating to what they think is keto/LCHF but one or more things are creating an insulin spike. In particular, this appears to be more common when one is very successful at being keto most of the time, but with some sudden explosions of glucose after these long stretches.

I’d recommend:

  • Doing a very thorough “audit” of your diet and really track all your nutrition for a while — and I mean everything: food, condiments, beverages, supplements (you may already be doing this
  • You already have a glucometer - consider testing your blood sugar just before a meal as well and two and three hours after.

Further notes:

  • Yes, your IR score is also high for someone on keto, which is likewise why this supports the above theory. Btw, I like the IR score on an NMR more than an A1C given the latter can be easily influenced by red blood cell lifecycle clearance and glucose sparing.
  • Your CRP is fine. It’s a hypersensitive needle that moves very very easily and a 0.1 or even 1.0 difference isn’t anything to be concerned about.