@DaveKeto Thanks for the information, I was eating higher carbs for a couple of months as I was shacking heavily on peanuts! I was really surprised at how much the numbers had moved from what I thought was just a few carbs.
I am currently on a 46-day fast, partially to help me relearn how to eat as I had trouble avoiding the snacks.
Consider other possibilities as well. There may be one or more other leaks in your diet you are unaware of.
I regularly say this to members of my family who react strongly that theyâve been strict on the diet, but when combing through everything we often find other things they didnât realize were spiking their glucose. Sometimes this is just a condiment such as hot sauce, or an alcoholic beverage, or my personal favorite â things like heavy cream or cheese that were presumed âsafeâ until we found the label had a higher carb count for that brand.
I constantly get the âDave is obsessive about labelsâ comment with my friends and family. But the truth is that I know there are many landmines with standard food in the places you least expect them.
And as always, you canât beat the meter. Always be willing to test something in isolation with your glucometer, itâs the best canary in the cole mine.
Day 10 and 234 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:
On my way home and sitting in an airport lounge to do this update and it may be shorter than normal. I am feeling great and have tons of energy! I was surprised when I started LCHF at how quickly I did not need afternoon naps anymore.
I used to do web training in the afternoons and there were days I was really glad we had 2 instructors so I could go somewhere and try to wake myself up!
I am mentioning this because someone had sent me a link to Ray Jardineâs blog about his 40-day, water only, fast. Well, I read it on the plane and couldnât believe what he said about having no energy during the entire fast and expecting to have to wait another month before his energy builds back up! Itâs like âDude: get some electrolytesâespecially salt!â
Without sodium in our bodies our blood becomes thicker and doesnât flow like it should, we must have salt in our diet!
Yes, I did an n=1 experiment with the Jigsaw Health Electrolyte Supreme I use and it showed no impact on my glucose out to 4 hours.
I guess I need to post that!
I need to check on the heavy cream I use.
Day 11 and 252 hours of fasting on water, decaf coffee, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. Feeling great with tons of energy although I did go to bed early last night due to travelling all day! I am back home so I have a new weight to show. Here are my numbers for today:
I have been a frequent traveler for many years and have over a million miles under my belt so travelling is not very stressful for me. My mantra is âYou only win if you get there safely!â This is what I keep in mind as I go through my day so I never fret the small stuff like delays whether traffic of airline delays. There is always another day and if I will be too late meetings can be rescheduled. Being late going home can be a bit of an issue especially when a child or grandchild is having a birthday. But knowing that I will eventually arrive home safely is what I keep in my mind.
I lost 13.2 pounds on the 4-day trip, again, as a seasoned traveler I am not tempted by the treats on the plane or in the airport. In fact, being on a fast made all decisions a whole lot easierâjust donât eat! Also, being 7 days into the fast meant I wasnât having any urges and so I could easily walk past all of the food outlets (Popeyeâs Chicken smelled really good last night so I grinned and continued walking to my gate.)
I increased the number of cups of coffee per day with heavy cream, it seems to really calm my system and it appears, from the ketone numbers, to like the extra fat. All 3 nights on my trip I had dinner with family in the area and colleagues. All 3 restaurants had heavy cream available for in my coffee instead of Half and Half, and they brought it in a cream pitcher that looked to be about ½ cup. I estimate that I had ž cup of heavy cream each day which is about 600 calories.
I am still obsessing over Ray Jardineâs blog on his 40-day fast and how he had no energy. He even said that he had to work in shifts: 15 minutes working, and hour or 2 lying on the floor! I am not sure exactly what he did wrong but I am just the opposite: fully alert and plenty of energy!
My blood tests I had drawn on the first day of my fast show that I am still insulin resistant which worries me. With this fast, and the low level at which my glucose is sitting, I am hoping to begin the healing process as insulin resistance has been identified to be the actual cause of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimerâs disease, PCOS, and a number of other modern diseases. I will talk more in later posts about insulin resistance.
I really like these updates Ron. I think this thread is a great document for others to gain some insight into fasting, even if their plan is just for a day or two. Good stuff, thanks for sharing with the community.
I think Ray Jardine was a glucose burnerâŚnot in ketosis, nor fat adapted, when he started the fast.
I agree that he is a glucose burner. I kept waiting for the day he became a fat burner and had energy again but he never mentioned it!
Well, imagine going into ketosis for extended period and getting the keto flu and not being fat adapted while doing an extended fast.
Day 12 and 282 hours of fasting on water, decaf coffee, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. Feeling great with tons of energy and my mind keeps suggesting that maybe I should eat but I am working on keeping strong! Here are my numbers for today:
I want to remind everyone that fasting for 46 days is not something you can or want to just jump into, you need to prepare for it well ahead of time. First, if you are on prescription medications you must see your doctor and discuss your plans with them so that you have supervision during the fast. I am on no prescription medications and I still visited my doctor to let him know what I was planning to do.
Secondly, when you fast you are not eating any nourishment so your body will eventually burn fat, from your body for the nourishment. Your liver will make the necessary glucose, about 150 calories needed per day, as well as process fatty acids from the lipolysis of your adipose (fat) cells and this will be the rest of the calories needed to for your body to function normally. I was on the low carbohydrate high fat (LCHF) for 20 months before I started this fast so my body is already in ketosis: burning body fat and ingested fat for fuel.
No, you will not go into a starvation mode where your body slows down your metabolic rate like many âexpertsâ tell us. Medical studies actually show that fasting causes an increase in the production of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) which increases the adrenalin and noradrenalin production to increase our metabolic rate as well as spare the protein in our muscles!
Think about it, our hunter gatherer ancestors often went without food for possibly days at a time. Would nature make their bodies shut down or would they have extra energy to go find and hunt food? We are here, so the species did not die off and I will place my assurance on the fact that humans are designed to have extra energy when fasting to continue the species!
I donât feel any physical signs of hunger, my stomach doesnât growl and there are no urges, but my brain likes playing games with me like an addict! I am trying to teach myself a better way of eating for when I finish the fast, until then, I am training myself, day by day, to stay focused on the goal. To help with the focus I am also âgiving it up to the lordâ by praying when I feel challenged to keep me on track for the entire fast.
Iâve had a busy and interesting weekend where I even got to serve corned beef and cabbage at our St Patrickâs day festival today at church. Everything smelled wonderful and there was no physical need for food, only the slight mental thought of âonly one bite.â Like a recovering addict, yes, Iâm a food addict, I resisted and said âNo.â
Thanks again for a detailed write up Ron. I donât know anything about Jardine but when Iâve googled for extended fasters it seems a disproportionate number of them are vegans. Of the vegans many are juice fasters⌠Since my desire and inclination are at a -6 on a 1 to 10 scale to become a vegan I usually skip their blogs. Iâm glad to be here for information and support.
Day 13 and 305 hours of fasting on water, decaf coffee, bone broth, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. Was really tired yesterday due to the time change and too much activity that I had trouble getting to sleep. Passed out last night and slept for about 10 hours so Iâm feeling great with tons of energy once again! Here are my numbers for today:
Iâve added another version of the Glucose/Ketones chart where both values are in millimoles per liter (mmol/l) which is used for glucose in most places outside the US as well as the ketones. This chart shows when I hit that very therapeutic level of the glucose/ketone index = <1. Whenever the ketone line is above the glucose line then I am at my desired level! I will leave the other chart for those friends in the US who are used to seeing glucose in milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl).
A small victory yesterday was serving corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes to over 250 people and I didnât have a taste, or a bite, or even lick a spoon! I just kept busy doing the work and never even thought about trying some: I am getting better at controlling my intake of food!
I mentioned the other day that I want to talk about insulin resistance but before I get into that we need to understand why insulin is one of the most important hormones in our body. Insulinâs primary purpose is to rid the blood of a very toxic substance, namely sugar!
Yes, sugar is very toxic for us and that is why our bodies have a natural defense to take it out of our blood stream. Sugar comes in 2 forms; glucose and fructose. Glucose can be burned for energy by our muscles and our brain, any remaining glucose is then stored as glycogen in our muscles and liver. This is only temporary storage of up to about 2,000 calories. Any extra glucose, and all of the fructose, is then stored as body fat by insulin. Insulin also stops the oxidation (burning) of body fat as there is too much toxic glucose around and it needs to get rid of it by either burning it or storing it.
So where does all of this sugar come from? Well, all carbohydrates become sugar in our body through digestion. For example: a slice of typical white bread becomes about 4 teaspoons of sugar and this is actually absorbed into the blood twice as fast as table sugar would be! Any product containing carbohydrates WILL become sugar in your body!
Look at a food label and take the total carbs and subtract the dietary fiber carbs (as these are not digested.) Now divide the difference by 4, there are 4 grams of carbs in a teaspoon of sugar, and you have the sugar equivalent for that food. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015 stated that adults should limit their sugar intake to 6 teaspoons a day, children under 12 to 3 teaspoons a day.
What is your sugar intake?
I love cooking during extended fasts! Itâs not tempting and I enjoy cooking. Especially after about day 12, absolutely no desire for food.
After the first couple days, the mental challenge is that âfood would taste good right nowâ, but no hunger!
I just came back from a camping trip by myself and didnât take any food, just lots of water and a bottle of salt. I wasnât around food and never felt hungry or thought about eating. Kept busy hiking the trails. Broke my 5 day fast when I got home. Was extremely cold, partly from the fast and partly from being in freezing rain, below freezing temps for last two days and camping in a tent.
Youâre doing great! Keep up the great fasting! (I havenât tried a fast with broth or cream, etc, just water. I think those things would make me hungry, but havenât tried to find out)
I normally do the broth for the electrolytes and decided to do the cream occasionally for my coffee. I am keeping my calories as low as I can from the cream! I donât get any âI need creamâ cravings so all is well. I actually went a couple of days so far without any cream at all.
I hope you can warm up again!
Day 14, 2 weeks! And 329 hours fasted on water, coffee, bone broth, electrolytes, and occasional heavy cream. After my 10-hours of sleep the night before I woke refreshed this morning and got up about 5:15 which is early for me! Here are my numbers for today:
My glucose and ketones look fantastic but my weight is moving very slowly. As I said, weight loss is not one of the important things I am looking for. I will take what I can get and as long as I can become healthier, which I will see at the end of this fast from my blood work, I will be very happy. Just looking for improvement!
Yesterday I talked about sugar, mostly glucose, and how it is toxic and how our bodies uses insulin to process glucose out of our blood and stores it as glycogen in our muscles and liver or as fat in our bodies. That is the primary purpose of insulin, get the glucose out of the blood. Other things insulin affects are the blocking of oxidation (burning) of our adipose tissue (fat) and it blocks the hormone leptin from telling our brain that we have eaten: we think we are still hungry even after eating a full meal of carbohydrates!
Insulin resistance is when we have too much insulin in our system and the cells stop listening to it. It is like taking an antibiotic for too long, our body becomes resistant to it and the drug doesnât do us any good; or for someone taking drugs: when they start out it doesnât take much for a high and as they continue to use it takes more and more because their body and brain have become resistant.
And so with insulin! A high carbohydrate diet forces our insulin levels to remain high all of the time trying to process all of the sugar from the 3 meals a day we eat plus all the carby snacks we have been convinced are healthy. Letâs see, high insulin means we never feel satiated so we are always hungry: what do we do? Eat more! More carbs to be stored as fat!
Now we have tons of insulin all the time and our cells will stop listening to the insulin signals so our body will produce more and more insulin trying to reduce the glucose in our blood. This is what leads to Type 2 diabetes! If the cycle continues it can also damage our pancreas and result in the person becoming insulin dependent just like a Type 1 diabetic. Not a good outcome.
Now letâs review the current dietary guidelines: we are told to eat 9-11 portions of grains and starchy vegetables every day when all of these turn instantly into sugar in our body. Try this: first thing in the morning, take the inside of a piece of white bread and let it sit in your mouth for a minuteâit will taste sweet as the flour is broken down to sugar just from you saliva! We are also told to eat 5-7 portions of fruits and vegetables every day. Fruits, again, are very high in sugar so be careful there. Whole vegetables do break down but much more slowly and do not have as much of a glycemic impact but still raise insulin.
The trick to getting healthy and reversing the effects of insulin resistance is to eat a diet that will not raise insulin. It is not hard to do and I manage to eat very well when Iâm not fasting. You can see from my glucose levels that my insulin will be low because there is very little for it to do!
Youâre doing great!
Iâve only made it to 35 days before I started to feel weak (probably because not overweight?).
Ron, your graphics and write ups are second to none. Thank you for continuing this practice as you fast.
Hi - Iâm not overweight by much. Can I ask if you had MCT oil or anything else during your 35 day fast?
