I’ve spent the morning reading what I can find on this and really don’t have much to go on.
My question is how people do on alternate day fasts versus doing a single longer fast? Does anyone know any studies, or maybe have input on their own N=1 experiments or even IDM or other experts? I think I recall that IDM (Megan Ramos) says they rarely have their patients do more than 36 hour fasts.
I’m back on ADFs like I did from last June until November. I fast Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and eat M,W,F and Sat. This is only my second week back, and so far I’m doing OK.
I stopped doing ADFs around the start of November because I had consistent problems with diarrhea (always on the refeeding day, always two hours after my first meal at noon) but after several experiments I seem to have come up with a trick to avoid that. It wasn’t life-threatening, but it wasn’t fun, either - it was actually pretty miserable feeling.
Among my experiments since the first of the year, I did one five day fast. I felt pretty rotten on the last day, but I expect that would go away with practice, I just didn’t notice any improvement in weight loss, energy, or my morning fasting blood glucose. My FBG was lower midway through it than the last day. That made me think there was no real advantage over doing alternate days.
So does anyone know if it’s better to fast three days straight or stick with alternating days?
If it helps, I was never called Type 2 diabetic, but I think that’s because I went keto far enough back (2015) to keep from going that far. I think I’m insulin resistant, as both my brother and mother are/were T2. Even today my FBG (non-fasting) runs close to 110. I’m 65. Staring weight 260, current 208. I do cardio, cycling about an hour three times a week, and do some superslow lifting on our Bowflex. Otherwise, I’m just “walking around” active, doing various things around the house.