My tips (Finished Day 17. This fast day 43 1/2 of 60 I think: 12, 14, 1.5, 17).
- Start from a sugar & carb clean diet, in ketosis if possible to make the first few days much, much easier.
(Return to a sugar & carb clean diet when you exit the fast – don’t go back to the SAD – Standard American Diet – or to otherwise eating crap.)
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Manage your electrolytes so you will FEEL good, be healthy enough to continue, and easily refeed safely. (90% of problems are fluid and electrolytes issues.)
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Psychology:
a. Count DAYS and plan DAYS not hours if you want to do a long fast.
b. Accept feelings from your stomach etc. Don’t try to deny them but rather use them as a signal:
It’s not so much that you are hungry but a signal: You’ve been on a fast for 2 days. You are doing great. You are doing something most people cannot do and will not attempt. You are getting health.
c. When you feel something not so pleasant CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE DOING, take a walk, a nap, do sit ups. Just do some different physical activity.
d. When you feel something get some water (electrolyte solution is better), drink some tea or coffee (if you allow that) etc.
e. Remember, not everything wrong with you is due to the fast – if you didn’t have health issues BEFORE the fast you probably wouldn’t be doing it.
f. REMEMBER: No one dies from not eating IF they have good electrolytes – the records is 382 days.
g. Most people don’t even feel bad or get too hungry after day 3 if they manage electrolytes.
h. It is better to eat a little bone broth or something than to exit a fast that you are otherwise enjoying and which is giving you health benefits.
j. It’s your fast and YOU MAKE THE RULES – the fasting police will not break down your door for transgressions so use what you need to get by as long as it keeps you on the path to YOUR GOALS.
I use the GKI (glucose and ketones) to know I am doing fine and even boost with a bit of heavy cream or MCT oil powder when my numbers are on track for the number of days in the fast.
k. Don’t plan for a limited fast NOR for a long fast at first. Plan to go to a point and re-evaluate:
I started every one of the long fasts with a plan to go 1 then 3 days. Then 5, 7, 10, etc.
I never plan an exit until I really intend to exit, but I don’t set some nearly impossible goal of 42 or 60 days at the beginning.
Right now at day 17 I am pretty sure that 20 or 21 will be easy and then I’ll try to figure out if all the way to April 30 (for 30 days) is right. I might go to 42 days or 7 weeks.
Key: I am NOT planning 4 to 7 weeks, but neither am I planning to exist at my next milepost.
Today I did 4 hours of Jiu-Jitsu (at two different schools) I am trying out; both are very close to my house which I like, and both will let me get to boxing easy on the nights when I want to do both.
That should tell you more about fasting than about me but you have to use me to see the example:
Finished 17 days of electrolyte fasting:
- 66 years old
- Haven’t exercise AT all in over 4 years until the last 2-3 weeks
- No boxing or formal Jiu-Jutsu training in almost 9 years
- 4 replaced joints (both hips, both knees) – haven’t worked out really hard since replacements
- Had undiagnosed heart failure in 2010 or 2011 which was diagnored and treated successfully along with AFIB in 2012 – currently off all meds since fasting, except clonidine which I use for any blood pressure reading over 130-140.
- Motivation has returned since fasting (and keto/carnivore diet)
- Taking action in all phases of my life
- Energetic (4 hours Jiu-Jitsu today, boxing yesterday including full speed sparing for 2 rounds in the ring for the first time, boxing 3-4 times each day the last 2 weeks and now adding jiu-jitsu.)
- Cleaning up my garage and storage rooms.
- My wife is joining me in this and feels the same
The numbers
- Glucose: 77
- Ketones 7.3 - highest ever
- GKI 0.59
- DrBozRatio 10.9
- Weight. 205.8
- Loss since Thanksgiving 2017: 76.5 lbs
- Loss on this fast (17 days): 26.5 lbs (stuck for a few days)
- Body Fat 23.2% (started at 40%+)
- Lean body mass: 158 (up about 8 lbs since FASTING)
- Target weight (15% body fat): 186
- Total weight loss required: 96.5 lbs (it was 110 lbs when I started)
- Weight to lose: 19.9 lbs. (First time it’s been under 20 lbs)
I have no real understanding of how I am putting on muscle while fasting and losing weight and these scale numbers are a bit inaccurate, but they are consistently trending in this direction.
Fasting == High energy output, fat loss, MUSCLE addition, feeling great.
Hopefully, I’ve cleaned up a fatty liver, fatty pancreas, reset my insulin basal levels, induced significant autophagy to clean up poorly performing cellular organelles, and induced significant apoptosis to eliminate cells no longer functioning correctly or no longer needed (fat, extra skin, extra blood vessels in those areas etc.)
However you do it, just do it and do what is right for you and do it safely.