Attempting my first 14 day water/electrolyte fast


(Jane) #41

You really are Type-A LOL. One bite doesn’t “ruin” a fast. Set your autophagy back a few hours maybe …but ruin it?

I made some cheese while fasting and I sliced it in half to vacuum seal it - wheel too large to fit my sealer and melting wax is messy. Done both, like the sealer better

Anyway I usually slice off a sliver to taste before putting it into my cheese cave to age. I sliced off a tiny sliver for me and my husband and we popped it in our mouths and ate it before we remembered we were fasting!!! We were only 14 hours in so while not happy about it just shrugged and continued to fast.


(Jane) #42

Congrats on the 0.71 - that’s awesome !


(Michael) #43

Last night I went to bed a bit late 12:30, and had to get up early for a Sunday at 8 am. I just lay awake in bed, pretty much all night. At 3 am I decided that I would cut my fast shot at noon (because I have learned over the previous 10 days that I need sleep if I am not eating). At 4 am I got up and said F@$@ it, went downstairs and frantically searched for where my wife put the bone broth, then ate 1 Litre worth (quite a bit), took a magnesium supplement and two vitamin C pills and went back to bed at 4:45. Still did not sleep (partially because now I kept getting up to pee out the liquid) and maybe got an hour or two sleep before alarm went off at 8 am. So, after getting at most a couple hours of sleep, but having only had the bone broth, I have WAY more energy than the past few days.
Continuing my refeed, I am nibbling on some wild salmon now (so 8 hours after my bone broth) and if everything continues I will be having something like a steak for dinner tonight. Tomorrow I will be trying to start eating 3000+ calories on a Lion’s diet (again, if today’s refeed goes smoothly). I am not quite prepared for that endeavor yet. I will ask for help in the carnivore section, otherwise I will be melting beef suet and dipping my meats in it. Hoping for some other ideas.
While I did not reach my goal of 14 days, 247 hours is still a good first attempt at a longer fast, and I am sure I made some progress with my T2D at least, if not my IBS (which I may have, I cannot tell yet). I won’t repost the same graph since I broke fast since the last measurement, I will include my table instead which has more weight measurement consolidated and a few notes (just for prosperities sake)

Date Time Glucose bHB GKI Weight (in pounds) Hour into fast Notes
6-Aug 12:39:00AM 5.3 1.1 4.82 27
6-Aug 8:19:00AM 7.2 0.8 9.00 152.4 35 4.5 hours sleep last night, 5.5 night before
6-Aug 9:39:00AM 7.0 0.7 10.00 36 first small bowel movement
6-Aug 11:19:00AM 6.7 1.3 5.15 38
6-Aug 1:19:00PM 6.3 0.9 7.00 40 second small bowel movement
6-Aug 2:39:00PM 5.8 1.2 4.83 41
6-Aug 4:19:00PM 5.2 1.1 4.73 43
6-Aug 5:29:00PM 5.1 0.9 5.67 44
6-Aug 6:59:00PM 4.9 0.9 5.44 45
6-Aug 8:29:00PM 4.8 0.9 5.33 47
6-Aug 10:49:00PM 5.1 0.8 6.38 49
7-Aug 7:49:00AM 5.9 1.8 3.28 152.4 58 bowel movement
7-Aug 12:49:00PM 5.6 1.5 3.73 63
7-Aug 11:49:00PM 3.9 2 1.95 74
8-Aug 8:09:00AM 4.8 1.9 2.53 151.4 83 messy bowel movement
8-Aug 10:29:00PM 4.0 3.1 1.29 153.4 97
9-Aug 8:39:00AM 4.1 3.8 1.08 150.0 107 Medium level diarrhea this morning
9-Aug 12:39:00PM 4.1 3.6 1.14 111 Small second bout of diarrhea
9-Aug 10:19:00PM 3.7 3.6 1.03 151.6 121
10-Aug 9:39:00AM 4.8 4.4 1.09 149.2 132 Small bout of diarrhea
10-Aug 9:49:00PM 4.2 4.2 1.00 149.4 144
11-Aug 8:55:00AM 5.1 4.5 1.13 146.8 155 Small bout of diarrhea, second tiny bout of diarrhea at 12:30 pm as well
11-Aug 10:12:00PM 3.7 4.3 0.86 147.6 169
12-Aug 8:35:00AM 4.5 5.2 0.87 146.6 179 medium bout of diarrhea
12-Aug 9:19:00PM 3.8 4.2 0.90 147.6 192
13-Aug 9:35:00AM 4.6 5.4 0.85 145.0 204 weight before diarrhea, 145.8, after was 145.0 for day 9 /sigh
13-Aug 11:19:00PM 4.3 4.1 1.05 147.4 218
14-Aug 9:35:00AM 5.6 5.7 0.98 145.0 228 small bout of diarrhea
14-Aug 11:09:00PM 3.7 5.2 0.71 146.8 242
15-Aug 4:35:00AM 144.8 247 Broke fast after not sleeping for pretty much the whole night

(Michael) #44

Hi Jane,

re: protein intake and autophagy. Common sense says you may be correct, but I could not find any studies, medical articles or firm evidence as to the length of time autophagy would turn off once your body recognized protein intake. For example, if you digest all the protein from your last meal, I was under the impression then that it takes some time after the last protein digestion for autophagy to turn on. I would kind of expect a similar thing, whereby if you ate a piece of meat, you would turn autophagy off. Would it actually only be for a few hours as you suggest, maybe. Could it also possibly take another 12 or more hours to re-initiate, maybe? Here is where I get stuck. Think about a mouthful as “little” and therefore unimportant. suppose you increased from a little or tiny amount to a slightly bigger small amount. In theory (going by your thinking), you would be able to eat small meals and still get into autophagy once the small meal is digested in a few hours. This does not quite feel correct to me.

If you have any hard evidence/links please let me know, this particular question has been bugging me. I had a brief e-mail exchange with Jason Fung a month ago on this topic, but unfortunately I was not specific enough in my original question, and his response did not address the question and was essentially was meant for a complete newbie (or idiot?), so it was not helpful. He did not respond to my response asking with more details - it was free and on his own time, so no hard feelings, but I did not get an answer to my questions on autophagy.


(Jane) #45

No I believe a “small meal” would stop autophagy for quite some time. We use a rule of thumb of 24 hours from our last meal to start autophagy but we always go into with strict keto 1-2 days before so our glycogen stores are depleted and in solid ketosis after 12 hrs. Perhaps it starts a few hours sooner for us - no way to know.

Unfortunately autophagy is difficult to measure unless you have access to sophisticated lab equipment. Not many studies in spite of the potential benefits because no corporation makes money when you stop eating so no corporate sponsors for grants. Our government is not interested in awarding grants that don’t benefit Kraft Foods or Big Pharma, either


(Jane) #46

Our n=2 after 2 years of fasting…… my husband’s skin tags disappeared, my age spots on my arms faded, my loose skin tightened up. None of these things happened even after 9 months on keto until we started fasting.

We just trust the process


(Jane) #47

You should be very proud to make 10 days!

Hope your refeed goes ok and you sleep well tonight on a full tummy.


(Michael) #48

I am proud. I did well I think. Thank you for all your responses and posts. You are a credit to these forums for sure :slight_smile:


(Bob M) #49

10 days is fantastic. The longest I made was 5.5 days, and I was getting dizzy when I stood up. So, I stopped. Though I have done quite a few 4.5 day fasts.


(Michael) #50

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your positive feedback. Everytime I felt remotely light headed, I drank water with salt and almost always was fine again immediately after. In the end, it was the fatigue that got to me. Doing this at the end of a semester (I am a professor) probably made it harder, but that was part of why I choose now. I thought if I could do 14 days during my busiest time, I can easily to 21 when I had no other activities. Not sure that is true, but still.

As a follow up. Refeed went great yesterday, except I ran out of meat and my daughters apartment (or I would have eaten more). Bit behind today, only had about 1000 calories maybe (1 pound T-Bone steak, /shrug), so got a lot of eating to do today!

Weight was 145.4 this morning. I may do one more follow up in a week, if I have any health issues to report (or to declare fixed :slight_smile: ) (edit to change the weight to be correct!)


(KCKO, KCFO) #51

10 days is a great fast. Congrats. Enjoy the refeed stage.


(Michael) #52

Thank you collaroygal!