I agree, sadly many people want to be too slim. I actually dislike the word “skinny” when not used to underweight people but English isn’t even first and second language and skinny sounds like “skin and bones” to me… A little extra fat is probably good (I like safety and who knows when some famine comes? chances are tiny but still… and I definitely want some shorter extrended fasts without problem in the future) but I mean little, not my 30-35lbs (or whatever I have, I don’t know as I never ever was slim as an adult and I hope my workouts resulted in a weeee bit more muscle mass as well).
But some people goes below zero where zero is the lowest ideal to me, still with a healthy amount of fat, little padding… Whatever a person normally should have, women much more than men. The body hates being below this zero, it’s not sustainable with a decent amount of muscles and may cause problems.
I believe the healthy amount of fat isn’t a very small range for most of us. More than strictly needed fat but still a healthy body? Fine. I don’t KNOW where is my limit where my health doesn’t get affected but when I will be happy with my figure, it surely will be just right health wise too. I just want to lose my fat rolls on my belly and show my slowly developing muscles better 
I won’t be too fat or too thin when I say I can stop.
Could there be such a thing as too much autophagy?
Well that’s it, if you have a healthy body image and a healthy metabolic system, you will surely be happy when your body is in a good place health wise. If it whispers to you, stop, I’m good here, surely you listen to it I’d like to build some muscle too, honestly my body is so unfit and weak, but I carry on with those ridiculously easy weights and even those get heavy feeling after a while. And I do my daily walks. Apart from that I am probably much closer to a couch potato than an athletic person, but I believe every little bit helps.
Yeah, apparently fasting during gestation or lactation while on a keto diet can result in a condition called “euglycaemic ketoacidosis,” which is similar to diabetic ketoacidosis, except there is no rise in serum glucose. It’s not the keto diet that is the problem, but rather trying to fast during those times of great stress on the body.
Congratulations on the six years Robin. It’s been three years for me and here’s looking to many, many healthy years cancer free for us all. I used to do a lot of healing visualisation when I was in the middle of it all but now I no longer deem it necessary, as my attitude to life is, just enjoy it, put your best foot forward and do whatever makes you happy. And it doesn’t hurt to stop every once in a while and just remember everything we have to be grateful for. Life is both sunshine and rain and many beautiful memorable rainbows in between.
Sure, but that’s picking isolated, rare instances. Good grief - “underweight” - how many people are truly that way? 
While indeed we can say that worldwide, “many” are, among the people reading this forum it’s a very tiny percentage.
I will say that there’s little point in “forcing” oneself to fast. My longest fast is 12 days, and in comparison going a few days without eating is usually really easy. Yet there are also times when I want to go 6 days, perhaps, and after 3 days I just quit. “Just not feeling it this time,” or “Screw it, I want to eat.” There’s nothing wrong with adjusting things, here - there is tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and there will be more fasts, or not.
As to what is possible, here’s a guy who’s not ‘fat’ yet has gone 40 days more than once.
It depends on what “longer” is. Even normal or ‘ideal’ weight people have enough stored energy to go a long time, long as in many days. This is not saying it will necessarily be easy for them - yes, experience with fasting makes a big difference, as does the individual person’s mentality and emotions about it, and how fast their body adapts. To generalize, it’s often much harder for a person with 15-30% bodyfat (women) or 10-20% (men) to fast for multiple days, versus people with more fat.
I’d say the evidence is overwhelmingly tilted toward it being good for us, rather than it wrecking us. Autophagy is generally just cleaning up cells. For those with metabolic damage, obesity, etc., it’s usually because one’s lifestyle has resulted in high blood sugar, high insulin, inflammation, etc. This is observable on the cellular level. Just as ketogenic eating generally works to stop the damage and remedy some of the undesirable conditions, so does fasting and autophagy.
Good conversation, Fangs. 
I agree - there is much we don’t know, and there are things we cannot know. Cancer - we’ve been talking about it. For me, the most compelling thing about autophagy is the demonstrable “eating up” of the stuff that causes/contributes to Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia and other cognitive problems. Protein structures in nerve cells get messed up, made wrong, etc., and they interfere with the brain’s operation. Autophagy is supposed to be clearing this “junk” away, and the failure of that is thought to be a big part of why people get Alzheimer’s, etc.
Right now in the U.S., about 1 in 9 or ~11% of people 65 and older have Alzheimer’s. Over the next 20 to 30 years this is forecasted to increase to 14 or 15%. Significant chance of somebody getting it, all other things being equal. There’s certainly genetic predisposition for it, but it’s still a roll of the dice.
Not only that, but it might be preventable, by avoiding carbohydrate. It’s not for nothing that some Alzheimer’s disease researchers insist on calling it Type III diabetes, to emphasise the connexion with insulin resistance. Probably not the best nomenclature, but it does make explicit that the problem is with glucose metabolism in the brain.
Does to me too @Shinita and English is my first language.
I’ve stepped away from trying to lose fat now, for over a year I think, and now focusing on gaining lean muscle. I don’t even know what I weigh now but can see how much muscle I’ve gained and feel the massive strength increase too, that comes from eating in a deliberate, protein focused, calorie surplus.
On the fitness groups I’m part of, I see so many women posting skeletal photos and saying they want to lose weight, while others congratulate them and tell them how amazing they look when in reality they are depriving their bodies and slowly destroying themselves, it’s so sad, they can’t get past the mistaken belief that thin is the answer to everything… my focus is health and strength.
I am working on it. I am now down to 10 grams carbohydrates a day. A pretty big change from the 7-800 grams carbohydrates I used to eat. At the moment I consider myself 80% carnivore, and the curious thing is my body appears to be wanting carbs less and less, perhaps abstinence dims any previous addiction. I did have some mild withdrawal symptoms in the beginning but they are all gone now along with any cravings.
Sadly, a lot of people, mostly women, are so embroiled in the silliness of the fashion and beauty industry and you know, the modern world, and it says itself really that when they focus on these ideals without applying the faintest concept of health, they become train wrecks of frightening portions. A plethora of problems and eating disorders and metabolic damage conditions ensues.
I would love to feel strong, healthy and fit with well-functioning muscles. I eat plenty of protein now but I’ve only been doing keto for about a month so I will give it much more time and continue with my light weights. My lifestyle is a bit sedentary apart from daily walks, housework and looking after my two active boys. I find it is great exercise just taking them to the park and having to run after them lol. But my new year’s resolution is definitely going to be to try and improve my level of fitness within the realms of realism of course, as I don’t expect any miraculous transformation. But I would like to do something about the daily Tamoxifen-induced muscle and body aches, and I imagine improved fitness would help with that.
Not forever no, my oncologist reccommended me to take it for 10 years. I am approaching 3 years. It’s not too bad so I put up with it, but I do realise on Tamoxifen I am going to be a reduced version of myself. But I have already noticed benefits just from starting this ketogenic WOE so I am hopeful now that a lot of this will improve. And my quality of life is good, I am blessed with my little family and just really enjoy the small moments as well as the great ones, and just getting the privilege to see my boys grow up you know, I am feeling blessed and incredibly lucky.
The retort was in response to the OP first post on IF. Yep motivation for a multi day fast is difficult though. Boredom or stress is where I’ll break-a-fast.
[quote=“PaulL, post:47, topic:117106”]
Not only that, but it might be preventable, by avoiding carbohydrate. It’s not for nothing that some Alzheimer’s disease researchers insist on calling it Type III diabetes, to emphasise the connexion with insulin resistance. Probably not the best nomenclature, but it does make explicit that the problem is with glucose metabolism in the brain [/quote]
100%. Part me feels data is being suppressed. The other part thinks it’s a lack of awareness, arrogance of the population. Around my area the boomers revolve around eating, drinking etc. They need that instant dopamine boost.
oh yea like that doesn’t cover a ton of ‘life’ for the entire population in every aspect of life! good point about it all out there!
Obviously. I talked about underweight people. And I only know one case but it’s very logical to me that underweight people hardly can fast without problems even if it’s a short EF.
But probably thinner normal people loses muscle too and may have other problems due to not getting enough energy from the tiny fat they can use.
People with normal weight are probably all over the place, some can’t fast for more than 24 hours without problems but many others can.
I wanted to write this the first time but maybe I used too many words and it wasn’t clear especially that I wondered about things too as I don’t know what happens in the different cases, what are the chances… That is a big reason I write these things, I hope someone can say something more specific while I wondering and am sure certain things happen but how often…? I don’t know.
Mine too! Okay, looks matter too but I just want some normal body, no huge fat rolls and hopefully more and more showing muscles… But that is actually health and strength or at least there is a strong correlation
It’s not fine when people are encouraged to be very fat either and I saw that too many times. And it’s not that bad but people tell others not to lose any more, they are too thin when they still have 20-30kg extra… It happened to me, normal middle aged village women in my country are often plump and it’s fine as long as it’s not too serious and they are still healthy enough, it’s their decision to be happy with it - but I don’t want to hear that I absolutely mustn’t lose any more fat at that level. Almost all my extra fat is in the middle, it’s not pretty and not always convenient. My poor SO can’t even have 10kg extra without having a significant pot belly and he is vain and quite slim otherwise. It’s different in black clothes I know but let us decide if we want to lose more (okay that others have zero influence on our decisions but not everyone is like this and it could be annoying if we met such people frequently). We don’t even want to be really thin, we are merely against a fatty round unaesthetical and potentially not ideally healthy belly.
Mine wasn’t the aggressive or fast-growing type or I probably would have taken the Tamoxifen.
The radiation was tough. Not at first but as they increased the dosage it wiped me out, energy-wise.
I was the only engineer at my site who knew how to program and troubleshoot the computer (DCS) that controlled the chemical plant processes. I never missed any work during radiation treatments. I dragged myself into my office, closed the door, put my head on my desk and waited for the control room to call with a problem.
I left every day at 3 pm for my radiation treatments, then went home and went to bed. I did nothing else at work except keep their units running and my boss was grateful for that. No projects, no meetings - nada. Wait for the phone to ring.
All the skin under my breast peeled off and it oozed clear liquid. I used baby powder and kept a bandana tucked into the bottom of my bra to soak up the liquid. Horrific.
Thankfully it was only 6 weeks and 2 weeks after the last treatment I felt like a whole new person!
Hi Jane, I’m sorry you had such bad skin reactions during radiotherapy, it sounds awful. I’m glad you healed up well and felt better after the treatment.
I was warned about effects to the skin myself by the nurses, but in the end I didn’t really suffer much in the way of side effects, except the tiredness. I used E45 cream, perhaps that helped.
I had to hold my breath during radiotherapy everytime to move my heart into the right position, they told me some patients had to do this and others didn’t, they did a scan first before starting radiotherapy to determine this.
I had already gone through chemotherapy so my hair was barely there on my head when I started, just a soft fuzz. But both radiotherapy and chemotherapy was fairly uneventful. I was even planning at the time to get in shape, planning long walks. Then I began taking Tamoxifen nearer the end of my radiotherapy and my energy just went. And then came the body aches so I struggled to do my special breathing and lying on the metal bed, as I had named it. Thank God that was nearer the end of the radiotherapy sessions.
It may have been an accumulation of it all, as I had three surgeries, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, just a whirlpool of treatment, but I remember how the tiredness got firm hold when I started Tamoxifen, and it hasn’t really let go since.
It’s different for everyone as we are all unique with unique circumstances. Again I just want to say how wonderful that you’ve been cancer free 14 years!
Hi Never2late,
I haven’t read this thread since I haven’t checked in for several days. Just wanted to share that there is a woman (with breast cancer) on Facebook that runs a group that discusses such topics. She did a 26 day fast herself while she had a tumor and unfortunately it grew quite a lot during that period. She has written about this double edged sword.
I didn’t join for cancer reasons so I only lightly read through her experience-I just found it alarming so I remember it when it happened to her. If you join the group and search on the words breast cancer sword, her post on it will come right up.
It’s called Fasting & Autophagy-must be experienced
She named it that to try to thwart beginners. She loses her mind when people try to ask for fasting support. She really only wants to have discussions when people have researched an issue.