Hello everyone. I am new here to this forum. I am 5’2", 57 year old woman. SW 315, CW 269.2 and GW 135. I have been eating strict Keto for 16 weeks. I have incorporated IF and EF to my life and have found lots of success. I have to date lost 59 lbs. My struggle has come from when its time to re-feed. I struggle with being hungry because my Ketones are always high. I really don’t want to eat but make myself. My longest fast was 114 hours and I have to say, I was hungry when I broke the fast. My stomach had growled for over 45 minutes and when it started to hurt, I knew I had to end my 120 fast early. Are there others here who do extended fasting? How does it work for you? Is re-feeding an issue? How often do you do EF? Thank you for all your input in advance.
Extended Fasting and ReFeeding
I don’t fast intentionally anymore, but I’ve done quite a bit of it in the past. I found during that time the foods I had the most ease with breaking a fast were fatty animal foods. Eggs, brisket, ribeye, sometimes bacon.
The growling is normal, your digestive tract has been on a break for quite some time. It’s “waking up”, if you will.
Hi Leanne.
All of my EF experiences ended with me very much looking forward to eating. But since you are having an issue with lack of hunger, I would suggest a cup of warm, salted bone broth when you wish to end your fast… to wake up your digestive system. Just a little prodding might be all it takes.
I started incorporating more extended fasting over a period of time, with 10 days as my longest fast. I had to break it at 10 days because I wanted to be back on a normal schedule at day 14, so I wouldn’t extend the fast beyond 14 days. I took a couple of days to reintroduce food slowly, homemade bone broths the first days, some blended vegetables the next day, some steamed vegetables on the third day and after that incorporating more fats. Re-feeding is certainly something to look out for, although I wouldn’t worry too much about it when you stay under 5 days.
I tend to IF in an 18:6 protocol, do at most 1 EF of 46 hours every week. The longer EF are not harder (to be honest, they are much easier than 46 hours), but doesn’t fit well as I enjoy eating at least once a day with the family. Jason Fung wrote a very nice book about fasting, it pretty much gave all the answers I was looking for. I can highly recommend it if you want to do more fasting.