How to reap most of the fasting benefits long term?

(Keto life n' a little hippie ) #1

When it comes to fasting there are so many benefits.

To harvest the greatest amount of these benefits, what is the best way to fast? I’ve been doing 72 hours fasting a week for a while now. On top of that I also have a narrow eating window, I eat 18/6 or 20/4 most days, depending on my schedule. It works great right now with my motivation elevated and now that I manage to keep a laser focus on the task at hand. But I don’t think I can manage this regime long term, as I got a dark side where all the cravings live.

The benefits I mostly am after are these:

  • Anti inflammation
  • Increased stam cell production
  • Autophage
  • Cell rejuvenation
  • Better brain health
  • Growth hormone increase

What is a little confusing for me as I read up on this topic on various sites is that so many sources are contradicting each other. Some claims that intermittent fasting will reap all benefits. Meaning a narrow eating window would be all that is needed to hit the jackpot. While other promotes extended fasting. And even between those that promote prolonged fasting there seems to be no common ground to what length of fast will give you the benefits with lowest “costs”. Some says 21 days of fasting, others 2-3 days will do.
And no one really talks much of how often you should fast, if there is such a thing as too much fasting or how you should plan for fasting in a way that you can stick to it longterm.

I’ve listed a few possible routes for fasting.

  • Intermittent fasting only. With a short as possible eating window.
  • Intermittent fasting with planned say 72 hours fasting. Maybe twice a month.
  • Intermittent fasting with planned shorter say 72 hours fasting. Maybe twice a month + long 10-21 days fast once or twice a year.

What do you think would be the best sustainable route of fasting to best reach the highest amount of these benefits?

Remember, my goal for this is to reap as much of the fasting benefits while still having a way of fasting I can commit to long term. Even when I am no longer overweight and obese I think a sustainable eating regime that provides for better health and longevity is the way to go.

(mole person) #2

Mostly the answers are just not known yet. This area of research is only now exploding.

Intermittent fasting is great for a lot of reasons and I do it daily but I wouldn’t count on it for significant autophagy which is where a lot of the benefits that you are looking for above would primarily come from.

Volter Longo has perhaps done the most work in this area and he favors 5 day fasts about four times a year. There is no evidence currently that one would do better with longer fasts, that I know of, and the risks for harm increase.

I think I’d go with this one while you continue to have significant weight to lose except change the long fasts to five days. As you approach your goal weight however the regular 72 hr fasts will begin to get harder and you may have to shorten them.

I’m at my goal weight and even 36 hrs is really hard.

(Keto life n' a little hippie ) #3

Thank you for a meaningful answer. Well that is something then, I don’t need to think about 21 days of fasting :smiley:

I do 72 hours with ease as long as I take extra salt. So stretching to 120 hours should be doable once every quarter.

I haven’t much looked into any possible harms of fasting, can you elaborate on what harms one could experience while fasting? I’ve had some serious back pain on the first fast, and I think I mentally got so worked up about it that the pain got stronger and stronger. It was in the lower part of my back I would say around L4 maybe? First I thought my kidneys was about to shut down. Then I turned to google and saw lots of people having the same issue, and hey. I finally learned where the kidneys actually sites :smiley:

The regime I’ve run so far with 72 hour fasting each week on top on intermittent fasting and narrow eating window I suspect is not sustainable long term. Both because I will be more active and work out, and because it really can cause problems with motivation and mental focus. So that’s why I started now already to plan for the new fasting regime. It must be something I can manage long term.

I agree about the sustainability, but I must also find a way to harvest benefits of stam cells and autophagy. Because I am certain I’ve run my body down in ground over the past 20 or so years. Luckily I haven’t gotten any permanent damage but I think I was dangerously close. And I am also at that age where I really would like to delay the aging process to promote longevity.

So what do you think about intermittent fasting with narrow eating window like 20/4 weekly. With two prolonged fasts per month, 48-72 hours and then one 5 day fast each quarter?

At least now when I still got 100 + lbs to loose that will be doable, while I still will have enough energy to work out, taking walks and be more focused at work.

(mole person) #4

I meant to add that I’m pretty sure you’ll be getting some benefits of autophagy even with a 72 hr water fast. It’s just that these benefits seem to continue to increase out to 5 days.

I can’t really. I don’t know. But no one really does. That’s why it’s best not to fast longer than 5 days. Somebody has studied fasts of that duration and found them beneficial. Beyond that it’s just an open question right now. Maybe 10 days is better than five, but also maybe it’s way, way worse than not fasting at all. Nobody really knows. I know that I’m not super interested in being the Guinea pig.

This is probably sort of normal. When you fast your body goes into autophagy. Self eating. It’s breaking itself down to get energy to fuel the body. The benefits of autophagy only happen in the days of refeeding following the fast when your body uses the fuel that you are now giving it to actively rebuild all those structures. The benefit comes from the fact that when it breaks stuff down during the fast your body is trying to get rid of its crappier already messed up structures but when the rebuild happens they are made new and healthy again. So it’s not surprising that some slight, perhaps even previously non symptomatic, injury might hurt more during a fast. However, I’d pay attention to serious pain and break a fast.

I think that’s really great actually. I’d add one alteration. You should not IF the day after a longer fast. You really want to give your body the tools it needs for rebuilding. I think up to 48 hrs is fine, but after a longer fast give yourself at least an 8 hr feeding window and have at least two really decent meals that day.

(mole person) #5

Oh, and one more thing. I know I’ve said it before but you impress the f*** out of me. I can only imagine how difficult what you are doing is. We see a lot of people come and go with big plans but most don’t last a week when they come initially talking about big fasts. You’ve busted all sorts of odds already.

(Keto life n' a little hippie ) #6

Ok that really makes all kind of sense now that I’ve learned from you that autophagy starter after the fast, my understanding have been that it all occur’d during the fast.Thank you for enlightening me. Yeah I think I start with daily intermittent fasting with narrow eating window like 20/4 weekly. With two prolonged fasts per month, 48-72 hours and then one 5 day fast each quarter.

Except for the first two days after a fast I will keep an 8 hour eating window to ensure I get properly re fed.

Btw, for prolonged fasting up to 3 weeks there are various fasting retreats in Europe that have been in business for like 200-300 years iirc. Can’t remeber if it was in Poland where you can actually get a doctors notice to attend and get the fasting retreat either for free or only pay a little percentage of the price. Can’t remember what illnesses and disorders was on the list for the state grant but it was a pretty long list. There are also several institutions like that in Russia afaik, or so I’ve been told. I think you can pick 14 days or 21 days fast.

Of course the probably have medical staff at hand at all time and take blood work and monitor each “inmate” but still people think of those places as an old school health spa. If their customers would get sick or die I am sure they’ve been closed down a long time ago.

Lets hope that more experts and scientists are going to study fasting, I’ve hear’d that in Asia there have also been tradition for fasting.

(Keto life n' a little hippie ) #7

Thank you for the kind words. But really is not that I am super strong, or determent or have tons of will power. I would say for the better part of my life it’s been the other way around :smiley:

But after last Christmas I really felt something had to change before my obesity would kill me dead. All the changes I’ve made I felt was made with a loaded gun to my head. Either change or become very sick and then you die.

What made me change my thoughts was a very outspoken and free thinking specialist I saw right before or after Christmas in regard to my joint pain. He sat me down and lay out the land for me and asked, sir, du you wanna die or become seriously ill with fatal diseases? I think I almost swallowed my tongue when he followed up with saying that if I didn’t take care of the obesity I could be dead within a few years. Or tomorrow. He followed up and told me about about gastric bypass etc and said joint pain I should get used to. Because they would only get worse until I lost a significant amount of weight.

I kind of felt like bitch slapping the guy, because I felt wounded and hurt. But while I sat there in his office and took a minute to really think it over it all made sense, he was not being rude, he was telling me the truth.

I am no better then next guy, so I pondered over it, and thought well there is always tomorrow. There was leftovers, sweet&treats to polish off and so many good reasons why I should not start today. But the honest doctor’s word got stuck in my head, and each day I procrastinated I could hear his voice. Lazy as I am I kind of half ass’d it like so many times before. I went online and read up about bypass. So mange complications, so many that ended up worse then before the surgery. No thank you sir to that.

Then I found the camp I signed up then and there. Partly because I knew I needed the change, and partly because it was half a year ahead in time. To me that ment months of comfort food, pepsi cola, and any and all sweet&treats I got craving for at any time. Basically I could continue my bad habits.

Then I met one that was in the program last year, and I got terrified. When I heard about how hard it was I felt like crying. I had gotten OK at work, I had paid up and suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible for a “husky” guy like me. That was pulling me down for a few weeks and then I realized I had to plan ahead, and start now. Enter keto, intermittent fasting and prolonged fasting.

Keto wasn’t by choice really. I felt there was a gun to my head that gave me no choice. Pluss I hate to waste money, and payment was non refundable.

And now I learned that keto is the best thing that have ever happen’d to me. I am finally free from the chain and anker of sugar and unhealthy eating. No more craving I can’t resist. No more hunger and overeating. So for me I am on keto for the long haul. It has already changed my life and made it better. Even if there is a long way to go the become healthy.

(Bob M) #8

Cool, because that’s all I can hack. :grinning:

I do 16:8 a lot, sometimes 36 hours when I can, sometimes OMAD, mostly TMAD.

The autophagy thing is all over the map. Supposedly, coffee and exercise helps it. There might be some autophagy if you hit 16 hours of fasting, and I’m sure that goes up with combining that with coffee and exercise. Others say you need a lot of time for autophagy.

I also agree with the recommendation to take a bit of a break after longer fasting of say 5 days. That’s what I’ve been doing too. However, I’m also fairly close to any “goal” I have: I’m currently under 36 inch waist pants (they are almost all loose on me), and I’d like to get to 34 inch pants one day. I really don’t care about getting thinner than that (or even if I get to 34s, though that would be nice).

(Keto life n' a little hippie ) #9

Well ain’t that great, coffee will boost autophagy. Nice. I’ve been a coffee nerd for years and drink so much of the stuff I’ve actually thought it was too much. No need to worry about that anymore. I can enjoy all my coffees without a guilty conscience.

(mole person) #10

The autophagy happens when you are fasting, but the benefits mostly come from the rebuilding that happens after the autophagy. The autophagy is the trigger. During the fast the body breaks down the bad and old proteins in your cells to use for fuel (that’s the autophagy) and after the fast, when you provide fuel from food again, the body says:

“Whew! The period of hardship is over let’s rebuild all that stuff we had to break down when times were tough!”

But it rebuilds it all with healthy new materials.

Make sense?

(Keto life n' a little hippie ) #11

Ohh now it makes more sense. How long do should the re feed period be after prolonged fast before going back to intermittent fasting?

(mole person) #12

The accepted wisdom is that the refeeding period should be no shorter than the fast. But this really means don’t fast again in that timeframe and don’t calorie restrict. It’s ok to still have a feeding window, you don’t need to be eating all day. But open it up so you can have two decent meals in a decent stretch of time, perhaps at least 8 hrs.

So after your 72 hr fast do at least 3 days of 16/8 with heathy portioned meals. After a five day fast do five days of this.

(Robert C) #13

I think this is important - doing heavy IF between 72-hour EFs means you are essentially fasting all of the time. Fasting adaptations for the 72s will prevent metabolic slowdown but such short refeed windows might not be big enough so daily caloric intake on those days might be too low.

What I have been playing with lately (and seems okay so far) is to eat to satiety on Keto half the week and fast the other half. So I skip food completely on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - then have a late lunch or early dinner Thursday and eat normal Keto (to satiety) until Sunday night (this happens to fit really well with my schedule). I feel that if alternate-day-fasting is considered safe then 3.5 days off and 3.5 days on would also be safe (but I have no evidence to back that up - just intuition).

Finally, I think looking for a “sustainable” schedule is a moving target.
If weight loss is your goal and you are starting out heavy - you might be more aggressive - if you hit a plateau, you might opt for a 5 day fast instead of 3. When you are closer to goal - aggressive tactics might lead to mental or physical backlash (bouncing your weight back up due to burnout for example), maybe a gentle landing approach is better. Also, if you are simply too aggressive for too long, you might fall into the trap I did - basically inability to get past the first 24 hours. You start out the day confident you hit 72 hours or more and by dinnertime you find yourself finishing off a Keto style Chipotle burrito bowl.