I’ve been working on keto for most of this year. I lost 17 pounds with ease this past spring and have kept all but a few pounds off. I’ve been back on for about 2 months and today I went to my best friend’s house and fell off the wagon. I really didn’t want to and I’m not happy about it. My question is, would it be a good idea to fast for a good 24 hours just to drop my blood sugar and let my body purge the carbage?
Thank you for any and all advice!
I don’t believe it matters. Fast or not, as you please. As long as you are not loading your system with glucose (carbohydrate, sugar) or fructose (sugar), you will be fine. Your insulin will drop again, and this will turn out to be merely a blip on the radar.
On the other hand, fasting may help you to break the cycle of addiction and prevent a continuing carb binge. But only you know whether it will do that, or not.
Thanks! I had some really bad sugar stuff, but not like a crazy binge. I don’t want anymore and I will not let this start me down another path of carbage. I think I’m going to fast for 24 hours as it seems to be all phycological and I’ll feel better 
I hate when people send me home with leftovers! It’s all in the garbage and out by the curb as tomorrow is garbage day! 
I do the the same thing. If I have a carby day (it’s rare but it does happen), I make sure to “pay for it” with a fast the next day. Or else (for me at least) it’s too easy to get back into eating carbs on a regular basis.
One carby meal turns into a cheat day, which can turn into 2, which turns into a long weekend, which turns into a week, etc etc. So I personally use fasting to put the brakes on. I’ve been a sugar addict for a long time, so I find that this works for me when life happens and I let myself indulge once in a while.
Slow and sure wins the race. In other words, don’t kick yourself so hard that getting back onto where you were is more difficult that what it should be. Just learn from the error and move on.
I have done this many times over the past 5 years with varying success. It works very efficiently to get you back into ketosis if you’re fat adapted. For me this usually happens around the 17 hour mark, but I imagine it’s individual and depends on how much glucose you’ve put into your system.
My only caution would be to be honest about your mental state and if you find yourself getting cravings and fantasising about digging the carbage out the bin I would eat a large portion of meat. Whatever your preference - steak and butter, cheeseburgers, a lb of bacon and eggs - just fatty meat will have a minimal impact on your insulin levels and will provide fat to your body if your own insulin levels are still too high to access your body fat.
Good luck, you’ll be back in ketosis before you know it!
I love Paul’s response.
for me no. Fasting is punishment and I rebel against punishment every time I backslided I would then put punishment on me and if I saw fasting as punishment, oh boy it never worked for me. Fasting and me never got along.
I would just resume normal eating and go from there.
Your key to it all, don’t carb binge See I was one who if I went off into sugar land, I wouldn’t do one meal, I went all in for days! So I had to worry about eating the crap first as my most important focus and then I could avoid all the punishment reactions I would then put on me. Crazy stuff I went thru trying to find my best way for survival with lifestyle eating changes 
best of luck. do what works best for you and just roll with it. don’t do anything that works against you and you got it good.
If you’re doing it as “punishment for being bad” as @Fangs suggested, then I would recommend against it. You weren’t “bad” and you don’t need to be “punished”.
On the other hand, if fasting helps you reset your mental state and get back on track with your regular way of eating, then it’s a great idea.
Metabolically, a 24h fast will certainly help normalize blood sugar (
), insulin (), and ketones (
). It will help you resume burning fat for energy. So if you can do it without much discomfort, why not?
yea I would use fasting as ‘getting back on the horse’ and it always worked against me point blank and then it was truly torture, cause my mindset at the time was if you ate all that crap the day before, then you need to clean out and don’t deserve to eat the next day. I was a warped ‘old dieter’ and alot of my ‘dieting’ was a train wreck LOL Again personal stuff on fasting in my journey.
So yes, if you can do it and it helps, then roll with it.
if it works against you, run from it like I did
Whatever works for you. I almost never do a longer fast, I never do that when coming back either. But I don’t force-feed myself when I am satiated and I am typically always very very satiated for very long after a carby day so a longer fast easily happens. I still eat every day.
We get into ketosis quickly either way so I do whatever feels easier and more comfortable.
I never reallty understand this fasting hype, I mean when coming back to keto… Ketosis happens so quickly when eating too! And of course we eat when we are hungry or just feel we need food… (No everyone but I don’t understand or agree with that under normal circumstances.)
In severe carb poisoning (that I never have nowadays as I know what not to do) fasting and as low carb as possible is what my body desired… So I ate (or fasted) accordingly. It’s useful to have a body that always have a strong opinion about what to do…
You guys are the best! Thanks for all your replies! Turns out I did not fast as I thought about the punishment side of it and just went right back to keto the next day. I had no issues with wanting to binge or anything, it was like a blip. And I will say, thanks to the Genius of Carl Franklin, I now make my bacon in the oven on parchment paper! Do we really need to know anything else? Lol!
I forgot to write it the last time but after a too extreme off day when I still don’t fast, I tend to make it stricter. No punishment feeling at all, I am fine with it after a rebellious day… I eat good food and reach satiation but I go closer to some clean, extreme low-carb style. On a normal day, I am more indulgent and it’s fine but a stricter day helps to make me feel I balanced out the previous one a bit. And it feels good. I have stricter days anyway but after a wilder day the timing seems perfect.
Who says your blood sugars high now? You’re not getting rid of your glycogen in 24hrs, so unless you’re going to hit the gym and beat the crap out of yourself or do a ton of HIIT cardio just go back to eating keto and it’ll self correct. Fix the way you think about this. You didn’t “fall of the wagon” You’re not a drug addict or an alcoholic (that I know of) you ate normal food! Your life isn’t going into a downspin, no real damage has happened. You’ll hold a couple lbs in water for a couple days…SO? KCKO.
I like it…Fix the way I think about this. Very Good!! The only addict I am is a food addict, for real, so Yep, you are so right!
I think Dr. Georgia Edes talks about the negative effects of taking a punitive approach to the behaviours around eating. The classic are the people who will try to exercise off the sweet treat.
Fasting is a great strategy when you have no hunger nor cravings, as it promotes many health benefits. It is, I think, best to be well fed to fast. Using fasting or exercise as punishment, especially repeatedly, is a risky path to take.
Mavro has it right, as some addiction specialists will also warn, dealing with the cravings for a few days after the wagon fall is a considerable psychological challenge.
My gut feeling is that the days after are where a concerted effort to eat well, feed oneself properly with whole food, highly nutritious, low carb foods may be the best strategy to reduce the likelihood of future relapses, as compared to opting for fasting.
Fasting can have such a strong psychological effect on me. My main goal of fasting is autophagy not weight loss, so if I’m feeling hungry (and it doesn’t go away quickly, like I just needed some water) then I will go ahead and eat.
I personally never want to think about fasting as punishment, only beneficial.
I hope that I didn’t make it sound like I was punishing myself by fasting after having sweats. I think of it more as earning/resetting myself then saying that “I did a bad thing” and mentally whipping myself.