Let me be more specific. I am not unwell as in I am seriously sick. I mean that I can function very well and I am just a bit low energy. But I am not that sick. I know my body and long before critical stages I would have stopped the fast.
If It is the Ketones that do it then I probably won’t feel anything. My Ketones were high when I began Keto for 8 months. it was 3.1 almost daily and occasionally went to 4.0 or 5.0 but went down to 0.8 and stayed there fairly consistently. However as of yesterday they shot up to 5.1 which is was the range they were in the beginning of Keto.
No Patrick, I always do things the hard way. I found Dr Fung first to treat T2D, so I started fasting first. As I wanted to push fasting, I found eating less carbs made that easier, so I became low carb.
Low energy and nauseous. Are you taking in salts? I would expect you are given the length of your fast but I don’t see where you mentioned it.
As for BM’s. There was a log on here a while back from a guy tracking a really long fast, I think 30 days if I remember right. He actually had some BM’s really far into it, like at week 2 I think. Apparently the consistency changes quite a bit when it’s been that long and the body is finally ready to get rid of it. He described it as kind of tar like. He had done research on it and it sounded like it was completely normal for such an extended fast. Maybe I can find his thread, not sure…
As I was searching for this older thread I noticed a big influx of people trying these extreme 30+ day fasts whereas when I first started here a couple years ago most people were staying more within the several day range as their extended fast period. My understanding is that the founders of this forum don’t really support fasting over 72 hours. They feel the benefits come far from outweighing the dangers and it sounds too like the benefits are thought to be maxed out at about 72 hours as well. That said, I only link to this because the OP talks about BM’s during extended fasting. It may give you some insight as to what’s happening.
I’m experimenting with long fasts (multi-week) vs cyclic (5 days a week) vs adaptive (fast at high GKI, feed at low GKI). I also weightlift 5 days a week.
My n=1 is that I start to feel good once my ketones are above 3 but it’s not a hyper kind of energy. It’s like a solid consistent calm and energy throughput - like an energizer bunny but not hyper.
For example, I can do manual labor from 8am to 8pm without stopping … most of my eating buddies get tired and need to rest and eat… I just keep going. I also don’t feel stressed when shit happens. I just stay calm and find myself thinking very clearly about what needs to be done.
My view is that the fasted state triggers hormonal and epigenetic adaptation that are needed for survival… stay calm, think clearly, keep moving, find food, make shelter. It doesn’t waste energy by making you “super energetic”… it super-focuses it making you “super productive”
And honestly I do naturally put you and others who I know have been at this a while into a separate category. Like, I don’t worry about you. And the OP too, two years keto, extended fasting seems to be a reasonable progression and self experimentation and they sound self educated on it.
But with newbies who are only a month or so into keto and they are all gung-ho about extreme extended fasts - it just seems premature and reckless and for the wrong reasons. I kind of cringe when I see these posts. I saw a lot of them while looking for the one above that I linked to. It struck me as a big influx from what I remember these discussions used to be. Kind of like extreme extended fasting is the new fad, and some people aren’t approaching it in a thoughtful and reasonable and timely way. So, just to clarify, having just run across all those posts are the reasons for my cautions above.
Your self experimenting is interesting. I like that you are noticing correlations with ketone levels and GKI and
This is an interesting description. Back when I was rowing, I experienced this. Felt like I could just go forever, and at a hard steady state row. We practiced in the morning and I always worked out in a fasted state. It sometimes felt like it took me a bit to get warmed up. But once I was up and running, I wanted to just keep going. Kind of euphoric. Everyone else had already eaten bananas and bagels or oatmeal for breakfast and they were starving again and couldn’t wait for practice to end so they could go have more bananas and bagels and oatmeal. It was quite an experience to feel so good running on my own body rather than a banana.
This is how it felt. A calm and a clarity even while expending steady hard efforts and the ability to easily maintain control and be efficient and effective and not at all frantic or exhausted.
I appreciate your findings. I think they are a nice addition to other fasting benefits such as autophagy.
I felt that with my first couple 24-36 hour fasts. That euphoria or a sense that I could conquer the world was amazing! Good to know it was the ketones causing it. It reminded me of runners high which I had only experienced 2 times many years ago.
Thanks for the compliment.my friends and family think I am crazy. And and still my friends binge on cakes and soft drinks all day.
Imagine how I felt when 6 months back my friend expressed how crazy I was whilst he was eating 2 services of cheese cake with large quantity of whip cream.
Yep. I get you. Same here. We’ve had some family over the past few months. All of them dependent upon carbs. Their search for bread, cereal, oatmeal, chips, soda pop, etc in our kitchen was almost frantic. Like a zombie-like singularly focused obsession frantic. It was striking to observe. No matter what we offered, it was passed up in search for just the possibility of some kind of carb… “Would you like an omelette for breakfast?” “No thanks, I’ll just have toast” “We don’t have bread; how about just scrambled eggs?” “No thanks, I’ll just have cereal” “We don’t have cereal; how about some ham or bacon or breakfast sausage?” “No thanks, I’ll just have oatmeal” “We don’t have oatmeal, how abo… “What about granola, do you have granola?!” “Nope.” “How about we run to the store?” “Oh, no, we don’t need to do that, I’ll be fine.” Ya, I’m the one who’s crazy.
Same. In order maintain resting metabolic rate during extended fasting, our body upregulates norepinephrine, which facilitates lipolysis. It’s a sensation like having too much coffee, with elevated heart rate, and loads of energy. It actually made it hard for me to sleep when I started out with extended fasting. I felt it when I first started fasting, but by my 3rd 84hr fast in a month I wasn’t feeling it anymore.
I think part of adapting to fasting is a mild adrenal resistance. I think it’s kind of like caffeine resistance. That’s a good thing, else it’d be hard to sleep like it was in the early days.
My best guess is that by eating OMAD, you’re body burns through most of your food prior to refeeding, so you upregulate norepinephrine a bit towards the end of your fast to keep things on an even keel. I’d imagine you’ve immunized yourself against “fasting high”.
I still struggle w/insomnia on fasting days sometimes. I’m not gonna lie…I miss that high! The first time I got it, I spent the entire day painting my entire kitchen and was STILL wandering around the house that night looking for something to fix.
We could be talking about two different things. What you’re describing I would characterize as “ketone clarity”. I still definitely get that. What I’m talking about feels like drinking 6 expressos and feeling like you just want to do push-ups and then alphabetize the contents of your garage. That’s what I refer to as “fasting high”.
Realistically though, our metabolisms have so much individual variation that we probably all have a very different experience of fasting, so who knows.
doing it the hard way is always best in my opinion. thanks
“Would you like an omelette for breakfast?”
“No thanks, I’ll just have toast”
“We don’t have bread; how about just scrambled eggs?”
