More to report on fasting experience, after trying out a 3 1/2 day trial earlier. I didn't get electrolyte supplement right that first time, and felt a bit off during the night after the third day. This time I bought the other supplements they recommended in a Reddit fasting subforum, or an equivalent of that.
They say that you need to supplement sodium (oddly recommended there on a wiki page as both salt and baking soda, which is nasty to drink mixed in), potassium, and magnesium. I couldn't find the food grade epsom salt so I bought a magnesium supplement. It turns out that salt substitute products tend to be made from a potassium salt; easy. Unfortunately the version I found was mixed real salt (sodium chloride) and potassium chloride, so I had to do some estimation in amounts, since I was too lazy to really write down and calculate it all out. A friend mentioned that he thought that calcium might be an issue, related to how it interacts with other mineral use, so I took some of a calcium supplement at the house, and an occasional multivitamin. And that's it; that's all I ingested for 5 days, in addition to water.
This writing will work in two parts. The first is about the actual experience, since I went a day and a half longer than the last trial, and hoped that it would be easier since I last tried this experience a month ago, and changed supplementation. The second part is about effects, hopefully positive effects, which I'll need to wait at least a couple of days to write it. I'm writing a draft of the take on the experience just before I end the fast, to get to experience this written communication while I'm still doing it.
Before that just a few related details. I had considered what else I could ingest and still consider the experience to be fasting, like coffee (not that I normally drink that), tea, tisanes (herb teas), or adding lemon or lime to water. I opted to omit any of that; I think for a progressed fasting habit adding what works for you would be better, just being careful about things making you hungry or impacting your stomach, but for initial trials it's better to leave it all out. The fast was really for something like 4 days and 22 hours; I started and stopped on dinner 5 days apart but will [/ did] eat earlier at the end. I had meant to do the extra night, so 5 1/2 days, if I had slept well the night before, and if it seemed easy and symptom free, but it wasn't exactly like that. And I don't [/ didn't] want to be recovering on Monday, as would occur if I eat in the morning.
I have a slight sore throat today, on day 5, which I actually had for 2 or 3 days prior to fasting, but had shaken. Maybe a cold? I thought then maybe it was a mold or dust issue from leaving our house vacant for two months not so long ago, maybe resolved because I cleaned the AC filters and had that bedroom unit professionally cleaned. Of course I'm considering if I might not have some serious medical condition, but I doubt it.
About weight loss, I'm not exactly doing this for that, and since we don't have a scale at the house I never weighed myself. It would be nice if I lost a couple of kilos / 4 or 5 pounds, but it won't change much for me whether I do or don't. I'll never know, since I won't weigh myself soon after and didn't before. I've crept up to 165 pounds (74 kilos), when I had been around 160 / 71 for most of the last 15 years, so I would like to drop back down. Some of that is probably muscle tissue gain, because I've been running for four years, and swam a lot in Hawaii for two months recently. Still, being slightly leaner would be fine, and that would have all my pants fitting well, versus the tighter ones not as comfortable.
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just "after," I didn't take a before. I do look like a dad. |
I ran across a couple of decent but not ideal video references about fasting, this one by Dr. Berg (which gets electrolyte supplementation completely wrong, assuming that sea salt would contain enough other minerals besides sodium, which it wouldn't), and an experiential account. That "doctor" is a chiropractor, who makes multiple videos a week about popular health subjects, far too many to research any in any significant depth. I see his input as no more than a collection of internet hearsay, and it's no surprise that he didn't get the only practical detail right, about supplementing electrolytes.
There would be better references out there, but Youtube is almost entirely populated by these sorts of light content sources. One is about actual research on fasting delaying Alzheimer's development in genetically inclined mice; maybe that highlights a good reason to take up fasting or maybe it doesn't carry over directly to humans. Fasting seems to be the only thing that extends test animals' lifespans, or at least suppressed calorie intake does, so there probably are multiple benefits to it, it would just be hard to sort out.
The fasting experience
Was it easier? It's not as if having prior exposure and dialing in electrolytes made it a lot easier. I was still really hungry for the first three days, but the mental haziness and radically shifting energy level was reduced. Level of hunger might have backed off a little, or maybe it was that I was just as hungry, for just as long (3 days), but that it seemed more normal to me, so it didn't bother me quite as much. Again instead of avoiding all exposure to food on the first day I went to a grocery store (it was a street market the first time), to buy pumpkin seeds and cashews for after the fast, to start back on food with low carb and stomach friendly inputs. Kind of off topic, I also bought some American style white cheddar, which isn't commonly available here in Bangkok.
It wasn't bad being in that store, around food, because I used a lunch break at work to go there, and the real hunger only kicked in later in the day. I guess that had been worse the first time, because I had visited a market in the evening with my wife.
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visiting a street festival selling food; it wasn't so bad, being around it while fasting |
Lots of references mention how through prior experience you can speed up the switch into ketosis, only processing fat energy, in this case that from your body, not food, versus carbohydrate energy use. Two ways to do that: eat almost no carbs the day before, or do light exercise the first day to cycle through existing glycogen reserves (I think that's how they put that). I didn't attempt that at all, eating a large dinner of Isaan sausage and corn the night before, with pineapple, banana, and orange for desert. A lot of carbs! The reasoning was to boost nutrient intake, and to not worry about the carbs. Maybe a long walk to that store on day one speeded up draining energy reserves, but it had just worked out like that, I wasn't intentionally exercising.
About electrolyte experience: it's hard to say how much difference this made, but I didn't experience exactly the same heart palpitations that I had the first time (or at least thought that I did). Learning in mid-fast that I wasn't properly supplementing electrolyte input probably didn't help with confidence related to experience any body changes. Maybe that practical improvement this time did help with keeping energy level more stable. I didn't push it by doing exercise, but I did sweep leaves in the driveway and do laundry and such, and visited a temple and another market on day 4 (again my wife wanted to do that, and hunger wasn't so bad then anyway).
That salt and water mixture was disgusting. I thought that if I could dilute it more than they recommended it would be better, but it turned out best to drink it at about that strength and then drink plain water after to resolve the reaction from it. I mixed it at double the strength they mentioned and then added cold water to drink it cool, but otherwise I was consuming a variation of that Reddit sub information wiki's "snake juice" recipe, with magnesium added twice a day in the form of those fizzy dissolvable tablets. On day 5 I was considering dropping the baking soda sodium input, just bumping the salt, but by then it was near the end anyway.
Side effects, hunger and other: I was quite hungry the first three days, and then that resolved on day 4. On day 5--as I write this initial draft--I'm not hungry but energy level and clarity isn't great. I didn't sleep well last night, or most nights, only getting a solid 9 hour nights' sleep on one exception (after day 2?). I felt like I was always dialing in how much of that vile salt mixture and regular water I had been drinking, and that's what kept waking me up. Just a guess from my experience, but I think drinking 2 liters of that and one liter of water might work well. 3 liters is a decent amount of water to drink in one day, but I think adding a bit beyond a generally recommended 2 to make allowance for body processes being atypical and no food input containing any water makes sense. Drinking more yet might pull out more of other minerals and vitamins, but a five day fast isn't really pushing it for risk from nutrient deficits (per my understanding; who knows really), especially when adding a few vitamin supplements.
I never really felt normal, or good. Even though hunger seemed slightly less of an issue processing all that salt water threw off my digestive system a little. I didn't have diarrhea, that time, but my stomach kept churning for the first 2 1/2 days. It wasn't really so uncomfortable, so I didn't mind much, but I could imagine someone finding that off-putting. At a couple instances on day 4 and 5 I felt a little dizzy standing up quickly; my equilibrium wasn't normal. Waking in the night I felt more off than during the day, but drinking water resolved that (again I didn't get hydration and electrolyte supplementation completely dialed in).
It's odd describing what it's like to not feel hungry after not eating for 5 days. In one sense I'm definitely hungry; if I think about food I crave it, and thinking about how my stomach feels brings up noticing a notable hollow feeling. Smelling food is even worse; I can smell the neighbors cooking dinner, which I don't really remember doing before. But oddly I didn't crave food very much at that night market on day 4 evening, even when my wife ate in front of me in two places. I kept seeing food on the table while working remotely; it probably would've been better to remove those snacks, now consisting of dried strawberries and a Thai crispy rolled crepe / cookie sort of thing. But the energy issues and general concern about my body experiencing this is worse, and that very minor sore throat. Better to let it go roughly at the five day mark.
Today is my birthday, one part of why my wife wants us to go out to dinner, preventing me from stopping right at 8 PM, as I had planned. It's a strange present to myself, to experience the last of starving for 5 days.
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right after the fast |
Lessons learned / new experiences: being a little more active this time worked out, and I can see how exercising while fasting might be possible, just in a mild form. I think if someone practiced fasting more normalizing the experience might be helpful, perhaps not talking much about shared experience in a related forum, not telling many people IRL about it, and trying to include the full range of normal activities. Not related to how those others would see it, but just in relation to making it seem as normal as possible within your own perspective. I think going heavy on carbs the day before is probably a bad idea; I probably could've lessened transition impact by not doing that.
I've read and watched videos a bit more on what it's supposed to bring for benefits, but oddly I'm skeptical of all of that. It's probably all mostly right, but health claims in general often amount to hearsay knowledge extended from a study that wasn't quite that specific, or worse, general medical care perspective or from the echo-chamber effect of people repeating what they saw claimed somewhere, from unreliable sources. Maybe that fasting experience just did cure cancer in my body, and offset diabetes risk, reduce insulin resistance, and delayed my later onset of dementia. Maybe significant autophagy occurred, and lots of damaged cells have been recycled, which should reduce inflammation and resolve all sorts of minor organ health and tissue damage issues I'm barely aware of.
The only noticeable benefit last time, beyond having a different perspective on food, and perhaps a slight boost in mental clarity, was that it seemed like I had a lot more energy when running distance, over 2 or 3 miles (4 or 5 kilometers), up to 8 km (5 miles) on my longer normal route. That's not really even one of the benefits mentioned in hearsay accounts, so it wasn't confirmation bias that caused noticing that.
Beyond that I don't know. Maybe I'll add more in a later effects addition to this initial draft. This took just over a half hour to write, if that's helpful for clarifying how writing just over a page of text would go with potentially diminished mental acuity. I feel as mentally clear as normal; kind of odd.
Later account, experienced effects
Breaking the fast: I ate pumpkin seeds, almonds, and a small bowl of meusli with milk to return to eating. Of course it all tasted great, especially the almonds. It was great eating food with salt that matched the food instead of drinking that salty water. Then we went out to dinner; I had wanted to eat that controlled food type form of small meal first. A food court burger tasted the best of any burger I've ever eaten, surely only because of the context. Then I ate a waffle with caramel and ice cream. Every time I fast I vow that I'm going to eat a very healthy diet afterwards, and that drops out as soon as I see ice cream. Next we went to a familiar restaurant (MK) where I ate more ice cream cake, offered for free related to it being my birthday.
As to side effects from eating, the first light meal went great, as planned. I was somewhat full eating what wouldn't overfill a moderate sized cereal bowl. The burger I ate too fast, and started sweating as a response to the digestive system shock. Maybe related to a carb spike from the fries? Probably not; it was right afterwards, and it settled out quite quickly. After what wouldn't have been a huge meal I felt like I'd eaten a round of Thanksgiving dinner (which I missed, since that Thursday was day 2 of the fast, but they don't "do" Thanksgiving in Thailand anyway).
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I did eat that traditional meal, just a bit later on, as a cafe special |
Later account of effects: I'm writing this on Tuesday, after ending the fast on Sunday around 6 PM. Monday morning it felt like I wasn't completely back to normal. I didn't really lack energy, or mental clarity, but still felt a much milder form of that odd feeling that had persisted over the fast.
By Monday afternoon that had resolved, and by evening I felt fantastic. My wife and I went for a 12 km bike ride at a local park, and that felt like it took absolutely no effort at all, so I went out for a run right afterwards. That's the fastest I've ever ran that 4 km loop (not that I time it; I'm oddly opposed to that, which I won't go into here). I usually either run an 8 km milder pace circuit (5 miles or so), or with the shorter 4 km version I include a 1 km (two thirds mile) maximum speed segment at the end, and it was surprising how it felt effortless for the entire run, and that pace was crazy the last kilometer. It helps to adjust the form and effort by matching stride pace count to breathing pace, automatically changing both and the relationship at different speeds, and it was hard to get it to push towards a highest speed near-failure point; I could just keep going faster.
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anyone visiting Bangkok might check out renting bikes at Rot Fai park; it's so nice there |
Mentally I feel normal, maybe slightly sharper. My energy level is good. As I was telling my wife maybe it's all because my baseline of feeling relatively terrible for 5 days makes "back to normal" feel like I'm bright, sharp, and energetic.
I slept ok for the past two nights, with some interruption last night, but then my sleep hasn't been as consistent since returning from Hawaii, nearly two months ago. Unusually vivid dreams have been a side effect during fasting, and also an after-effect. I don't know what to make of that.
It would be nice if I had more experiential input or conclusions to share, but that's pretty much it. It did seem a good bit easier than the first fast, just still rough enough, so it seems possible that after another round or two it might be much more manageable. I'm not sure if I'll do it again, but probably that boost in running experience is going to be quite tempting. I'll do the longer run again later in the week, so I can see if that was a temporary effect, or if I can fly through the routes now, which would seem strange.
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kids making colored sand street art at that festival |
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a better look at more of their work |
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(off topic) this local mall sells the houses ($45), but not gingerbread men, so strange |
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