I'm starting this post on day 2 to include some general context and current perspective, but I won't finish and post it until it's over. That made citing a length of time in the working title strange; I included 6 days as a guess, but really I'll fast for at least 5 and maybe go as long as 7 if it seems comfortable. Odd that I'd expect not eating for 5 days to a week to be agreeable and pleasant, right? In retrospect, added in later, it was fine for the most part, light duty compared to two earlier trials, but I still stopped it after 5 days.
But it is much more moderate to experience this time; I'm hungry, and was on day 1 too, but it's nothing like those first two trials. I think that's mostly because my expectation related to not eating has changed, not because my body is dealing with it better, although that could factor in. I drank some tisane yesterday, blue pea / butterfly herb with stevia, but didn't notice it making any difference. I was still hungry, and my stomach still rumbled a bit, especially related to drinking the salt mixture. In a Reddit sub on fasting they recommend supplementing sodium (salt, or mixing that with baking soda), potassium (salt substitute works), and magnesium, which I ingest as a dissolvable tablet supplement. Food grade epsom salt can be used for magnesium, but they say it has laxative properties, and I didn't see that handy at a local grocery store or pharmacy.
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these are from a vine growing at the house, so all very fresh |
That brings up the theme of conventional wisdom of drinking only water, versus supplementing minerals, versus taking that next step, including tea and tisanes, or coffee, lemon or lime along with water, or whatever else. It's commonly expressed that you can drink only water for a day or two, no problem, but that it adds potential impact, or even risk, if you go longer without electrolyte input, of course with individual experiences varying a lot.
On my first trial I didn't supplement those minerals (salts, really), beyond taking a multivitamin, then part-way through sorted out that levels included weren't even close to sufficient. I could've kept on with a trial anyway, but felt what I perceived to be an irregular heartbeat at about 3 days in, and stopped the fast. Maybe it was just something I imagined; it's easy to let concerns about that kind of thing get to you, and minor sleep disruption when changing diet so drastically is probably normal, so it's easy to be up in the night wondering how ok you feel.
The mineral supplement step serves two purposes then: offsetting risk of muscle function disruption (and your heart is a muscle), and adding peace of mind. Dialing in supplementation takes some doing, and I think everyone would experience laxative effect from rushing ingestion at some point in trials, or maybe even sporadically later. It helps having an empty digestive system, but not as completely as one would expect.
I'm not sure that any perspective on pros and cons of adding coffee, tea, tisanes, and whatever else emerges from checking out that sub's discussions, or watching popular content Youtube videos about fasting (many of which are not so great, clearly just content producers passing on bits they've heard, as this writing also conveys).
As I see it a main concern is if autophagy is offset or decreased by ingesting anything. That's a body process of recycling damaged or atypical cells in your body when you don't eat, one supposed benefit and goal of fasting over a couple of days worth of time, which supposedly extends to reducing cancer risk (more on that here). I didn't mean if you eat anything with caloric value; you just aren't fasting if you consume calories. Exercise is also said to initiate autophagy, but beyond that inputs and related conditions aren't clear. Supposedly it occurs after a couple of days of not eating, and I have no idea how ingesting coffee, tea, or tisanes factors in.
Then there is concern people bring up that even artificial sweeteners, or stevia, can trigger digestive or energy processing internal processes that aren't ideal (insulin release, I guess), tricking your body into thinking you just ate sugar, when you didn't. This trial is about passing on experiential account related to that, but of course I can't track my digestive system changes, or insulin production, and I am not measuring blood glucose levels.
I drank blue pea tisane yesterday (day 1), and both Shui Xian roasted oolong and Jing Mai sheng pu'er today, more inclined to crave any beverage input since I'm not eating. I felt the usual caffeine withdrawal headache yesterday, and energy loss, but I feel pretty normal today (at time of writing the initial draft, on day 2). Compared to the first two trials hunger is a non-issue, but again my guess is that's from acclimation to the idea of not eating. There are still snacks on the table I'm sitting at, tons of them, cashew butter cookies, digestive biscuits, dried strawberries and mango, and strange snacks my mother-in-law eats that I don't, odd crackers and dried pork snacks, but I'm not fixated on eating it. As you walk around and see things it might be normal to think a snack sounds good, and of course I'm more prone to that now, but beyond an odd emptiness and baseline of moderate, limited hunger I feel normal.
I plan to run tomorrow; that'll be new. I felt like doing it today but I just ran the most I have yet in a week, four 8 km intermediate pace runs, and my legs are too blasted, on a second rest day after all that. I ran the last 3 of those outings slightly sore, which is why it sounds good to me anyway, because it's normal now. But there's no rush, so I should acclimate to the fast and take an extra rest day to be on the safe side. Maybe because it's crazy cold out now for Bangkok, down to 20 C / 68 F at night, I'll try to run in the morning tomorrow, but I'm not a morning person, so I tend to not feel like that at 7 AM.
Day 3
Sleep could've went better but otherwise all goes well, and even for that I just woke up and slept again a few times. Drinking water helped me sleep again; I may not be drinking enough. I'm still hungry today but nothing like the first three days both other times. Today I tried exercise for the first time, a 4 km / 2 1/2 mile run, and that felt pretty normal, not unusual.
For tea I drank shu pu'er as a breakfast, of sorts, and am trying out a Thai sheng in the afternoon. Shu really settled my stomach, and the sheng isn't as smooth, but writing about Thai teas had me craving it. Sticking mostly to shu and Wuyi Yancha (roasted oolongs) might make sense. I thought chrysanthemum would be ideal for fasting but haven't tried it out yet. A sheng version yesterday didn't bother my empty stomach at all, and that one today did, a little, maybe for being younger, not softening in character with as much age (bitterness and astringency).
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that Chawang Shop Jinggu pu'er reviewed here; much better after a year of settling |
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what that looks like brewed (comparison tasting) |
Day 4
Mixed results today; again sleep wasn't so great, but my energy level was good today, and right on cue hunger almost dropped out. That's relatively speaking; the idea of eating is there in the background, but the feeling of hunger and repetition of thinking of food wasn't. I walked about 3 km / 2 miles doing an errand today, and felt fine. Later on, around 7 PM, I really crashed, not just feeling low energy, but feeling not ok, and slept if off for 45 minutes. I don't know why; maybe related to drinking electrolyte mix too fast, or a stevia sweetened chrysanthemum and rosemary blend. On day 1 I drank a tisane with stevia and nothing negative came of that, but I was probably still settling into ketosis.
I'll end this fast in the evening tomorrow, at 5 days, because two papaya grown at the house and a bunch of bananas are ripe, and it's enough, it'll be good to eat again. I may run tomorrow, to finish testing out that input.
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my nemesis; he figured out plastic bags were covering some because they were almost ripe |
Day 5
I think I'm getting something slightly wrong with electrolytes; my energy level isn't great, or clarity, and my calf muscles feel a little odd. Probably that's too little intake instead of too much, so bumping it just a little could resolve it. All the same I'll probably drop the running idea, and leave that at one trial for this fast.
Later, after ending the fast
Looking back on that calf muscle thing I think I was just sore, that I had ran one day and walked some the next and I wasn't recovering as I normally do, probably because I was days into not eating. Fasting is like that though, at least early on, you have to wonder if every minor sign isn't related to it, and wonder if it's not more serious than it seems. My wife's last advice was to just not cause myself to have a heart attack, and that's it, probably not eating for a week (on some appropriate electrolytes) isn't very dangerous, but it makes you wonder, because you can't be sure.
On the other side of that not eating for a few days seems like something any animal or person could be built to deal with. It's a little rough psychologically, but physically it should be ok. For people with health problems of course doctor input would be required, and it wouldn't be good to find out about health problems you don't know about while not eating.
This time was by far the easiest of three attempts, the last two of which both lasted 5 days (minus a couple hours; I went dinner on Saturday to dinner on Thursday, and drank some milk after dinner on Saturday, so that it wouldn't spoil over the fast). But then I did experience an unusual crash on day 4, and day 5 wasn't as easy as the first half of day 4. On the last day I went out to run an errand and went grocery shopping; that's not so easy. I smelled prepared foods, and walked by stalls selling plenty of it. It was still just normal but it brought me back to the earlier days' experience of hunger.
What about lessons learned?
-it gets easier every time: that's been covered here. Mental clarity and energy level were much better this time, and by day 5 I stopped thinking about food, until I went grocery shopping, and that didn't help. I just saw someone mentioning how the difficulty, overcoming that bit of adversity (hunger) is something they see as a benefit, so I guess for some it's as well that's it's not too easy.
-running can be fine: it's no problem, but it's at least possible that recovery time is slowed. My guess is that at least the running experience you could keep extending as you acclimate, but I am concerned about recovery. To be clear on context I'm 54, and I run a bit harder than really makes sense, pushing pace to close to my limit at the end of a lot of runs, which may or may not be a good practice. Conventional wisdom in running circles is that you shouldn't do that, that running slowly 80% of the time builds a base and speeds recovery time, and works better. I couldn't run every day given that context, but I'm not trying to log 50 mile weeks to work up to a marathon, it's just limited exercise.
[Final edit]: I did feel very minor leg cramping, even after eating in the evening of the last fast day, leading me to think it was an electrolyte issue, but then I'm also sore, and have recovered a lot from that throughout that one day. I think the issue was that I didn't recover well from a light run and walking two days after, so for me every other day runs while fasting would probably go badly, no matter how short or light. I like the idea of running on stored fat energy too; maybe I could try it early, even on day 1, to move on to ketosis, and then be ready to run again by day 4.
-tea doesn't seem to change a lot, one way or the other. It's nice drinking something familiar, retaining part of an eating experience, and still necessary to consider drinking it on an empty stomach. The second time I drank sheng I felt that, in a bad way. I had one mug of roasted oolong this last day but got caught up in trying to down a good bit of salt water, the electrolytes, and extra water, to avoid dehydration risk, so I'm cold brewing the second potential infusion from those leaves in the refrigerator to drink again tomorrow. Shu pu'er felt the most comfortable; no surprise there.
-tisanes might not have any effect, and stevia seemed not to. But then I don't know; once I drank a tisane, stevia, and electrolytes in a relatively short period and felt that crash then. One part I didn't mention is that mixing the blue pea tisane with the salt (electrolyte) water made it quite palatable; it might be possible to experiment with a best-results saltwater cover tisane flavor. If some of that disgusting salt water tasted more like a Gatorade that would be great, and there's no reason why fruit range couldn't help with that, even without calories. It would work to peel the outside of an entire orange (the zest) using a fruit peeler, dry that, and then brew a whole orange's worth of outer peel later while fasting to make up an orange flavored Gatorade version.
The odd part is that I don't know if any health benefits are being realized. I didn't weigh myself before, during, or after, but I doubt I've changed weight at all, or if I did feeling more like eating for a few days will restore it. I see it as a chance to reset diet, but my normal diet is fine, unusually healthy. It's just one more thing to experiment with for me, I guess, and somehow it does seem to help with energy level while running, maybe because my body can switch over to an alternate energy source easier with that extra acclimation.
Another odd part is that I like the idea of an exercise in willpower, living with somewhat significant and constant discomfort for some days. It's only terrible if you think it is, but still there's an underlying and constant pressure. It makes it easier to notice what you are eating continually afterwards, to see it as an energy source and health input in addition to an urge response. It might pair well with some kind of intuitive eating approach, something I took up decades ago, but that's another long story for another day.
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