The last post about fasting experience settled in on "why?," never fully resolving that, and I'll only repeat that theme a bit here, extending it to two different directions.
The main answer in the past has been "to experiment." Of course most people fast to lose weight, but my own body weight seems strongly inclined to return to the previous level (about 74 kg or 165 pounds), and since that's reasonable I don't try to adjust that. Maybe I should shift back to more like 71 kg / 160, and will at some point.
After 20 days of experience of not eating that initial experimentation phase is kind of done; so what's next? Any answer would relate to potential or expected health benefits, so lets summarize that, after placing why I'm trying to communicate this.
I would like to share these ideas to make the option to practice fasting open to more people. I don't need to validate what I'm doing, to get others to join in so it makes it seem like it really does make sense. For the most part I don't care what other people do, or think. Related to helping other people I make an exception, and then if I can I do. So I guess all this is a claim that I buy into the health benefits? I'm a bit skeptical, but otherwise I do.
On to potential benefits.
Fasting may enable metabolic flexibility. This would allow someone to use body fat energy more effectively, which could apply well to exercise, not just to not eating, although I guess also to being able to skip lunch. I do seem to experience improved energy level on longer runs.
I last tested out running four miles on day 4 of a fast, so completely into ketosis, with glycogen reserves long since expended, and that went ok. I was experiencing minor knee soreness (so probably shouldn't have even ran that), so I didn't try out a longer test.
Fasting reduces insulin resistance: This actually seems to work; it seems more clearly documented as an actual positive effect. For people at risk of developing adult onset diabetes--which is a significant risk for me; both of my grandmothers and one uncle developed that--they can reduce that risk through fasting, moderating body weight, and reducing high levels of intake of carbohydrates, especially refined sugars.
There's nothing necessarily dangerous about all refined sugar intake, per my understanding (which is not necessarily well-informed), it's that it's easy to bump that to very high levels, and then actual risk does come up. Drinking 32 ounces of soda relates to about 100 grams of sugar consumption, at around 336 calories, or one sixth of a normal day's dietary caloric intake. That's like eating 6 1/2 apples; which would take longer to digest for all that fiber, even if you could eat that many. Risk also relates to that being empty of any other nutrient content, to that potentially adding to a positive caloric balance (more taken in than used), and to problems with your body handling the related blood sugar. Conversion to body fat can occur, and some other negative side effects, and to developed insulin resistance.
It's probably better to moderate body weight and mind dietary inputs than to use fasting to offset impacts of being overweight and eating a bad diet. Or doing both is an option. Maintaining significant muscle mass also helps (not like bodybuilders, I mean average or more than average), for different reasons, especially since muscle tissue stores glycogen (reserve energy), but I don't want to write out too many tangents in this.
Fasting may reduce visceral body fat. There are tests for this sort of thing, so I could be documenting this (my actual proportion of body fat by location), but I'm not. The idea is that fat in or between organs is used first when fasting, and that first change is not at all just a cosmetic concern. Liver function should improve as a direct result of regular fasting, if fat deposits in the liver were an issue to begin with. How often is that relevant though? Who knows. Blood compound markers would show that, but I'm not minding those, and missed my last annual health check at work due to being out of the country then.
I can add that I've put on about 3 kgs (6 1/2 pounds) over the last two years and my waist size was a little larger a year ago, and then bumping running volume and perhaps fasting dropped it back to where it had been. Thinking it through storing visceral fat in the form of what is in between internal organs may or may not be a bad thing, but it seems clearer that storing fat within your liver is a problem.
More mental clarity, reduced aging effects: hard to say about these kinds of changes. I feel ok, probably a little clearer, but that's hard to track. Maybe I do have slightly less grey hair than a year ago, which is odd. I can even sometimes see eyebrow hair change from white to brown again, since those being two colors stands out more--hard to place that. I've been running more since then too, really keeping up with sleep, exercising a lot more, and my diet has improved a bit.
And I've ramped up intake of goji berries as a daily supplement; that might've helped. I finished a kg I bought in mid-June recently, so I seem to be consuming 350 grams or so per month, just over 10 grams a day, a good bit. Why? My thinking was that I try to eat a lot of fruit but don't get to that every day, and I definitely can put 10 grams or so of dried berries in hot water and then consume the infusion and fruit, every day, regardless of what I happen to be eating that day. Supposedly one compound in those offsets aging impact, but even if it's the nutrients in them that are healthy instead that also works.
Fasting may offset cancer
This is a big one, and this tangent runs longer than I intended, since I've been reviewing this subject a good bit lately, just not necessarily in a focused form.
I have no idea if fasting does really offset cancer risk or assist with resolution, but many, many sources claim that both do occur. I can't sort out which potential claims work or don't work, or when and how they apply. From catching a bit of cancer experience related Youtube content--which I'll say more about here--cancer cells do consume a lot of blood sugar, so that a main way of tracking growth of such tissue is to just monitor where the most is being consumed in the body (after you ingest some radioactive sugar; kind of a strange process). I'm not really caught up on what my cells are using for an energy source right now (it's day 2 of a fast, as I write the first draft, long before posting this), but of course my carbohydrate intake is over, for now. I'll probably be "in ketosis" later today, whatever that means.
Autophagy is said to occur during fasting (and it really does, but exactly what that means is harder to pin down). At a minimum your body consumes internal body fat (of course; how else could you stay alive, since only using muscle tissue as an energy source would make less sense), and it may recycle all sorts of damaged cells. It's a complicated subject though, one that's hard to sort out.
Someone could easily turn up a lot of content saying that fasting really does offset cancer risk (this is an interesting example), or support treatment / resolution, but how good any of those sources are would be hard to settle. Cancer isn't just one thing, and experiences would vary, and a topic like that naturally relates to a lot of people repeating what they want to be true, filtering their own reference source input. A lot of light medical advice looks more solid than it might really be, and a source citing other sources isn't clearly well-grounded until you also evaluate those. That linked video reference cites a lot of research background, but even for those kinds of sources you need to be careful; you might read only about studies supporting some claim, when conclusions from other studies also reject that connection.
Those cancer related accounts come from running across a Youtube channel about someone experiencing cancer, Paul in Perth, and then the Youtube algorithm showing me plenty more of that since that's how it works. If you watch one channel about puppies, even if you're not subscribed to it, you'll see lots more of that in your feed there. It can be a little depressing, watching people talk about dying, but for the most part those stories are about being hopeful and positive when things are dark for them. To me those people tend to be more inspiring than any other accounts of any subjects.
In a comment I asked Paul in Perth if he could use fasting for cancer resolution and he said that it could have potentially helped at an earlier stage, but for his disease being so far progressed negative effects related to recovery from chemo treatments made it relatively unsuitable (per his understanding, related to his own condition and type of cancer).
I just saw a video of a guy literally at the end, Daryl, saying that he was signing off since he would die within a day or two, and he was much more positive and upbeat than almost any movie review content. He showed a box / urn he picked out, shook it, and said "this is light; I guess I'm not in there yet." A 16 year old girl, who goes by So Fia, ended a long series of posts about her struggle focused entirely on the positive, about her love of life, and appreciation for what she had. She was so much stronger, braver, and more wise than any other "healthy" influencer type I've ever seen. The main message is usually one of hope and optimism, about appreciation for life, not fear of death.
None of this related to fasting, to be clear. None of them even tried it out as a form of partial resolution, although there surely are videos out there about people who did feel fasting helped them, which again would be hard to evaluate, or people trying it and not noticing any positive difference.
Should those people have tried it out? I have no idea. According to health claims within "fasting circles" of course they should have, but personally I can't place that. There is no clear cause and effect for why they developed cancer, or why others experienced miracle recoveries that they did not, some related to fasting and many more not (the first guy I mentioned a video channel for is still alive; the other two are not).
In many cases people link cancer experience to high carbohydrate diets (back to hearsay input from cancer patients, to be clear). Discussion of treatment experimentation comes up more related to keto-oriented diets (more than fasting, I suppose, at least per limited and random sampling). That's not intended as a claim that generality or that resolution practice is effective, I'm referencing their understanding. In looking up those video links this content creator thinks his cancer stemmed from a vitamin D deficiency, oxidative stress (from multiple inputs), from alcohol exposure, and a high carbohydrate diet. Who knows; maybe those were the main causes, surely along with genetics.
I've skipped including links to people claiming fasting helped them resolve cancer experiences here; even a post focused on that topic would be taking on a lot. I'd also be careful of trusting what seem to be very well grounded but light information sources online linking fasting with cancer prevention or resolution, of which there are many. It can seem that if one source might be valid or could be questionable that 10 taken together must be reliable, but many people make videos citing the same studies on mice that may or may not mean a lot related to actual human experience. They might be generating that content with a slightly different spin mostly to draw viewership, without really turning up any new insights, or in some cases even without reviewing more grounded sources.
Why would I embrace fasting as a means to potentially offset a risk that's not necessarily high for me, when it's hard to clearly determine the linkage that it even works (beyond a lot of claims floating around)? One partial answer is that I'm discussing potential reduced risk of dying, at a cost of not eating sometimes. I've spent roughly 20 days fasting over the past year (25, after editing this; I just finished another 5 day fast), and the main cost or impact was increased hunger and reduced clarity and energy level over that time. All of that was much more moderate in the last fast, and hunger is much more of a non-issue this time too. People actually claim that fasting improves mental clarity, but what I mean here is that energy level fluctuations have an impact, especially in the first 3 or 4 trials.
Another partial answer is that reduced cancer risk isn't really the main benefit people associate with fasting, beyond weight loss, and it's not necessarily a main reason I'm doing it. Supposedly--as mentioned--it offsets effects of aging, increases mental clarity (when it's not offsetting it), reduces visceral fat levels and impact, and offsets risks from insulin resistance, lowering risk of diabetes. Autophagy is another subject I won't really get into here, closely linked to potentially reduced cancer risk, which I've covered more in the past.
Why wouldn't people fast then? There seems to be a lot of potential benefit, and most people could use to lose a few pounds. Let's address that separately.
Why not fast? Normalizing fasting practice.
In discussing that in a health related thread someone commented "that sounds like complete torture." There's that; hunger experience is profound over the first few trials. It's so negative that exposure to a consistent problematic condition like that works as a mindfulness tool, a way of experiencing the present moment differently.
In light of that it would be natural for people not to fast if they aren't sold on any of these benefits, if they have no clear reason to. I'm only going to mention it to set it aside here but it's hard to be certain any of these claims completely work. What someone considers good evidence would shift what any individual review would turn up. If it's only to find documented research of multiple independent findings then maybe that would be possible, but you would still need to interpret what a number of narrow studies really mean in actual practice.
If finding a couple of dozen "health expert" claims and personal experience accounts is enough then that would be an easy bar to clear. I'm a bit skeptical by nature, so I tend to arrive at probabilities related to what I think is accurate, not necessarily even trying to sort out the final facts of the matter.
Some people might actually regard fasting as posing health risks, although anyone unfamiliar with the subject also couldn't be clear on what those are. Vitamin deficiency, stomach problems? The second is mentioned more, when you tell people you practice fasting (per my experience, at least).
Oddly people who eat continuously throughout the day would actually routinely experience stomach problems, and I never do, because I eat moderate amounts of foods almost entirely as three meals. That was true before I tried out fasting too though. I'm unfamiliar with what it's like to regularly experience an upset stomach, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, or any problems with digesting food. By "regularly" I mean that I might eat something that speeds up my digestion process once a year, or every other year, or that makes me even sicker every half dozen years. That's not bad for eating a broad mix of local foods in Bangkok. The rest I essentially never experience. Some vegetables, legumes and beans, or high protein foods cause gas; that range of experience is familiar, especially as a former long-term vegetarian.
Fasting hasn't caused me any noticeable stomach problems, in those 25 days. I get hungry, but not like during the first three trials. That relates more to an empty feeling than other types of discomfort. Really empty; it's hard to describe. As of writing an initial draft of this, on day 2 of 5, I could go for most of an hour without being reminded that I am fasting, and the next day maybe even longer, but that's not to say that I felt no negative side effects. I was hungry, with a low energy level, but I might not notice either for awhile if I'm busy, or even watching a video.
In bodybuilding circles rapid fat loss is very desirable, but muscle tissue loss is a serious concern, so fasting can be applied, but only in limited forms and contexts. One of the main intros to this subject, that partly led me to explore fasting practices, was from one longevity related "biohacker" bringing it up, and one bodybuilder (Leo and Longevity and "Vigorous Steve," who isn't as far out there as his Youtuber brand name implies, but a little maybe).
Steve used fasting to rapidly resolve fatty liver disease, even though applying a fasting mimicking diet for weeks cost him plenty of muscle mass loss. Most of that muscle came back fast, and it seemed the very real health risk caused him to reconsider even trying to be as massive again (the 250 pound or up range, I think). Leo explored fasting as he did many longevity related pursuits. Steve feels absolutely certain that fasting does definitely reduce visceral body fat, from experiencing that, and perhaps Leo's direct experiential claims are harder to evaluate.
Most people in a Reddit fasting sub-forum I follow practice fasting mainly to lose weight, which makes sense. It's a somewhat radical approach, but it should work. Often people either struggle to make it through 24 hours there or else really swing for the fence and go straight to attempting 21 day fasts, which I see as unnecessarily difficult and risky. With more exposure people seem to settle on alternating fasting and eating, on a 2 or 3 day cycle, which they might refer to as "rolling 72s," the hour duration. Since the benefit of autophagy is said to "kick in" after 2 days I would think using a 3 day cycle might be better than 2. Or 4 would work; for me the second day is hardest in terms of hunger and the third is most disruptive for experienced energy level.
Few people would be familiar with how fasting isn't as unpleasant an experience after repeated exposure. I can compare it to how running can definitely seem distinctly unpleasant prior to more exposure than most people would ever experience, and then it's kind of pleasant, even addictive. I think fasting ends up being more neutral, not so difficult, and definitely not pleasant, but just normal over time.
Maybe level of discomfort can be comparable to when you get 5 or 6 hours sleep instead of 8 (which I don't do; I need my sleep, and I put my time in with sleep deprivation working night shifts when younger and raising young kids after that). For many people that's a normal trade-off, a way to go through life, so that eventually they wouldn't even notice feeling a bit hazy and off, after their body adjusts to it. At this point I'd much rather not eat for a day or two than try to function on 5 hours sleep.
My take on fasting benefits
I've really not been clear on how many benefits I buy into here, or which I seem to directly experience. That only works so well because the largest scale benefits you can't pin down, like reducing cancer or diabetes risk. Maybe I'm mentally clearer, but that's really hard to track too. So many things factor into that. My experience of digestion can't improve because I've never had problems, but it hasn't worsened.
Resetting my diet to a somewhat healthier form has definitely happened, but oddly I was eating a really healthy diet a year ago, before a first trial. There were a few snacks to shift to a healthier form, and I could've dialed in generally healthy food intake to a level that may be a bit extreme, and did so. I think all of that has supported taking my running habit a lot further over the past year, but again inputs and outcomes are complicated. I know that I've ran between 15 and 20 miles a week for all this year, but I can't trace that directly back to diet improvement; maybe I could've did the same eating worse instead of better. I feel like it helped my energy level when running, the metabolic flexibility theme, but who knows.
It's too bad I skipped my annual health check-up last year, due to being out of the country when my company conducts those, and probably will again this year; that would be a good way to track some change, potentially, and undergoing that is a good idea in general.
Fasting has changed how I experience an urge to snack between meals, which was always somewhat limited. I had switched from eating a bit of chocolate--or potato chips, if they were around--to some mixed nuts between meals around a year ago, and after fasting I tend to snack as a habit even less. Fasting highlights how much of that practice relates to immediate triggers, like seeing something, or to boredom, and it can become more normal to drop out both cycles.
In conclusion...
Fasting is an option? But then it always was.
I've taken up and set aside a lot of atypical practices over the course of my life, and it's interesting considering why others don't do those things, or when maybe more will, or I guess in some cases to what extent I'm making any sense at all. I was a vegetarian for 17 years, which I ended about a dozen years ago, due to not putting the right effort in to get it to balance, and experiencing immune system problems. Since then it has become a lot more mainstream.
I was into rock climbing in the early 90s, and thought this is so cool it will have to "take off," not noticing that it being gear intensive and difficult would probably prevent that (and has). I explored Buddhism for many years, but then I always knew that was for my own reasons, that there was never going to be broad uptake. This being a tea blog of course that pattern applies to that beverage choice too.
Fasting will probably never really have its day as a broad trend, at least not in the immediate future. People only need to skip breakfast and lunch to see why it's not a standard option; you get hungry. That gets worse on day two, even if it's much diminished on a third or fourth fasting experience. "Biohacking" is much more approachable; taking a lot of supplements and drugs. I get it. I'm not on that page myself but I get it.
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I reset to a healthier diet but it's still based on normal food |
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