Mental approach and state related to long term water fasting

I'm on day 4 of a 5 day water fast now, four full days without eating, counting that I started on Sunday evening and it's Thursday evening now.  For some people that's not that long a duration; they can extend it into multiple weeks.  5 or 7 days is pretty common for significant length water fasts though.

I'll get into what I consider to be a water fast, but I'll start with the point here.  Fasting requires an interesting mental approach, and it's interesting how your mental state plays out over 5 days, or more or less time.  Maybe it's what one would expect; it would depend on what you would expect.

Back to the definition of water fasting; there are a few, but the way I'm using it I will drink tea or herb tea, or diet soda, but nothing with any calorie content.  Of course some people limit it to water; that is implied in the term I'm using for it.  Some people drink coffee, but I drink mine with milk and sugar, and don't want to try to switch over on a very empty stomach.  

I don't drink a lot of diet soda when fasting, but I might have one or two.  I drank one so far; that will be it.  A local Thai producer, Singh, makes a nice diet lemon or orange soda that's a pleasant break from tasting nothing but tea for days.  I usually only drink herb tea a couple of times, but not because I see it as a negative input.  Related to tea I've found that I can only drink shou pu'er, some hei cha, and aged white tea, because those are easy on your stomach.  Shou is best.  Not because I like that type, because it's definitely not a favorite, but it works best.

Not to go too far into the how-to scope here, or probably at all into why to fast, but for the most part the only other thing I ingest is sodium, potassium, and magnesium electrolytes, or salts.  I use the chloride compound version of all of those, because they are readily accessible and the cheapest.  I don't eat much for vitamins; I did just take a multi-vitamin, but hadn't up until then.  The magnesium I take as a tablet (gel coated capsule, I guess that was), and the other two I mix into water and drink.  What dosage to take is pretty complicated; I'll skip that here.  I will say that it takes forever to get a decent input range sorted out, and it probably varies by person, and by what that person is experiencing.

Mental state

Someone on Reddit mentioned that the added mental tension or stress from not eating is part of the reason you benefit from it, which I found very interesting.  Their idea was that if you feel a constant tension for several days, and could resolve it completely just by eating, but don't, then the rest of your life feels that much less tense or stressful, because you conditioned to experience temporary but sustained stress.  I can't say for sure if that works, but maybe, or probably.

I really wanted to pass on more subjective experience description here, not theory on how it plays out, to say what it's like.  It changes as you gain exposure to fasting, so the first three times it's very different than after a number of fasts.  

This might be about 12 for me; I'm not keeping track (maybe just over a dozen, thinking it through more, or it could be 15, since I fasted a lot that first year).  I try to fast for 5 days 4 times a year, but this year I've only done it once earlier this year, so far, about seven months ago.  I spent about six months with my kids, in Honolulu and then in Bangkok, the two places where we live, and I limit activities like that while I'm around them.  It's nice eating with them, and cooking for them, so I just skip the practice, until later.  I'm living with Keoni now but not my daughter; he just graduated high school, so he's back in Bangkok, not returning to Honolulu for now.

a full sized child, kitten, and tea; these are important parts of my life now

In the beginning it's very stressful, and you experience more severe hunger and energy level disruption.  You think about food a lot more, and it causes more stress.  After a half dozen fasts you don't think about food very often, but an emptiness persists, and some degree of stress.

That's already pretty much the short version.  Somehow it seemed deeper than that, more complicated.  The form of the stress is unique.  People into fasting claim that you experience an unusual mental clarity, and I agree with that.  I can get way more work done if I'm on days 3, 4, or 5 of a fast than normal.  But I'm a little edgy too, prone to being short with people, so it comes at a cost.

I guess in general the starting points seem more important, and valid.  Why fast?  If it's just to experience stress then there would be lots of ways to add that to your life.  There is a list of conventionally accepted benefits, but those are impossible to verify, both by personal experience and through research.  They center around autophagy, a body process that clears out damaged cell material to use as resources, which is triggered by exercise, but all the more so by fasting.  All of this is conventional understanding; it's not easy to verify.  Supposedly it reduces risk of cancer and diabetes, and who knows what else.

There's not much that personal experience completely supports.  I feel a little mentally clearer since taking up fasting.  I seem to experience more energy when I run.  That would relate to metabolic flexibility, another benefit, related to your body adapting to use fat energy better.  I'm in ketosis right now; fat or muscle tissue is all the energy there is to keep my metabolism going.  Reserve glycogen seems to run out on day three, but again that's just another guess.

One very odd positive result occurred, that I can't fully connect:  around when I started fasting the grey hair I had then mostly returned to being colored again.  It seems a stretch, doesn't it?  And could even relate to improving general health, making limited changes to diet and exercise, or getting a bit more sleep.  There's no way to track the cause and effect.

So I may be fasting for nothing; the supposed benefits may not be real.  For plenty of others it's easy to accept what random web sources contribute, but for me it's not.  There's research on autophagy, but not so much on fasting effects.  It would be all but impossible to separate cause and effect in studies too.

Taking up another tangent, people might wonder if there aren't clear signs that the stress on your body is negative.  Wouldn't someone get sick more often, while not eating?  Kind of.  I get a minor sore throat sometimes, and sometimes taking some vitamin C clears that up, and at least once I've quit a fast because that seems to be a sign to.  In general not though.  

You feel stress, and hunger, and get a bit grumpy.  Energy level can vary some, but not at all like the crazy shifts for the first two to three fasts.  It would be better to start gradually, to minimize all of that, but of course I didn't.  I tried to fast for 5 days the first time, and figured out that not supplementing electrolytes wouldn't work.  I experienced common side effects, like problems sleeping, muscle cramping, and even perceived irregular heartbeat.  

Of course I quit that first fast when all of that came up.  I think that's an important part of it; striking a balance between being really committed to the fast and also being ok with giving it up if you feel sick, or if stress level goes too high.  I've been busy at work before and stopped a fast early; you have to keep track of how much stress still makes sense.

Now I can sleep fairly well, not so different than normally.  That is a bit odd, that not eating for days doesn't affect my sleep, at all.

Of course it makes you wonder if you aren't as sharp mentally, and might make some sort of mistake, driving, in work duties, or whatever else.  I minimize work impact by fasting on Wednesdays, normally, so the end of the fast is on the weekend.  I just said that the first half is worse, earlier on, but the first day is fine, and really only the second relates to more hunger.  Day three energy level varies, which isn't ideal, but starting a fast on Saturday would cause that on a Monday, which also wouldn't be great.  This week I'm fasting Monday to Friday, because my son stays with me, so I want to eat when he does on the weekend.

Update after the fast; how it went

It's Friday evening now, when I was scheduled to end the fast.  I'll often pull the plug two hours early, related to the time I took the last bite five days ago, going from dinner to dinner over those days.  It often works out that I ended eating at 7:30 or 8 to start, and it makes no sense to wait until 8 to eat to really fulfill that 120 hours (5x24).  Plenty of people approach it that way though, which is fine.

Today I ate at lunch; it might have only been 112, so hardly over 4 1/2 days.  Work has been really intense this week, involving a lot of productivity, meetings, and need to think a lot, and I wanted to be a little sharper for Friday afternoon.  I already knew that within the first hour or two after eating your body is kind of focused on digestion, with blood sugar from that only becoming available as it gets processed, so you don't snap right back to normal.  But it sort of worked; I could do work that last half of the day without counting down to when I would eat.

This fast seemed a little harsher than usual.  Taking 7 months off seemed to leave me less acclimated.  Or so I'm guessing; the busy work-week probably didn't help.  I was in a car accident the day before I started the fast, which was minor, so not a concern, but the stress level from that didn't make for a great start, going into it less relaxed.

I walked a lot less than I usually do.  Often I'll see a fast as a great time to get lots of steps in, because any energy used comes out of fat, and I'm not mainly doing it to lose weight, but I could use to lose a few pounds.  I'm up close to 80 kg or 180 pounds now, maybe a bit under both, and at 1.7 m / 5' 7" that's not so heavy, but it's more than I weighed in my 40s and earlier 50s.  I run, and less body weight is better, less stress on everything.

I'm not running now, for the last two weeks, because my right foot isn't ok, experiencing what seems to be an early start on bone spurs.  I've been running on it for three months anyway, just cutting back, but for pretty much every running injury I get that pattern plays out, that I cut distance and intensity back, and then only heal when I take a break for a few weeks, or a month.  So I'm not walking that much now either, but some.

What lessons did I learn?  Even after dozens of days of fasting, maybe 60 to 80?, the experience can still vary.  It's great if you can experience very little stress, and some unproductive time.  Ordinary life is harder during fasting.  I think it helps a lot with my mental clarity the rest of the time, and general health, so it's probably still a positive trade off, across lots of dimensions of my life.

Fasting basics, and a bit more on background and approach

this picture has food in it, but relaxing in nature with tea could be helpful while fasting

I mentioned that fasting may have improved my health in relation to aging aspects in a Reddit thread, and in a second comment covered basics on how to fast.  It all works as a great summary of the topic.  

Let's start with the first part, what seemed to improve as a result of fasting practice:

I'm really also pursuing health instead of avoiding aspects related to aging, or longevity related "biohacking." But I tried out fasting awhile back (maybe 2 1/2 years ago), and it seemed to make a difference. Now I try to fast for 5 days at a time 4 times per year.

It's hard pushing that to the next level for description, listing out likely benefits. I think I'm a little mentally clearer, and my energy level seems more stable, especially when running. That second part is a reference to metabolic flexibility; people are said to be able to use fat energy better when they routinely experience ketosis.

It's possible that it is offsetting other aging effects, but not in a way I can clearly link and justify. The few grey hairs I had mostly returned to being colored. That could've been for some other reason though; I exercised more around the same time, adjusted diet, and added a bit of supplementation to help with exercise recovery. My health checkup blood markers have all improved somewhat, but I'd expect exercise to be related to that.

Then someone asked about the details, in the form of these questions:

Curious about your fasting. Water only? For how long? How do you transition back to food?

My answer ran a bit long, since it seemed I could cover a few other basics, beyond those three questions:

Past 3 days you really need to supplement electrolytes, but that's it, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. People who fast often tend to drink things with no calories, and I drink tea or herb teas / tisanes, and sometimes a diet soda, but not often. I've never heard of anyone trying to eat something solid with no calories; that's not typical fasting. People avoid eating a single calorie, even though eating 10 to 20 might not re-trigger digestion response.

I try to fast 4 times a year for 5 days at a time. There's no clear reason for why 5 days at once or 20 days per year would be optimum; people sort out what they think will work on their own. Autophagy, a recycling process for inactive cells or damaged cellular material, is said to peak at or after 48 hours, but autophagy routinely happens to some extent, and that kind of hearsay input is only so reliable.

Transitioning back to food is a lot more difficult when you fast for 2 or 3 weeks, instead of 5 to 7 days. You can still get it wrong fasting for 5 days, but that has only happened to me once. I would normally eat a burger and fries to resume eating, but a natural version of it, using quality meat (pork; I live in Thailand and we don't eat much beef here), decent bread, home-made fries, often from sweet potatoes, and vegetables, spinach and tomato.

I once quit early for some reason and ate McDonald's food instead, thinking it would also work, but it didn't, and it took a couple of days to get past severe diarrhea. Beyond that, not eating fast food or junk, which is kind of common sense, people advise to avoid sugar. Probably moderating fiber right away would be as well, although you can eat a normal amount of it.

One benefit of fasting that may not be so intuitive is that it changes your relationship with food. The habitual eating, or "food noise," drops out. Not on the first couple of fasts, but eventually it does. You can reset to a better diet. You can only make so much change at one time, or it won't stick, but over the course of a few fasts you could completely reset what you eat and your related eating habits, and it wouldn't seem nearly as difficult as making extreme changes while still eating.

One potential negative, depending on how people see it, is that I think my metabolism might have slowed slightly, that I eat a little less and maintain the same body weight. I've gained weight in the last 2 1/2 years, but I've been exercising a lot, and I think it's mostly muscle weight. People discuss a risk of losing muscle mass during fasts but I'm certain that I don't. 5 days isn't that long a time period, and my body would have access to protein in my digestive system the first day.

To make it easier people recommend switching to a very low carbohydrate diet for a couple of days prior to the fast. Not necessarily to enter ketosis, but that is the general idea. An extreme version of that would be to not eat any carbs at all for 4 to 5 days, and you might enter ketosis then. If you are already using only fat and protein for energy, and mostly fat, it should be easier to switch to using body fat, in theory.

Later on you really do seem to take on greater "metabolic flexibility," an ability to use different energy sources, or at least it seems to me that I never feel any energy issues when I run, which I attribute to this. I'll run for 12 km for routine outings (3 times every 8 or 9 days) and energy level is never an issue, even though I'm 57, and everything works a little less effectively at this age.

And that's most of it.  I could add a little about what tea I tend to drink, given this is a tea blog, but that doesn't run long, because most types seem not to work well.  I can drink shou / shu pu'er, and sometimes go with aged white tea.  I would guess that some forms of hei cha would also be fine, and I've had positive results experimenting with that, but it would depend on the type.  Harsher Liu Bao wouldn't work at all, and milder Fu zhuan would probably be fine.

I think herb teas / tisanes are even more flexible, that few of those would upset your stomach.  I experience great results from drinking those, but I think it might be mostly because I'll brew a couple of rounds of a large mug of one, and drinking an extra liter of water is probably helpful.  You really should drink at least 3 liters a day while fasting, more than it feels natural to drink, and a full gallon (around 4 liters) is more the optimum people recommend.  Your body is said to use a lot of water by processing energy through ketosis.  

Again all of this is hearsay, which can only be confirmed so effectively through experimentation.  But I can notice that if I don't drink a lot of water I suffer negative effects, and that it takes a lot of electrolyte input to seem to balance that factor.  It's on the order of 1 to 2 grams per day of both sodium and potassium; an awful lot.  You don't need that much magnesium; maybe 400 mg.  All of this isn't dosing recommendations, and I suspect what works best for people would vary by a lot of factors, like body size, local climate (if they're sweating), rate of metabolism, energy use, and so on.  

Some people probably become very inactive while fasting, even though it works well for me to walk a good bit while not eating.  It's relaxing, and it takes my mind off not eating.  My thinking is that light activity helps over the first couple of days to switch over to full ketosis, so I'm not going through that adjustment period for three days, which seems to be the normal time-frame.  I've experimented with running while fasting, and that's fine, I can, but I suspect recovery is impacted, taking in no protein for days.  So I've never really pushed it, never running too far.  Maybe only 2+ miles / 4 km to test it out?

From there other factors seem vague.  People might try to do more meditation, to lean into a more spiritual side of the experience, or at least to offset anxiety that might come from the mild underlying stress of not eating.  I first fasted based on someone telling me that they fast for spiritual purposes, to replicate what yogis and Jesus experienced.  Maybe there's something to all of that.  It's a profound feeling experience.  I can't do it justice by description, and it takes a few fasting trials for the early stress to settle out, and for hunger experience to subside, so that you get on to experiencing different dimensions of it.

Then people might discuss how to deal with that stress and the "intrusive thoughts" part better, food noise.  All of that just varies by person, and largely drops out with more exposure, again after a few fasts.  Hunger experience really is extreme and novel the first 2 or 3 times.  I don't mean the psychological expectation either; your body is unfamiliar with the process, and doesn't know to drop the hunger trigger in the same way.  Put another way, in physiological terms, you seem to produce a lot more ghrelin in those early trials, and your digestion response doesn't slow down at all, instead increasing, but later on it's the opposite, and you don't think of food much, or hear your stomach growl, and experience gas, and so on. 

I guess one last part I didn't cover is that I recommend people start with no more than 24 hours duration.  Of course I didn't; I tried to start with 5 days, and then failed after three, when I noticed that you experience severe symptoms from not supplementing electrolytes, like trouble sleeping, muscle cramps, and what seem to be heart palpitations, an irregular heartbeat.  But it would probably be so much easier to do a couple of 24 hour fasts, then a couple of 48 hour versions, then 3 days, then 4, and so on.  I've never made it much past 5; a different form of acclimation seems to apply to go beyond that.  I'm sure with a few trials it would be fine, but for me 5 days covers what I'm pursuing, hopefully triggering an autophagy / health maintenance response.

Two more tangents

I could probably keep considering extra tangents at length.  I've participated in discussions of fasting practice and experience in a Reddit sub for a few years now (where there is a good electrolytes wiki reference), r/fasting, so parts keep coming up.  I'll stop at two last points, the first related to the input of artificial sweeteners.  Are those ok?  

People are in two different camps related to that.  One group thinks that those could potentially trigger an insulin release, which would be a bad thing, and that at a minimum their purpose in fasting is to avoid chemical inputs.  As an example, some people think taking a multivitamin makes a lot of sense, since you are skipping ingesting all nutrition, and others see it as a sort of cleanse function to keep intake of everything to an absolute minimum.  

No one really knows if there is a negative effect from drinking a diet soda, or sweetening tea with stevia or aspartame.  I mean related to fasting, but I guess there is also a broader concern about these things.  I've drank nearly a dozen artificially sweetened drinks over the last 2 1/2 years while fasting and notice no negative effects.  That's not much of a sample size, and the opposite of a well-controlled review process.

The other subject is perhaps the trickiest part of fasting, getting electrolytes sorted out (beyond not eating when you are hungry).  This problem comes in a few parts:  

-how much sodium, potassium and magnesium do you need?

-does it matter which compounds provide those, and which are optimum?

-what is the best intake form (eg. in a drink solution, should that be flavored, what can you take in a pill form, or what won't work in that form)?

-how frequently should you ingest it, or put another way, what dose can you tolerate at one time?

1.  (amount of electrolytes):  The wiki reference in the r/fasting sub provides input on this, but the high end of the suggested range there is awfully high (many grams of both sodium and potassium).  People need to experiment and sort out what works for them.  I've already mentioned a general range, about 1 to 2 grams each of sodium and potassium, and about 400 mg of magnesium per day.  That's not advice, not even offered as a starting point, just mention of the general range.  It's a lot.

Later editing note:  they updated that page (here), and deleted that whole section recommending both an input range for electrolytes and how to mix a batch of "snake juice" to drink over the day.  What they have replaced it with doesn't give much of a recommendation:

That citation is about diet (eating food), not really tied to fasting (it mentions food twice).  That citation is from editing yesterday (Feb. 15, 2026) and today the advice is different again:

It keeps improving.  I would take any advice with a grain of salt, so in a sense it doesn't matter that the page has shown three different forms of input, perhaps over as many months.

One thing to keep in mind is that you are trying to ingest a certain dosage of sodium (for example), not necessarily sodium chloride.  The chloride part may work out to be essential, for all I know, but it's necessary to keep straight that calculating input of sodium, and the others, requires some way to account for the other part of the salt compound, what that contributes to weight (dose).  

2. (which compounds to take):  for sodium it's down to sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).  I don't like the taste of baking soda in a salt solution, so I only use table salt.  For potassium the main form you run across is potassium chloride, so that's what I use, but it's not the only form.  You can buy it as a table salt replacement in grocery stores; I've bought it in Wal-Mart in the US and Tops in Thailand.  It costs almost nothing, and works well as a supplement to balance out your electrolyte input when you aren't fasting.

Then magnesium is where things get complicated.  I use magnesium oxide, because it's the cheapest, but people recommend different versions, or recommend avoiding different versions.  Over and over people say one compound has a strong laxative effect and another is relatively optimum, it just might not match which they prefer.  It would work to look up discussions in that group (sub) to use as input, maybe as a sort of voting process, going with what people tend to say the most.  Using a search function in any social media group is an extreme step, but it would work.

3.  (best intake form):  you can just take magnesium as a pill; that dose is so low that it wouldn't be a problem.  It might be nice if you could take it in the morning and then a couple of hours before bed, because it's said to support sleep.  

The other two, sodium and potassium, are harder.  The standard approach is to make up a solution of quite a bit of water and those salts and drink that throughout the day.  It seems to work well for me to treat that as a meal, to drink some at breakfast, lunch, and dinner time, and some in the evening.  Too much at one time causes a strong laxative effect, but breaking it into four parts offsets that.

People tend to not mention other tricks or approaches very much.  Since you don't eat anything there's no way to couple it with food, and it would make limited sense to drink a very salty version of coffee or tea.  I've mixed it with tisanes before, and that's promising, but it's too much extra work.  If you use a base flavor tisane and dried citrus rind, and a little sweetener (stevia, some chemical form, whatever) it is a bit like gatorade.  You need to keep drinking a lot of water to help process it, and support energy use from fat through ketosis.  Experimenting with what works for you seems critical.

4.  (maximum electrolyte dose at one time):  Again you'd need to experiment to sort this out.  I'm sure that ingesting a gram each of sodium and potassium at one time would go badly, for almost anyone, so you need to break it up into at least 3 different intakes, and 4 might work better, or others might prefer a half dozen.  

You might think a laxative effect wouldn't be possible, after 3 or 4 days without eating, but you would be wrong.  Apparently your body continues to release a limited amount of digestive fluid, which may drop with acclimation, so you can experience multiple very odd, liquid bowel movements over a 5 day period.  Ingesting a lot of salt / electrolyte at one time triggers that.  Not just magnesium either; the other two can have that effect.

In general my stomach feels better than one would expect; I have few problems or issues.  If I were to drink green tea or black coffee maybe that wouldn't be true.  I've had no problems with any tisanes, so it doesn't work to recommend which work best.

Conclusions

All of this went a little light on the benefits part, but I think that would vary by person, and my input would seem like claims that I really can't support.  Did it offset aging effects?  It seems so, but who knows.  Do I experience more metabolic flexibility, more energy while running due to more efficient fat use?  The same.  And mental clarity is the same; maybe that improved, but it's hard to identify, and impossible to be clear on causes.

I also skipped over lots of negative effects that occur in those first few trials.  Beyond being desperately hungry I experienced energy level fluctuations, sleepiness, dizziness, trouble focusing, and boredom.  I would go with my wife to a market or restaurant and that really heightened the desire to eat.  By the 4th or 5th fast all of that was moderate, and by the 10th or 12th I wouldn't be reminded that I was even fasting many times in a day.

There are periods of mental clarity and productivity that happen, after some exposure, that are also hard to describe.  At times I can get 6 hours worth of creative work done in an hour.  It's hard to focus or channel that; it happens when it happens.  It's possible to stay busier than normal, over the entire fast, but past a certain stress level it all seems to crash.  It adds some underlying stress, so you have to be careful.  You don't need to moderate the demands on your time and productivity, but you can't push it too far either.

Fasting introduction; how to water fast for multiple days

 

shou / shu pu'er is best for fasting, very mild on your stomach

This topic came up in online discussion recently, one that I've written quite a bit about here.  Earlier posts were never really designed as a short introduction and how-to, so to supplement that other discussion I'll write that out here.  To be clear I might have only fasted for a total of 60 days or so, so I'm definitely no expert, really only getting started myself.  

Before getting into that I think a couple of preliminary factors apply:

1.  Why fast?

That discussion was about potential anti-aging benefits, and I guess that is one reason.  I've almost entirely reversed my experience of greying hair, probably from this input, over the course of the first year, or maybe less.  Of course I didn't take up fasting for that reason.  It is claimed to reduce risk of severe illnesses, especially cancer and diabetes, and it was partly about that.  But who knows about that, really.

It's also supposed to improve energy level, especially metabolic flexibility, use of internal fat for metabolism.  And to improve mental clarity, which I guess could've happened, but it's hard to track.  And it's hard to separate causes; I've been exercising more than ever and eating a better diet since I started fasting, about 2 1/2 years ago.  

Of course people also fast for weight loss, but that often may not work as well as expected.  I think my metabolism may have slowed slightly, related to fasting practices, and I've gained a few pounds in that 2 1/2 years.  It could just be muscle mass gain; I am exercising quite a bit, running 20 miles per week most weeks, swimming more than ever, and dabbling in pickleball most recently.

a picture from my running route this week; it's nice here, in Honolulu

2.  Are there risks?

There are risks related to almost everything, including fasting.  In general it's accepted as very safe to fast, by fasting practitioners, but it's probably not safe to fast for 3 days or longer without supplementing electrolytes (sodium, potassium, and magnesium).  Low levels of those will cause low energy level, headaches, muscle cramps, brain fog, dizziness, and problems sleeping.  

How much to supplement, and in what form, is quite complicated.  You can't take pills to supplement salts (what those are), because the volume is too high, and any type of tablet form could become stuck to the lining of your stomach and cause a problem.  Magnesium might be the exception to that; you only need to supplement about 400 mg a day of that, versus 1 to 2 grams of the other two (with that requirement varying by different factors).

I definitely wouldn't recommend ramping up fasting practices quickly; it would be better to give your body time to adjust to the new experiences.  Some degree of hunger experience is normal, of course, and also disrupted energy level and mental focus.  After 2 or 3 trials of an extended fast all of that subsides quite a bit, and your mental clarity actually improves, energy level is quite consistent, even high.  Later hunger experience takes on a completely different form, much reduced in intensity.

This isn't a comprehensive listing of risks.  Specific pre-existing conditions could connect with more serious risks.  In case of any concerns consulting a doctor would be best.

General approach

There's not so much to it; you supplement electrolytes, drink plenty of water, and don't eat.  Most people will consume coffee, tea, or tisanes (herb teas), and some will drink diet sodas, while others won't.  Anything containing next to no calories won't break a fast.  Something like adding lemon slices to water might constitute a grey area; there is some calorie input in that, so most people who fast wouldn't do this, but it probably wouldn't change much.  Discussion of bone broth as an input comes up; if that contains any calories, as it generally would, that would break the fast.  I won't take vitamin C tablets that contain 10 calories, typically, but I suppose in a special case I might make an exception, if my throat felt a little sore, for example.

The concern isn't necessarily the idea of pure fasting, instead that ingesting any calories could trigger hunger response and digestive system activity, even when that's as limited as a cough drop.  It's as well to err on the lower side.  Some people would continue taking multi-vitamins, and other supplements, and some see it as a good time to take a break from those, as something along the line of a "detox," a concept typically not utilized by most in discussion of fasting, per my experience.

To begin fasting one might do well to employ a staged approach, trying out limited period eating first (within a 4 hour window, for example), then 24 hour fasts, on to two days, and so on.  There is no need to try 3 to 4 days on an early attempt.  I did, but I'm communicating this to help others learn from my mistakes.  Experience of hunger over the first 48 hours is severe, and it doesn't decrease much over the next 2 or 3 days.  Your body can adjust to use body fat as an effective energy source, which is very readily available, there just for that purpose, but you need to condition yourself to do so.

How to supplement electrolytes

This is a lot more complicated than it probably first seems.  A first inclination is to buy a pre-mixed, flavored, pre-measured packet, like LMNT products.  That could work.  Even using this approach someone should consult a decent reference about daily requirements in relation to fasting, because the included levels may not be optimized for that.  

This Reddit fasting sub wiki could be helpful.  I think that recommendation range is a bit high, extending up to 6 grams a day of sodium and 4.7 grams of potassium.  My guess is that few people could tolerate anywhere near those amounts.  Everyone would need to experiment to see what works best for them anyway, probably starting much lower in the range.  Their magnesium recommendation of 300-400 mg per day seems about right, and that may be somewhat universally applicable.  The low end of the range they recommend, on the order of a gram a day for both sodium and potassium, might work for a starting point.  Note that this would be the weight of the sodium and potassium in the related compounds, not the amount of total salt, including the "chloride" or whatever else.

It's possible to use very common, inexpensive sources for these salts.  Sodium can be consumed as table salt, or alternatively from baking soda.  Potassium is most typically encountered as potassium chloride, although there must be other forms.  Magnesium is more complicated, since many people report experiencing strong laxative effects from some forms.  It all requires more consideration and review than I'll try to support here.  In theory food-grade versions of epsom salt could supplement magnesium, but that form, magnesium sulfate, may really act as a stronger laxative than other compound versions.

That Reddit sub wiki recommends making up a "snake juice" daily supplementation mix and drinking that, along with extra water intake.  That does work, but drinking salt water can seem a bit rough, even diluted forms.  I've experimented with variations of that practice, and for me it works best to drink a good bit sort of as meals, 3 to 4 times a day.  For sure even sodium and potassium can act as a powerful laxative if you ingest too much too quickly; everyone taking up fasting has that experience at some point.  I can't stand the taste of baking soda in such a mix; that kind of factor enters in.  

Flavoring that mix might be promising, but many people adjust to tolerating it without that step.  There are two schools of thought about stevia and artificial sweetener input, which could relate to this.  One take is that it can cause an insulin release response, and the other is that it probably doesn't.  I don't drink much for sweetened tisanes or diet sodas but I've not noticed any related effects when I have, any problems of any kind.

Muscle cramps are one clear sign that your electrolyte balance is off, or trouble sleeping could be.  I sleep well while fasting, in general, but while exploring electrolyte supplementation I often didn't.

Drinking a lot of water seems crucial.  Some people report good results from drinking an awful lot, much more than 2 liters a day, so I suppose it comes down to personal judgment and experimentation.

Limitations of fasting, related practices

You can exercise while fasting; that seems to work.  I keep intensity moderate, and have evolved practice to use it as a good time for a break from running, but I do tend to walk a lot while I fast.  It keeps my energy level up, and helps me shift over to the experience ketosis faster over the first two days.

In fasting circles discussion the main restriction is on discussing that you are fasting, with anyone, under any circumstances.  I don't observe this, but I get it.  Some people are put off by it, and in one discussion account their company's HR department required them to stop the fast.  It's a judgment call.  People do have an aversion to practices that are completely unfamiliar to them, so in general discussing fasting isn't met with acceptance or interest.

I work well while fasting; the busier I stay the easier it is, and my productivity level can be even higher than when I'm not fasting.  The extra mental clarity, after you adjust to it, is really something to experience.  Flashes of creative insight and productivity can be quite an experience, surpassing what I almost ever go through at other times.

How long someone can or should fast is relatively open, or duration over time.  It depends on the purpose.  People trying to lose weight describe fasting for up to 3 weeks or so in that fasting group; beyond that many report relatively severe side effects, or some in even less time.  Most people there adopt periodic fasting instead, like rotating 3 or 4 day fasting and eating periods (rolling 48s or 72s).  

This is just my take, but it would intuitively seem necessary to eat a very nutritionally balanced diet while trying to pull that off, during the days that one eats, including plenty of protein, healthy fats, and micronutrients.  Additionally supplementation through multi-vitamins might make a lot of difference.  I wouldn't undertake such a practice myself, but then I've not been trying to lose weight.

I fast for 5 days at a time, generally 4 times per year.  For someone trying to maximize or optimize the types of inputs I'm going after, improved general health, and experience of autophagy (cellular recycling), that might be sufficient, or alternating 4 day fasts every other month could be a next further step.  Maybe someone could obtain most of the same benefits only fasting every 6 months, for that same period, 5 days.  To me it helps to not go too long in between fasts to retain the acclimation to the experience.

Other sub-themes

There are so many other related sub-themes one might venture into.  Is it dangerous to break a fast by eating a lot of sugar, or too much food?  Yes, but not so much for shorter fasts, for a period of a week or less.  You definitely should break a fast by eating healthy food though, no junk food, fast food, or high sugar content foods.  Even very high fiber it would be best to avoid, resetting your digestive system with easy to process, balanced foods.  I often broke fasts by eating a healthy version of a burger and fries, so it doesn't need to be so healthy, or as easy to digest as rice soup.  Then I tried it using McDonald's food once, when time was tight, and it took days for my digestive system to recover.  I guess I had that coming, for straying so far from common sense.

Drinking bone broth comes up as a topic, both in relation to a question about whether it would break a fast (it would; even minimal calorie input breaks a fast), and related to a potential input to re-start digestion.  If someone fasts for two weeks or longer you need to re-feed in a much more careful, controlled way, or it really can be quite dangerous.  In such a case using bone broth as a gradual resumption of digestion could work well, according to plenty of discussion input.  But this is a topic I have no first-hand experience with, to be clear; I've only ever fasted for five days at a time.

People ask about what can offset hunger when fasting, if drinking water or salt-water might work, or if there are other "hacks."  It can't hurt to drink a little water or salt-water, but in general the hunger experience is just part of it, kind of unavoidable.  It subsides after 2 or 3 trials, but in those first rounds it's rough.  Your stomach might rumble or produce some gas, and thoughts of food don't quiet down.  Again I think gradually building up to longer periods--5 days; not multi-week fasts--might help.  To me there is no reason why one would need to go further, why fasting for a week or longer would make sense.  Autophagy is said to peak at or after 48 hours, so a 5 day break goes plenty beyond that.

Even though I've said that I've not used fasting for weight loss I can pass on speculation about how that might work.  I reset my diet to be just a little cleaner and healthier after every fast, and I think an approach like this could work.  You could reset, re-start eating, at a slight calorie deficit, switching to 1800-2000 calories per day, if you normally eat more.  You might just reset your metabolism to be slower, instead of inducing gradual weight loss, so it might work as an option to try dropping to 1500 calories for a couple of extra weeks.  Given that fasting could cause micro-nutrient gaps restarting diet to be much healthier than normal would make sense, especially if the idea is to eat less.  If you wake up and eat a few frozen waffles with syrup and then skip eating until dinner your diet will be essentially empty.

One main theme that people lean into in a fasting sub (group) is drawing on support from others to continue a fast, often supported by using an app to track fasting time.  I don't do any of that.  I wouldn't need a timer counting down hours across a period of five days, because I already know exactly when I started.  It wouldn't help me to know that a few internet strangers were also not eating at the same time.  But I don't think that my own approach and preferences are necessarily better for any reason.

I'm also not careful about making sure that I fast for the entire 120 hours (5 days); I tend to start a fast after dinner the first day, and eat a normal dinner on the last, so I would really only fast for 4 days and 22 hours, or so.  These types of practices and preferences vary by person; I get it why crossing the actual finish line makes a lot of difference for most people, as a personal victory.  I would just as soon not re-start eating right before sleeping on that last day, so those kinds of concerns also factor in.

I've not mentioned when I would stop a fast, under what circumstances.  If I feel sick I might, unless symptoms are very mild.  If something feels off I would stop.  I've started to get sick before, the stage prior to the normal symptoms, sore throat and such, and resuming eating a day or two early has seemed to cut short that illness experience to follow.

The only times fasting has seemed to cause atypical health issues seemed to relate to getting electrolyte supplementation wrong, early on.  Experience of an irregular heartbeat is especially concerning; when that occurs I would stop the fast.  I have experienced plenty of hunger, of course, and energy level fluctuation and limited dizziness is normal.  If I feel off drinking a round of tisane (herb tea) seems to correct for that.  In some cases I may just be getting behind on hydration, so that it's really the water in the herb tea that's making the difference.  Drinking a bit of salt water, supplementing some extra sodium and potassium, will often make a difference.  I tend to take magnesium as tablets or capsules, a couple of times a day, so it's easy to keep up with that input.

Conclusions

I don't tend to recommend fasting often because it's just too extreme a practice for most people.  Maybe not as much in other cultures with that practice as a component, but most Thais and Americans certainly can't relate to it.  Since I don't really recommend it for weight loss, as covered here, it's hard to suggest with certainty that it's great for general health, even though that is my understanding.  I think my general mental clarity has improved since fasting, and again I lost the experience of greying hair, which may well connect with other forms of internal systems health that is less obvious.

It's a little harder than I've let on, especially for the first 2 or 3 fasts.  Hunger experience is profound.  I think someone could avoid most of that by using a staged, progressive approach, as I've described.  Now when fasting I can go hours of the day without thinking about food at all.  The sharp, intense experience of hunger no longer occurs, and a dull empty feeling is quite diminished.  It does add some tension, or light underlying mental stress, that never completely goes away.  I find this comparable to the off feeling related to being jet-lagged; something isn't completely normal, for days.  Over time being jet-lagged seems normal to you though, and so does fasting experience, to an extent.

Optimum timing would vary by schedule demands, and how someone relates to different phases of the experience.  To me the first day is very easy, the second sometimes relates to the most experience of hunger, and on day three adjustment of energy level can occur.  Then days 4 and 5 tend to be easier, but mental tension can increase a little.  It seemed to work out well to start fasting on a Wednesday, on work-weeks, because that day is the easiest, and weathering Friday was the main concern.  Then fasting on off-work days was easy, because I could add a nap to offset energy issues, or make the time go faster, and watch more video content to stay distracted.

I think in the future fasting will become much more accepted, in "the West," but not any time soon. We're just not there yet.  Isolated positive accounts will continue to enter into public awareness, but it will probably take years for this kind of experience to become more mainstream.  It's trending more lately, and plenty of health-guru types now recommend it, especially more science-oriented examples of that broad type, like Huberman and the like.  Even so I think people will take up easier versions of their trend-oriented recommendations first, like trying to get some sun exposure in the morning, or ice baths.  It's much easier to exercise than to fast, and a little of that exposure goes a long way for general health.

Four-day fasting update; cooking while fasting, home-made Gatorade

I posted about a recent planned 5 day fast in a Reddit fasting sub, cut short to 4 days, which I'll also share here as an update.  The part about making a variation of Gatorade to make the electrolytes more pleasant (sodium and potassium salts) was interesting to me.

It's not a new theme, trying out tisane blends during fasting, but this worked better than earlier attempts. I used lime from the garden, about a quarter of a normal size lime worth, since they were tiny, and stevia for sweetness, along with a bit of jasmine green tea. Then I mixed some of the nasty salt water I've been drinking with that, and it was fine, actually delicious. I drank most of that salt water the normal way though, just working through it.

they're an unusual variation of a lime, maybe even a small type of orange

The first and second days were easier than ever, with less experience of hunger than before. Really that was true of the 3rd through 5th fasts, just in a different sense. Energy level and productivity at work didn't seem disrupted at all (I started on a Thursday, so the crux would be over the weekend). On-site office work ran late on Friday, and I didn't get out until 7, and it was fine.

There isn't much for approach or hacks to pass on. I drank electrolytes without monitoring amounts over the first two days, which is not ideal, just mixing some Less Salt and salt into water a few times a day, and taking magnesium capsules. It's better to figure out how much sodium, potassium, and magnesium intake works for you and mix up a daily drink mix, it's just easier to carry a bit of salt to work than the liquid. I had a calf cramp in the night after the second day; I was probably a little low on potassium, so I went back to a measured approach the next morning.

For me the middle range of electrolytes seems to work out, based on the sodium and potassium recommendations in that Reddit fasting sub reference, just over 2 grams each, with sodium slightly higher. For magnesium taking a supplement pill in the morning and evening seems to work well, adding up to more than they recommend there, but not a crazy amount.

I only drank that one tisane the whole time, that one I thought of as a variation of Gatorade, but perhaps it wasn't that close.  Some people would avoid anything but water and the salts, to really lean into the detox theme, but to me drinking some tisane / herb tea is fine, surely not all that impactful or toxic.  It's a helpful way to be able to experience "eating" something, to settle your stomach, and it helps with reminding you to stay hydrated, versus drinking liters of plain water a day.

For tea I drank shou pu'er in the morning on the first three days, a bit of green tea and tisanes at work the second day, and aged white tea, shou mei, on the last day.  Not lots of any of those teas either; one Western brewing round's worth of shou I split over two days of brewing.

I can do light exercise while fasting, and walked about 3km / 1 1/2 miles as part of a commute on the second day.  In general I limit jogging to 2 miles, nowhere near a routine run, but I was so busy with other things that I didn't run.

I cooked during the fast; that was odd.  On two different days too, making up food to bring to a set of cousins who are in poor health.  I made chicken and dumpling soup, home-made meatballs and spaghetti, and lots of steamed vegetables.  

I ended up going to a grocery store two days in a row, and a bakery on one of them; it's as well to not be around food that much, if it works out not to.  I cooked so much that my mother-in-law and I can eat that for a few days too.  Of course it increased my hunger level some, and I think my stomach producing more digestive fluids came with another odd side effect the next day, as something to expel.  Fasting can be strange like that though, the odd extra body function here or there.

It went great.  The main story line, to me, was being able to stay ridiculously busy and productive while not eating for four days, and feeling mostly normal while doing it.

Why even fast?  I've covered all that in a half dozen earlier update posts.  It's not to lose weight; I didn't weigh myself, and we don't have a scale at our house.  There are lots of likely health benefits, especially related to reducing diabetes risk, eliminating fat content in internal organs, and between them, and offsetting cancer and other risks, through the process of autophagy, your body recycling and using inactive cells for an energy source.  I'm not absolutely convinced it works as promoted, because accounts of all that seem to stop short of research findings about that process, but it probably is quite healthy for you.

It also works as a diet reset.  My diet is pretty good, so there's only so much change to be made, but I think that's probably the main potential benefit for most people.  You can easily recognize when eating habits only relate to triggers, or habitual patterns, and it stands out when genuine hunger cues drive the process instead.  

You are hungry the whole time during a multi-day fast, to an extent, but it's a different form of hunger, more just feeling empty, and I'm talking more about relationship with foods and eating than just that one part.  Fasting helps you reset approach to diet, and eating habits, in ways that are hard to describe.  Or you can go right back to eating junk all the time, but it gives you that short window of opportunity to make a limited amount of changes.

I think fasting helps with my mental clarity, but that part can be vague, and people might seem to experience whatever they expect to.  When people describe how pleasant fasting can be, experiencing unusual clarity and euphoria, I can't really relate to all that, but I think I am slightly clearer mentally as a result, afterwards and even during the fast.

back to my normal diet!  jk; this place is new in Bangkok.

the latest theme is travel; I'll get back to that

Fasting for 5 days, running, and meditation

 

I'm trying out fasting again, for the fifth time.  Twice before I fasted for 5 days, and two other times I stopped before that due to problems, probably mostly related to electrolyte balance.

A main point:  why do it?  It was always to experiment with the experience, to see if some of the associated health benefits seem to occur.  Weight loss wasn't necessarily one of those, for me.  I did gain a little weight over the last two years, up from 71 kg to 74, from around 156 pounds to 163, but that seems fine, even though I have bit of a gut.  It's claimed that fasting can improve mental clarity, and initiate autophagy, which can remove some visceral fat, some fat problematically located actually inside or around internal organs, and even potentially lower cancer risk.  Who knows; some research I checked indicates there could be something to a lot of that, but research findings don't seem to confirm most of it.  Of that list you might only notice the mental clarity; I don't think it's possible to change pants size.

To me the main benefits have been serving as a reset for diet habits and improving metabolic flexibility, my body's ability to use fat for energy.  How would I notice that, without fasting, and judging degree of suffering from switching to ketosis?  My energy level when running seems better, more continuous and consistent.  Of course if a meal runs late, or I miss one, then that doesn't seem like a problem, related to acclimation.  

My diet wasn't terrible before but the few fasting trials helped me dial it in to be closer to optimum, very low on sugar and other junk foods, based on very limited between meal snacking, and only moderate sized normal meals.  I eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, limited meat, eggs, and dairy (so I actually supplement protein a little), including diverse rice, grains, some bread, and beans.  I've switched from eating chocolate for a snack to nuts.

The main concern in trying fasting is electrolyte supplementation, which I've addressed in earlier posts.  It's tricky.  It seems like it should be simple, add some salt, potassium, and magnesium, but it's a lot more of those first two salts than you'd expect.

blue pea / butterfly tisane, picked from the garden to drink once during the fast

it's from here, beside the house

I'll write out how this went, starting writing this post on day 3.

Days 1 and 2:  in the past these were rough times, working through a lot of hunger and loss of energy, and some impact to mental clarity.  For the most part none of that happened.  Even hunger experience was very moderate; it just didn't seem like I was skipping eating most of that time.  

I think if I was hearing of that from someone else I'd be skeptical; two days of not eating was easy, no impact?  It kind of was, especially in comparison with the first three trials.  On the fourth attempt the first day was really easy, but I went out for a speed-work run, a training form relatively new to me, and I think that might have thrown off my electrolyte balance.  Or maybe it was too much for energy conversion from body fat, going beyond what I was adapted to?  Sleep disruption is a normal side effect of fasting, especially if your magnesium level runs low, and I went through that too that time, and then stopped.  

Hunger level, on that fourth trial and for these two days, was like when lunch or dinner runs an hour late; you can feel it, but it's not bad yet.  For someone accustomed to a strict eating schedule maybe an hour late would already be uncomfortable, and it wasn't even that bad.  It was strange.

Energy level and the rest seemed fine too.  I didn't worry about drinking some tisane (herb tea) on the first day to offset the gap from experiencing any food intake, but I did brew some blue pea flowers, chrysanthemum, and stevia the second day, which I drank with potassium and sodium salts added.  

This time I kept drinking a good bit of that salt water, which can be nasty, but didn't use the approach of measuring it out, which I suppose adds a bit of risk, getting it wrong again.  I've had some tea every day, the leftover of some sheng on the first day, shu pu'er on the second (easiest on your stomach, the natural call), and aged white tea today, which worked out.

The oddest part was a lack of impact.  I felt fine on the second evening so I went out to try a short run, just 2 miles, limiting the distance to avoid going through any energy level or electrolyte balance disruption, to see how I felt.  I ran the first two km at an easy 6 1/2 minute pace and set a faster cruise of 6 minutes for the third.  That felt fine, like I could keep it up, or could've pushed faster to run at 5 1/2 min / km speed if I'd wanted, but I had already pushed it too far the last trial, so didn't.  I meditated after that run, but I think I'll cover what that's all about in a separate section.

Day 3:  right away in the morning it really caught up to me, the disrupted, low energy, off feeling.  Not eating for the prior two days definitely didn't lead to an experience of increased mental clarity.  I took the cat to the vet too, running an unpleasant errand, and went via a stupid route for getting it all wrong, missing a couple of turns.  I botch driving here sometimes but not like that.  Waiting at the vet when you haven't eaten isn't much worse than when you have; it's still a bit annoying.  That's even for bringing a laptop so I could check in with work, and catch part of a meeting, before my appointment time interrupted that.

The cat has gingivitis, a mild gum infection.  She's almost 16 so I was worried she might be nearing the end, but after a shot, taking antibiotics in pill form later, and special mouthwash rinse for however long she should be ok.  She scratched the vet because I wasn't holding her legs tightly enough; maybe another focus issue.  It'll probably be my turn to see my own blood tomorrow when I try to rinse her mouth alone.

I'm not sure how the next 2 1/2 days will go.  I hadn't planned to run again right away but if I feel normal later I might try to run for 4 miles, my normal short loop, two routes around the local royal palace.  Muscle and other tissue recovery can be an issue when you don't eat but I didn't feel any soreness from that short 2 mile run.

I'm not fasting mostly for weight loss but it might be nice to lose a few pounds.  I'm up to around 165 pounds / 74 kg now, and I think the earlier fasting might have caused my body to worry about a shortage of food, to go into a winter mode.  That's probably good in the long term related to offsetting rate of aging.  There's a related long story about why I think being a vegetarian for 17 years probably slowed my metabolic rate for a long time.  That low metabolism allows me to run 20 or more miles a week (30 km) and eat relatively little food and still not lose any weight.  Being lighter would make running easier.  As far as aesthetics go it doesn't matter; I look ok, and it would be fine if I didn't.

I feel like I've not really communicated what the nagging symptom of hunger is like, what it really takes to adapt to not eating for days on end.  It becomes normal, to an extent, but you have to internally accept it rather than reject it, or it would definitely be much worse.  Maybe that leads into the part on meditation well enough, and I can put that in the middle of this day by day account.

Meditation:

Again, why do it?  I'm separated from my kids, who are back at school in Honolulu, while I take care of the cats, watch the house, and work locally here in Bangkok.  I can work remotely but someone needs to cover those two tasks, and Eye's mother--their grandmother--is there with them.  She's concerned the months she is separated from them might be some of her last, because she's getting up there in age, but it's also not easy for me to miss some.

my only form of contact with my daughter for now

So I'm making the most of it by meditating, running, and fasting, and holding a tea event here or there (one so far, planning a second).  And some job hunting, but it's hard to log a lot of hours at that activity, so I just keep plugging away at it here and there.

I've settled on meditating for 45 minutes at a time, almost every evening, missing a few sessions if a day ran long or if a run seemed to drain me too much.  It's really hard to describe results.  I might first add that I meditated some as an experiment when I was much younger, seeing interesting results from that, then again 15 years ago when I was ordained as a monk for two months, undergoing limited training at a meditation center.  

Nothing extreme changes as an outcome (usually).  It might give you a bit more mental clarity and focus; that's about it.  I've noticed that I carry tension in my body and experience the background noise in my mind slightly differently than I did early on, 2 1/2 to 3 weeks ago.  My mind seems more settled, and the tension I was holding in my upper shoulders has mostly dissipated.  My lower back tension isn't resolved, and maybe from running my legs tend to hold it too, which may settle out further within a couple more weeks.

Running is also a form of meditation, in a sense.  I have to set my mind to support that exertion level for an extended time, for around an hour for my standard run of 10 km (6+ miles).  Then I sometimes cut that short if heat exposure gets to be a bit much, often when I run at mid-day.  That heat effect feels a little like tiring from running but not exactly like that, more feeling a little off.

As far as the meditation experience itself goes following your breath is a standard practice, to help still your mind, or putting focus in one particular place within your body, maybe your lower stomach, around the diaphragm, or where the breath enters your nose.  Counting can help.  I try to let my mind quiet naturally and only use counting or other focusing techniques when that's not working, although there is always some chatter.  The experience of body tension can be uncomfortable, especially after the half an hour point.  It seems to me that's coming from mental disturbance, as much as retained tension, and that the expectation or desire to stop the meditation is causing it.  

I can settle to be much more comfortable just sitting than 3 weeks ago but I'm far from "there," if there even is such a level.  I set an alarm and it's hard to stop fleeting thoughts from wondering when it will go off, which seem partly triggered by body tension that is uncomfortable.  

Uncomfortable is all relative; maybe it's like the effort and tension from when you walk and carry groceries, and you'd like to put them down, but it's not to the point of a strain like a cramp.  I don't mean 100 yards / meters to a car; in Honolulu we had (/ have) no car so at times we would carry groceries quite far, along with using the bus at other times.  After a km or two the groceries get heavy, even though they're not really heavy, unless you think a couple of gallons of milk plus that much food is.  I could add that my wife switched us to large, sturdy re-usable bags back when that was trendy here a half-dozen years back, saving on plastic use, so it's not as if that looked exactly like someone walking down the street from a grocery store, but it's not that different.  It was odd.

What about meditation plus fasting; how has that changed things?  My patience seems just a little reduced.  If anything my mind might be a little quieter, more calm, but past the half hour point--which I don't track; I'm not watching a clock--there's more "when is this going to end?" feedback.  Physically I might be slightly more relaxed, which could support my theory that my mind's quietude and body tension level are connected.  

Maybe meditation is helping me not experience eating disruption as unpleasant, as it should normally be?  I'm not sure, and at a guess acclimation from prior fasts is more of a cause of that.  My body gets it, that this is one more normal state of being I'll go through.  The same must apply to running or carrying groceries an absurd distance, that after it normalizes one more internal negative feedback loop goes mostly quiet.  I actually like running now, which is strange, since it started as an easy way to exercise in a short period of time instead.  Even running in cross country and track in high school (long ago) I always had mixed feelings about it.

Day 3, later on:  I'm feeling it.  It would've made for a good story to have ran for three days but due to feeling off, tired, and at times very slightly dizzy I shouldn't try.  I've been drinking that nasty sodium and potassium salt water all day but tomorrow I'll measure out what I see as more optimum and parse that out across the day.  Hunger still isn't too bad; odd.  Different foods sound ok, and I feel a bit empty, but I don't spend much time thinking about that.  

Given the way I take these 5 day spans I'll eat at the end of the 5th day, not pushing on for what is really 5 1/2 that next morning, as the clock goes, so I really only have one more full day to go, then most of one.  I don't even stay strict about timing; if I end up fasting for 4 days and 22 hours because dinner timing varies that's fine.  It would be easy to add another half day, and eat the next morning, but it's nice getting the recovery done that extra day earlier, and getting back to normal the next.  

I don't "go big" and eat a lot at the end, and it's really not even possible to, without feeling sick (for me; others who fast say that they can).  Healthy and simple foods taste great at that point; I should probably try breaking the fast with homemade cheeseburgers.  Sort of healthy, I mean.

Day 4, mid-day:  I've really been feeling it all day.  I woke in the night feeling off and re-upped electrolyte intake, then slept well, but it was another rough morning.  I've not had normal energy, clarity, or focus all day.  I think it's not really electrolyte level issues; I measured out the daily salts intake this morning and took a magnesium tablet, plus multivitamin and calcium.  It seems like I'm just not accustomed to ketosis, what people sometimes call "keto flu."  Your body will adjust, but I've probably only been fully in ketosis for the past two days, using the last of what I was digesting or holding as glycogen on both Saturday and Sunday.

Hunger isn't much of an issue; I barely think of food.  That's another thing I didn't mention about meditation, that food might cross my mind, but no more so than what shows I've been watching, one more minor part of mental background noise.

I drank a mild black tea today and that was fine, no problem.  Shu pu'er is most sensible, easiest on the stomach, but just avoiding green tea, sheng pu'er, or very low oxidation level oolong is enough.

I expect that I'll feel a little better tomorrow.  I'd like to try running again this evening, to see if I can push it for forcing my body to convert fat energy.  It would be a stretch though.  I could essentially just crash for the next 12 hours or so afterwards, but I don't know what that fallout would be like.  Other somewhat scary symptoms go with the territory for fasting and electrolyte imbalance:  irregular heartbeat, dizziness, problems sleeping.  Walking for half an hour would be playing it safe but that's a tough call as a runner.  Not very many runners ever sort out if they can keep running after 4 days off food though.

Day 4, after a run:  I felt "keto flu" symptoms all day, only recovering after a nap after work.  Then I felt ok, so I went out for a run.  No matter how that went I planned to keep it short, because I just spent two days feeling quite off.  It went well, it felt normal, and slipped back into a normal 6 mile per km pace for the last 1 1/2.  I probably feel as good as I've felt over this fast now.  I experienced a little leg cramping during a stretch, a sign my electrolyte balance might not be right, so I came back and drank another cup of salt water and took a magnesium capsule (adding up to double the daily requirement; I guess that's fine).

I think if I fast again within the next month or so I could probably do those 2 mile runs daily, for being better acclimated, or even bump it up to 4 miles for a couple, at a slow pace.  Better safe than sorry this time; it's as well to not rush fasting experiences, as I've learned from a couple of failures.

Day 5, morning:  I was up in the night again, drinking more salt water at 5 or so.  I did drink shu pu'er this morning.  I feel much better than the last two days but still not normal, still disrupted.  It all makes me question if it's a good thing to even try this.  I won't know if most of the supposed benefits occur (more mental clarity, later on, autophagy, visceral fat reduction), and I don't expect to lose weight.  My diet was as good as it's likely to ever be, so that reset function doesn't apply.  I feel relatively ok today, not so tired and slightly out of it, but perhaps still not completely normal.

On the other side I think it all would normalize, if someone kept it up, I guess if they were pursuing weight loss (the main reason), or were really convinced of those benefits.  In the Reddit fasting sub people discuss applying radical rotating fasting approaches, rolling 48s or 72s, not eating half the time on either a 2 day or 3 day cycle (or 4 or 6 counting both parts).  One person recently commented they ate only 2 days a week, so with 5 days off, for an extended time.  Those people often mention body weights and loss amounts that related to more extreme circumstances.  

Even someone really wanting to lose only an extra 20 pounds of fat may use fasting.  One guy commenting in the Reddit fasting sub was at optimal body weight but was very low in muscle tissue, with a high percentage body fat, and he was asking if fasting and working out would help him.  My guess is that eating a moderated caloric input but healthy diet while working out would be better under those circumstances.

Day 5, at about the end:  towards the end it's natural to keep thinking that ending an extra hour early would be fine.  I went to the grocery store during lunch, since there's no food here, and being around food wasn't a problem.  I felt a little off earlier and drank the last of the saltwater mix I had made up and I'm fine.  Energy level and clarity have been close to normal today.

I only drank a tisane that once; I didn't miss eating enough to try to replicate it.  My throat felt odd so I drank the juice of a small lime on the last day.  Google says that I might have ingested 20 calories doing that.  There must be people out there who would see that as not really true fasting.

Related to the meditation again I keep thinking why am I really doing this.  I'm not that far in the hole related to mental clarity and focus, although my memory is slipping.  I don't think that I feel cranky but but it's not easy to maintain the same stability and sense of ease dropping out something as fundamental as eating.  My wife was yelling at me about something (over a call) and I yelled back, when normally I could just ignore it and let her have her say.  She's under a few levels of pressure too, and if it comes out in being cranky with me over something minor I should be fine with that.

Not much of a final retrospect take here, or new perspective.  It's possible that this practice could become really easy after one or two more trials, I just need to sort out if there is really any reason to keep trying it.  What if I am preventing cancer, suspending aging, improving internal organ function, and boosting my mental clarity?  Or what if every single potential health benefit isn't really happening?  I'm not even bringing up the "detox" theme, or letting my body drop off insulin resistance, which would be more of a concern if I was eating more sugar than I am.

Concerns about fasting; should people fast?

I've been thinking lately about whether I would recommend this to others or not.  I think not.  For people who feel like they need it, mostly for weight loss, or if they have a burning desire to mess around with how their body works, sure, it's fine.  For almost everyone it's just too disruptive, difficult, and unpleasant.  I kept saying that hunger wasn't much of a concern, and energy issues and loss of clarity only happened on 2 days out of 5, but that feeling of your body being empty of food never goes away.  Some people report feeling a related sort of euphoria, getting a high from it, but I seem not to.

One recurring theme in the Reddit fasting sub is communicating about fasting; many claim it's better to never bring it up, like that Fight Club rule about not talking about it.  The concern is probably over others taking it wrong, them being overly concerned, or you coming across as saying "woe is me!," when it's clearly an intentional personal choice, and definitely not a necessary one.  It absolutely has to become normal or it won't work.  

This includes impact to other daily life activities, beyond perspective and communication.  Few people could forego work or other activities for days to work through eating disruption, but I guess if someone has nothing going on laying on a couch for 5 days would work.  Even that defeats one of the main purpose though; if you drop normal activity level your metabolism will plummet, and weight loss won't occur to the same degree.

Related to other potential impact I slept like a baby, beyond getting up to drink salt water however many times, but then I tend to do that.  I might usually wake up to use a restroom and stay up for 15 minutes messing around online but my middle of the night insomnia days are behind me, since it's been a few years since kids have woke up frequently.  Storms wake my daughter, and then she wakes me up, but that's different, infrequent now.

It was cool that it seems like I could do longer runs if I try again, or probably could have this time.  Will that translate to feeling more energy on longer runs now?  I took an extra day off running after the fast because I felt soreness in my calves, maybe from disruption of normal recovery process, since I usually run a lot more than 4 miles in 5 days, often 6 miles in an outing.  But I'll run again and can check.  It would be nice if I didn't live in one of the hottest and most humid places on earth so I could check on that without disruption, the constant near heatstroke.  

I guess at a bare minimum I'll appreciate eating more again; there's nothing like fresh, plain, healthy food when you don't take eating for granted.

cheeseburgers and sweet potato, yam, and regular fries; that tasted good

the next day; chicken breasts are really easy to cook too

5 days of fasting including exercise and tea drinking

 

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.

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).

that Chawang Shop Jinggu pu'er reviewed here; much better after a year of settling

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.

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.