What 5 days of fasting feels like

 

Not long ago I wrote about fasting basics and some more detailed approach, here, but it occurs to me that there's another dimension that's harder to describe.  Fasting is a unique experience.  It's hard to just describe what hunger is like, once you acclimate, and the form changes.

Of course this has nothing to do with the theme of why to fast, and not all that much with how to do it, but it does overlap with that.  That earlier post was on the latter, and it's hard to pin down what research says, and not as reliable to convey hearsay or first person accounts of benefits.  I think I'm mentally clearer as a result of the practice, for example, but who knows how to place that.  Maybe I'm not, at all.  Maybe ramping up exercise or improving diet caused that, and there is no connection.  Or maybe I lose my mental faculties and don't know it.

So let's run through some parts of what it's like to fast instead, which will cover before and after acclimation.  I'm only having the latter experience now, because I've fasted for at least two months so far, in total.  

I try to fast 4 times a year, at 5 days each, and I'm on day 5 just now, not so many hours away from wrapping it up, at 4 days and maybe 19 hours.  I "call it" early because I fast from one dinner time to the one 5 days later, so for me it works better to "only" fast for 4 days and 22 hours or so, and if it works out to 20 or 21 that's fine too.  Otherwise I'd have to eat that first meal not so long before sleeping, which wouldn't be ideal.  I usually end up drinking milk after dinner the day before a fast, the last food to clear.

Reading back through those last ideas one might think that 5 days of fasting should really be 5 days and 6 nights, so really 5 1/2 days as clock time goes.  Maybe I will try breaking a fast the next morning instead at some point.  The mental pressure of fasting for "only" 5 days is already a bit to get through, though.

Fasting experience themes

Hunger:  the main factor, maybe.  Early on, for the first 2 or 3 trials, your body is shocked by the experience, and hunger is intense.  Physical cravings are coupled with what people call "food noise," repeating thoughts of eating.  Your body releases plenty of ghrelin, a hunger related hormone, so you keep producing digestive fluids, and experience stomach gas and discomfort.  Or at least that's my guess for why it feels like that.

After 4 or 5 fasts the experience completely changes, and that high degree of hunger largely drops out.  But you're still hungry.  It just takes on a feeling of emptiness, that runs in the background, so that if you smell food you really want it, but so that you can go a few hours without thinking about having not eaten.

One might naturally consider what they could drink to lessen the hunger experience (eating doesn't apply; pretty much no one ever eats paper or some other calorie deficient input).  It's normal for people to drink coffee, tea, or herb tea, and some drink diet sodas.  

I've had one diet soda in the past 5 days, a diet Strawberry Cream Pepsi.  It doesn't seem to change much, but I don't drink much of that.  I've had tea every day, and herb tea 3 of the days.  This time I started in on some pandan leaf and roselle tea I bought not so long ago, along with lemongrass tea, that I didn't get to.  All of those are common types in Thailand.  I don't use stevia to sweeten any of it, but I could.  

Related to the tea I usually drink shou pu'er or aged white tea, because they're easy on your stomach, but I also had some hei cha (Fu zhuan) and relatively oxidized sheng pu'er.  It would be nice to drink coffee but I'm not acclimated to drinking my coffee black, and that my hurt your stomach.  

I think it helps most to drink a tisane that you tend to drink a lot of, perhaps mostly because it boosts hydration input.  I can drink three 16 ounce mugs of chrysanthemum, and that adds well over a quart / liter to my daily fluid intake.  It's best to try to drink 3 liters of water a day, if you can, but that's a lot to get down.  You need to supplement quite a bit of salts (sodium, potassium, and magnesium; there's more on that in the earlier post), and I'm always struggling to get the intake amount right, and to work through salt water tasting awful, even in a diluted form.

Special hunger triggers:  I need to go to grocery store every time I fast because I let my food supply run out, and need to re-up it, usually on the last day.  Sometimes chance will have me visiting a market or restaurant with others I happen to be with.  In one sense it's not so bad, but in another it is.  Sometimes I'll cook for other people, and that is a different level of exposure.  Your digestive system can seem to turn back on, even when you just smell food.  

At worst that will lead you back to the earlier phase of stomach growling, that you tend to only experience early in fasting trials.  I just went grocery shopping on day 4, taking my mother-in-law to a store, and it was a little like that.  But even that level of exposure you acclimate to.  Cooking not so much.

Stress:  this is the other part of the experience of hunger.  It feels like an extra underlying stress, to me not completely unlike what extreme jet lag feels like.  If your normal stress baseline isn't bad it's no problem, but when other stressors enter in it can be too intense.  It's not hard to be productive when you fast, and that deserves it's own section, the extra mental clarity.  Even walking a lot or light exercise is fine.  But getting it all to balance requires a bit of extra attention.  

For me if other stressors add up too much I'll stop the fast.  The last example that comes to mind is too harsh to cite here, but even if work gets unusually busy it might throw it all off.

Other side effects (dizziness, low energy level, sleepiness):  this probably varies a lot by person, so what any one has to say wouldn't apply broadly.  But I'll include it.  In those first 3 or 4 fasts these negative factors were a lot more to deal with, especially the first two.  That's why I recommend people try period eating first (20-22 hour fasts), then 24, and build up.  I might feel a little dizzy a couple times a day.  Getting electrolyte balance (intake) dialed in offsets a lot of it, but your body seems to also need to adjust to a new range of experience.  If you fasted every other month you might stay well-adjusted to it, but if you let 3 or 4 months go between fasts you might end up adjusting again.

I don't really feel low energy level now, which is strange.  I've been walking 10,000 steps a day for all of the 5 days.  Typically I don't try to do much with losing weight, fasting for other reasons, but since I've climbed to 81 kg (178 pounds), up from 74 kg (163) I'd like to get that to drop again.  My blood pressure has been running high, and it might help.  I've been swimming a lot over the past year, and keep on adding a little extra muscle, so it's not that much fat gain, but it's some.

Lots of other potential side effects could be concerning.  If my electrolyte balance runs low I'll feel mild cramping, mostly in my calves, and that's not good.  That leads back into a longer and off-topic discussion about how hard it is to dial in an optimum electrolyte intake (sodium, potassium, and magnesium).  It should be easy, figuring out how much you need by trial and error, mixing up a diluted batch of that with water, then drinking that over the day (and taking magnesium by pill / tablet, because you need much less).  It's not so simple.  Some of that is probably user error, that I make it harder than it needs to be.  I'm back to just drinking some salt mix a few times a day, mixing it up without measuring it out per day, not using that more standard approach (standard within "fasting circles").  

This Reddit group is what I experience of that online discussion; it all requires some interpretation, and some extreme views come up, but that's normal for social media.  Note that the high end of their fasting wiki recommended electrolyte intake range is an awful lot of salt (or had been; per this following citation it's the opposite now); I have no idea how that could work out.

I take that back; in the past that wiki recommended a high end range of at least 3 grams each of sodium and potassium, and now it's a fraction of that.  There was a "snake juice" recipe for that daily mix for people to drink, and they've deleted that.  Lots of people had complained the high end was way too high, or maybe even the relative average, and maybe moderation staff changed on the page, and the guidance opinions they wanted to share with them.

This is the second version of that advice in two days; I cited it from yesterday (Feb. 15) and it was completely different.  Just keep in mind it's a rough guideline, not a final answer.  Individual requirements and tolerance for dosages would vary.  

One part that was interesting, in past versions of advice there in the r/fasting Electrolytes 101 wiki page, was that you can use either sodium chloride or baking soda, (sodium bicarbonate), and that food grade epsom salts can be used for magnesium input.  There is endless discussion there on what is the best magnesium compound form to supplement.  Maybe glycinate is recommended most, but I use magnesium oxide, because it's cheaper.  The concern is laxative effect.  Magnesium that is absorbed too quickly will cause that, so the compound form matters.  That's what laxatives often are (like milk of magnesia).

mental clarity, positive side effects:  mental clarity is about it for positive changes in the short term.  Even that comes and goes.  There are flashes where I can really get a lot done, and see complicated themes much clearer than I normally would.  My subconscious mind is also in on it; my dreams have picked up a really novel clarity and complexity over the last 3 nights (the first night I had eating hours prior).  

In one dream I dreamt I had accidentally broken the fast by eating, then woke up to realize it was a dream, but woke up in another dream where I experienced that.  I had an interesting exchange about child rearing practices with a fictional character in one last night.  I suppose the waking clarity is more meaningful and impactful.

I think the clarity extends to be a main positive effect from the fasting.  Maybe I'm also experiencing some aging effects less, but this is where it gets hazy.  My hair has returned to mostly colored since taking it up; I've lost the few grey hairs I had, except for very few around my temples, less than 10.  It's strange seeing a hair that's two colors, that had been grey and returned to brown, but I've experienced that.  I'm 57; I really should have greying hair now.  I don't care much about the aesthetic side, since I'm married, and it just doesn't matter, but it's an interesting change.

a visa renewal selfie from last month; you can see some grey hair

More on the vague side, I think that I have more energy when I run now, from greater "metabolic flexibility," or ability to use fat as an energy source.  Who knows; it would be easy to imagine that.  Or training experience tends to change in those kinds of ways over time. 

I think for many a main positive effect is a reduction of "food noise," and an ability to manage diet better.  My diet was pretty good to start out with, and I never snack that much, but I've used the fasts as resets, to make minor positive adjustment.  I keep going back to eating ice cream, and some chocolate, but the overall balance shifts.  It's much harder in the US than in Thailand; when Ben and Jerry's is on sale what can you do?  

I eat more fruit and vegetables than just about anyone now, and prefer that basis for my diet.  I eat some meat, to keep up protein intake, to adjust for exercising a good bit, but I eat nuts as a snack, a good bit of eggs and dairy, and use soy or pea protein shakes as a supplement.  

All that is a bit beside the point; the idea is that it's easier to improve your diet and change habits after a reset, of sorts.  For me I can only make minor changes each time, and if I try to shift too much after a fast it won't work.

risk:  I don't think much about this, but it's worth considering.  What could go wrong?  If your electrolytes get too far out of balance then lots of things could, up to and including having a heart attack.  It's important to get that dialed in as fast as possible, and probably gradually acclimating to fasting makes sense, even though it's more common for people to get the idea to try 3 to 7 days from an online video, and just go for it.  

The problem I do experience with dizziness could be much worse.  In the past 5 days I've stood up and felt light dizziness two or three times, which is pretty moderate.  It's something to keep an eye on.

The main risk is that if you ingest a lot of electrolytes at one time then you will experience diarrhea, even if you haven't eaten in days.  It's that "don't trust a fart" theme.  Then that carries over to "re-feeding;" if you eat low quality food to re-start eating you'll experience that for a couple of days.  

I've only tested that once though, and that was my experience.  I usually eat a burger and fries for a first meal, which sounds pretty low quality, but if you use good ground beef or pork (we don't eat beef much in Thailand), good bread, fresh potatoes or sweet potatoes for the fries, and some vegetables (tomato and spinach, usually), then it's not low quality food.  Of course most people who fast use an even more sensible approach, and eat different things in stages.  

Later editing note:  I ate a burger and fries again, yesterday, and my body digested it in 4 hours or so.  Maybe because I was still hungry and ate some yogurt, a little chocolate, and a bowl of cereal some hours later?  Or maybe looking forward to ending the fast too much prompted more rapid digestion.  What works would always vary by individual anyway.  The riskier "refeeding" cases relate to much longer fasts, well over a week in duration.  Then just winging it wouldn't be safe.

talking about fasting:  this is a bonus tangent; that pretty much already covers fasting experience.  In fasting circles people usually recommend keeping fasting experience a secret, especially during fasts.  Some people react negatively, of course.  In one online story an HR department told the person to start eating, not to fast.  People can be judgmental.  I don't talk much about it, but I don't avoid it either.  If people have problems with accepting someone else not eating, or a life practice they see as absurd, and probably harmful, then that's on them.

You can never really fully explain it.  People can only experiment with fasting and make of it what they do, for themselves, and that would vary by person.  It wouldn't be for everyone.  For some the negative side effects would be a complete deal-breaker.  For others acclimation, that I've been describing, might never seem to happen, even though it's my guess that within 4 or 5 trials most people would see negative aspects reduce.  And then a more primary point, for many there just wouldn't be any point to it, if they're not trying to lose weight, and see the health benefits as possible but not a given, and perhaps unlikely to occur.

I first tried out fasting, as an adult, because I met a guy who claimed he did it for spiritual reasons.  That's not entirely right; in an earlier life phase we would do multi-day juice fasts as some sort of cleanse / detox.  It made more sense in that life context.  I fasted for the very first time at the age of 10 or 11, passing 24 hours, but not fasting to my goal, 36 hours, or one complete day and night after waking.  I don't remember why I did that.  

Then I "fasted" a lot cutting weight as a wrestler in high school; I would go as long without eating as I needed to in order to make a competition weight.  Our team was really strong, and I didn't have the experience to be above average (I wrestled for 2 years), so I had to slot in at varsity wherever I could beat the other guys competing.  Good times!

So not eating for weight loss could work, and those other reasons may or may not be appealing.

Anti-aging protocol

 

This is something I've ended up discussing a good bit over the past few years, one of many subjects I've become interested in.  My fasting practice ties to an interest in this, even though it started as a result of a chance contact saying that it would bring about spiritual practice benefits (and maybe it did?  hard to say, since that is hard to track).

I'm no expert on avoiding aging effects, but I am a good example of how it can work out.  I'm 56 now and could pass for 40, or maybe even 30-something, and I am active to say the least.  I've just switched my runs back to 12 km per outing, not quite at 3 times per week, but it will level off to at least 30 km / 20 miles per week.  It's hard to justify that I'm more active in general, or more flexible related to being open to new experiences and learning, the less explicit themes related to aging.  It seems so, to me, but it's hard to support that.

56 compared to 16, but I think his genetic potential might be even better

It's strange using yourself as an example like that.  The same general theme came up related to discussing intelligence on Quora before, a favorite topic earlier on.  I'll skip passing on an IQ stat but mine has been tested at significantly higher than the 130 cut-off for grade-school gifted program participation.  People there--Quora--would always claim "intelligent people are less socially oriented," or something such, prone to whatever other malaise, but to me a lot of that ends up being hearsay patterns that don't necessarily hold up in most cases.  Intelligence is like any other aptitude; it can couple with a broad range of personal characters or other aptitudes and weaknesses.  

The nerd or geek persona is separate from intelligence; the two themes may tend to correspond, but they are not tightly causally connected.  Maybe people embracing those character or self-identification themes tend to be above average in intelligence, but it's not as if one is a sign of the other, or that intelligence leads directly to preference of those forms of experience (an interest in sci-fi or computers, etc.).  Somehow it all naturally groups together, that people with certain capacities tend to explore using them in similar ways, but there is no necessary connection.  Plenty of people with sports aptitude are couch potatoes, and plenty of people with very limited athletic potential are still active in sports anyway, they just couldn't excel at the highest levels of competition.

Back to the aging theme; I was responding to this question on Reddit:

If you are aging, what if any supplements did you take in order that you thought might reverse aging or made you feel decades younger again? I mean do you have a sip of certain juice a day or take something to make yourself feel decades younger?

Who isn't aging?  Of course people there recommended diet and exercise, as I did.  But I added some less standard thoughts and practices.

Nothing like that [referring to the magic bullet / take a pill potential], but I can suggest things I know work, for sure, and a couple that might help that are less certain:

exercise: you should try to get at least 3 hours of medium intensity exercise per week. If you want to use weightlifting as this input, to double up on improving muscle conditioning and joint health, you can just increase overall intensity by rushing the sets. Some input should be cardio though; intense beyond walking pace input.

sleep: 8 hours per day is an absolute minimum, unless you somehow don't need much sleep. Coupling a bit of extra sleep with bumping up exercise input will change everything, along with diet change.

diet: cut out processed foods, sugar, junk foods, fast food, unhealthy snacks, etc. Eat natural foods, meats, vegetables and fruits, some whole-grain starch input. Nuts and beans can help with keeping protein intake up, which is important for exercise recovery. You probably don't need to supplement much if your diet is great, but taking a multivitamin couldn't hurt, and some basics like extra magnesium and D.

drugs, cigarettes, alcohol: get away from ingesting any.

tea (onto less certain input): I drink lots of varied tea, of good quality, and that may make a difference (I'm holding up great for being 56). Lots of the polyphenols are probably helpful, along with mineral input. People claim green tea is best for heart health (cardiovascular health), but I think drinking diverse versions would be better, black, green, oolong, sheng pu'er, some hei cha, etc.

goji berry: I eat a little of this daily, re-hydrated dried versions soaked in hot water for some minutes. The extra vitamin A (beta carotine) and xeaxanthin might be most helpful. It's probably good for eye health to also take in a good bit of lutein, but eating leafy green vegetables would cover that.

fasting: this should probably be back in the "certain" grouping. Fasting for 3 to 5 days at a time, at least 4 times per year, could change everything related to aging experience. I think my greying hair reversed mainly because of this input; it had been partly grey, and now isn't. Brain health seems to also improve, mental clarity and memory, which is difficult to achieve.

from 2024, but I don't have many clear photos of myself

Expanding on that:

What about new types of supplements anti-aging gurus promote?  Maybe those could work.  I wouldn't know, since I'm not on any.  I've not even had my hormone levels checked, a far earlier and more basic starting point than taking up hormone inputs or exotic supplements.

What about specific exercise inputs, adjusted sleep forms, less developed supplementation (taking zinc or turmeric / curcumin), specific diet forms (towards keto, Mediterranean, etc.)?  Sure, lots of approaches or inputs might be positive.  Per my understanding being quite active is the main helpful input, walking a lot, doing lots of low intensity activities, like laundry, cutting firewood, walking and hiking, swimming, and so on.  Even gardening, doing lots of very low intensity tasks, supports maintaining flexibility, by forcing you to move in different ways, with significant exposure level.

Getting some sun alone could be helpful.  It could be hard separating causes and effects, related to an input like that.  If someone were to swap out lying motionless while watching streamed video content for walking in the sun they'd never know which input helped most, the sun, the walking, or just not lying motionless.

I think diet alone has the most potential for change, especially if someone is on the standard American diet.  I've been moving back and forth between Bangkok and Honolulu and it takes a lot more focus to maintain a decent diet here (I'm in Hawaii just now).  In Bangkok fresh fruit is sold everywhere, exotic and delicious tropical versions, and even street foods can be relatively healthy, those literally sold from carts out on the sidewalks.  And inexpensive; it costs $20 for just about any meal in Hawaii, and probably over $30 if it's actually healthy.  

"Juicing" has lots of potential; drinking a bit of mixed vegetable juice every day, as the kind of extra bump the original question was asking about.  I practiced that at two different times in my life, probably over a period of at least a half dozen years, or maybe closer to a decade.  I was also a vegetarian for 17 years; maybe that helped?  Often with special diets the inclination to avoid some inputs, like over-eating, or junk foods, might be more important than what you actually consume.  A vegetarian and keto or carnivore diet might end up providing similar benefits for similar reasons, for those limitations, even though the apparent diet input is completely opposite.  Maintaining moderate body weight could be the overall main factor, in limiting aging, and eating a good diet and exercising could help lead to this, but from different directions.

Of course exercise inputs have plenty of potential too.  My health radically improved when I took up running, back at 50, and it improved again when I conditioned enough to ramp up training intensity and volume.  Swimming here in Hawaii has seemed to improve my muscle tone and flexibility quite a bit.  Doing yoga when I was 50 to 52 made a lot of difference, but Covid closed our local favorite yoga studio, so I let that go.

I swim in a swim lane between coral reefs not far from here

Fasting practice is especially promising.  It's too long a subject to add much more about why I think it helps (in a word, autophagy), or approaches that might be best.

I can't really place tea as a positive input either.  Research evidence of tea being quite healthy is very mixed in forms and results.  It probably is, but it's not the simplest thing to test for, and there is limited academic interest in reviewing that, since there is limited corporate commercial interest in leveraging tea sales as a health input.  In the US health care of sick people is far more profitable than preventing illness, especially through inexpensive food inputs.  There's a lot one might consider in relation to Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective on how tea is healthy, and in what optimum forms, which would vary by individual related to best fit or best overall balance.  I drank a lot of tisanes from the age of 22 up to 40; it's not just "real tea" that would have a lot of potential. 

Health risks related to tea are a potential concern, but there isn't a lot to look out for.  Caffeine intake should only go so far, and fluoride input is something to think through.  If you drink high quality tea (less mass-produced, chemical supported growth versions) risks from pesticides and heavy metal inputs are probably quite limited.  There are outliers claiming there are more significant, common risks to avoid, but in my opinion as long as you don't take a "more is better" approach to input tea is very safe.  Consuming up to 20 grams per day of it should be fine.  

You can offset any potential risks by varying types and sources.  You could maximize those risks in the opposite way, buying a kilogram of the most inexpensive, questionable tea you can find from an Indian or Chinese market source, maximizing your contact with those somewhat rare inputs by concentrating the same exposure form.  I don't necessarily trust all the "wild origin" claims I hear, but if half of the tea I consume really is of that form that seems positive, and at this point most of what I drink is represented as such.

One might wonder what all of this is based on, beyond my own personal experience, and where it ends, what aging is likely to be like in one's 70s or 80s, if all goes well.  My parents have observed many of these practices, and are in great health at nearly 80.  Many of my family members lived healthy lives well into their 90s (which of course introduces a potential genetic input).  My Thai mother-in-law is from a family where people tend to not experience much of their 60s and she is holding up well at over 80 now.  Activity seemed to make a difference, and decent diet.  Her sleep regimen is awful, and she never does significant cardio stress exercise; one might get away with letting one of these positive inputs drop.  Her mobility is severely limited now; any gap may come at a price.

I hope that some of this is helpful to others.  There's more I could add about perspective shift that might help, about meditation as an input, for example, but I'll get back to that kind of thing more later.

my wife Eye also holds up pretty well in spite of only experiencing some of these themes

How fasting affects food cravings

 

A Reddit discussion theme brought this up, related to me practicing and following discussion about fasting.  I've experienced limited changes in food preferences that seem to relate to fasting, but then I've only ever fasted three times for 5 full days, and two other times when I stopped earlier, after 2 or 3 days, mostly related to getting electrolyte input wrong, I think.  I've wrote about that here.

That starting point input is this, from that post and discussion:

I have been fasting for a couple of weeks and apart from losing a bit of weight, realized I obsess less about food now. Anyone else experience this. If so, what are the reason for it?

I don't think I ever did obsess about food so much, but it will work as in intro to describe what I think changed.  I had snacking habits before that seemed to mostly drop out.  I would eat just a little chocolate regularly, and for awhile (even after the two rounds of fasting) I had switched to snacking on mixed nuts between meals.  It wasn't really a negative thing, as I saw it, or an obsession, but I feel even more inclined to just eat three light meals a day now, which really isn't far from how I saw my diet a year ago, before the fasting trials.

Someone mentioned a good reference on food craving experience, the psychology of that, which is a summary of lots of other reference materials.  From scanning their definition of food cravings maybe I never did experience what they describe as that.  I was more into ice cream before, which I would sometimes eat when it was around, but I never saw that as a craving experience.

Rather than go through a summary of the research paper contents, building up from background and definitions, it could be more interesting to start with what they say about fasting changing food experience or habits:

One area in which food cravings appear responsive to dietary reductions is fasting. The direction of change is unexpected. There is evidence that fasting, in both the short-term (Lappalainen et al. 1990) and the long-term (Harvey et al. 1993), is associated with fewer food-craving experiences. This decrease in craving is generalised across all food groups and does not rebound during re-feeding (Harvey et al. 1993; Martin et al. 2006). While such interventions are effective at bringing about weight loss, there is no relationship between the amount of weight lost and reduction in food craving.

This suppression of food craving is consistent with other observations of reduced appetite during weight loss on very-low-energy diets. The paradox ‘less food, less hunger’ is the headline of a study by Wadden et al. (1987)...

Interesting, right?  I'll consider some perspectives from comments in that Reddit discussion and then come back to tying it together with these ideas based on my own experience.

Reddit discussion inputs, versus my experiences

Let's just start with the first two comments, I guess sorted by Reddit karma (upvotes, their version of FB likes):

I usually go through a phase in my fasts where I obsessively scroll r/FoodPorn... so, I guess everyone is different. I do feel more control over my eating though. I use to need to eat every 3 hours or I might punch a baby for looking at me the wrong way. Now 16h is hardly noticeable.

It is interesting how people react to hunger or cravings in different ways, or take the whole experience very differently.  There seems to be a divide between people who avoid any contact with food or the idea of food and others who actually keep in touch with the subject while fasting, as that person does.  Some contact with food exposure while fasting is fine but it seems as well to avoid that, and scrolling the internet related to food content.

There's probably several reasons why this happens (biological, psychological, changes in environment, etc) but I think biologically it's because fasting has a powerful moderating impact on hormones related to hunger.

Hunger experience, and how it changes with fasting exposure, is one of the most interesting parts of exploring fasting.  Not just for abstract self-understanding either; it plays into enabling a different form of control over a main bodily input like eating.  Not just related to not eating, also tying to managing inputs, to eating healthier, to placing snacking in relation to meal inputs differently, and better.

These two inputs tie together quite well with a very general exposure theme I experienced, that links to the point about fasting causing less hunger experience in the end.

The first 2 or 3 times I tried fasting the experience of hunger was very intense.  It just seemed normal to me that people would always experience that.  I might also mention that I decided to fast once when I was 10 or 11 or so (I was a strange kid; I had no exposure to the practice of fasting at all at that point), and only made it through one nearly complete day.  Related to how people fasting count the time that probably was 26 hours or so, maybe 28, so one full day.  I didn't know what to make of the experience then, beyond that hunger experience would be intense.  I wanted to go a full day then, so more like 36 hours, but hunger was driving me crazy, and I ate some cake my family had eaten earlier.

Fast forward 40 years and I tried it again (with some juice fasting in the middle; that's easy enough to do for a number of days, because in a sense you are still "eating," ingesting calories).  Experience of hunger was intense.  The worst of it lasted 3 days or so, easing up after that.  It came in a few different forms, as a base-level feeling of emptiness, as gnawing desire to eat, and as cravings, as immediate urges to eat something I normally would at that time, or triggered by seeing or smelling a food.  The very first day--I don't remember if for an attempt that didn't work or the first 5 day duration; I think the latter--I visited a food market with my wife, and it wasn't so bad, beyond the smell.  Visiting a local fair and restaurant with her the next day also was fine; somehow working through the expectation of eating was no problem.

I was a four days into fasting at this street festival last year

I ended that fast late into my birthday so I had cake and ice cream

Then on the last 5 day fast hunger had dropped out relatively entirely, at least related to those earlier experiences.  My body seemed to adjust, perhaps related to the hormone experience mentioned in the second comment.  I think expectation at the mental level was also a factor; it was easy to just not attach to the idea of eating, to not try to not think about it, since that cycle of avoiding thoughts or desire can be problematic, to instead just accept it and let it go.

Back to the "craving" idea I'm not sure to what extent I ever fit the criteria in that paper, which explicitly describes that there is no singular clear definition of that.  It's a research review style of paper, so it talks around how different studies interpret cravings a little, but then mostly just sets that aside.  I picked up the habit of mostly eating three small meals a day so many years ago that it's hard to keep track; I don't snack that much.  In college we had cafeteria meal plans set up that way (freshman and sophomore years in the dorms), and my parents always tended to eat like that, with an evening desert as an exception.  

It's hard to summarize how it works out related to "less food intake equals less hunger," but thinking back I have some history with that.  I was really thin for my entire 20s and through most of my 30s, in part because I was vegetarian, and because I led a very active lifestyle, for work and sports, and fueled that by eating three moderate meals a day.  Through habit I mostly only ate when hungry, channeled down to those meal times, with some evening snacking included.  Maybe as much related to the vegetarian diet theme I think I kept caloric intake to an absolute minimum, to the extent that whenever I wasn't working or exercising if I would just sit down my body would crash.  Reading was a favorite hobby interest then, which matched well with that.

I tried to practice what I later heard referred to as "intuitive eating," which I didn't have a name for.  I tried to eat what I felt hungry for, adjusting for tuning into what my body needed, versus letting ice cream, potato chips, and McDonald's food become that default.  I didn't drink soda or eat candy much, even though I think I was cutting it close on caloric input, so it would've been natural to crave that.  Maybe a work-around was eating foods like trail mix as a snack, eating just enough to fuel the exercise and other processes.  I kept busy so I never noticed being hungry, until the next meal time brought it up, and by then I needed more food intake, so it all seemed quite natural.  I was 5' 8" and weighed 150 pounds or so, as skinny as could be, but my body was fine with the cycle.

camping in Canyonlands in Utah in the 90s; I would've hiked 10-15 miles a day back then

what that looked like, but this was across the border in Colorado

I'm an inch shorter now (people do tend to shrink as they age), and weigh 15 more pounds, but I seem to eat less than ever.  We seem to get into equilibrium states, and then change to become heavier or lighter isn't as natural as continuing on, if it all balances.

Fasting as a diet reset

One other part links, that is so distinct that a new section seems in order.  Even though I've just described eating a fairly healthy diet in my 20s (and I'm in my 50s now, and that never completely changed) fasting has seemed to help serve as a positive diet reset.  More than ever I appreciate and desire eating healthy, nutrient dense foods, like fruits and vegetables, complex salads, and healthy versions of soups and stews, or plain grilled meats and vegetable.  I've been eating a lot of pumpkin and sweet potatoes for years; that didn't change.  

It's not really directly related but I've been supplementing protein intake for about a year, drinking powder mixed into milk or juice, because I try to not eat too much meat, eggs, or dairy, but my protein demands seem considerable related to running a good bit (15 to 20 miles a week).  Why wouldn't I crave meat, dairy, and eggs, if I'm implying here that natural intuition can guide more ideal diet inputs?  I don't know.  Maybe it all doesn't actually work, and I'm only experiencing what I expect to experience.  I don't crave the protein shakes, at all; I have to remind myself to include that, and often skip it when I planned to but forgot (like with breakfast recently, and yesterday's).

Where I go (physically) seems to partly guide diet as much as these mental factors I'm bringing up.  In visiting malls or shopping complexes I walk by Dairy Queen (which is still more popular here than back in the US), and in the past I'd eat more of that.  

some product offerings are a little out there but I like others

I'm separated from my kids now, and my normal routines, because they're in Honolulu in school and I'm working in Bangkok, so I've not been in malls much for six weeks, and haven't eaten any ice cream in that time.  Thai foods tend to be fairly healthy but I'm almost entirely off those now too, cooking simple and basic food versions at home more.  I go to work in an office infrequently, about once a week, and what I eat there is mixed; sometimes food I bring, sometimes just a pastry or snack out doing an errand, or a couple of times fast food (back to McDonald's, once in that month or so).  It's not like I'm on an ideal diet; I saw Oreos on sale at the grocery store and picked some up, and since I was craving chocolate (maybe from mentioning it here) I bought chocolate covered digestives too.

So what really changed for me, related to this "reset" idea?  I had mentioned that when fasting I noticed a few layers of triggers of what or when to eat, and a snacking response was part of that.  My main version had shifted from chocolate to mixed nuts, eating a small handful a few times a day, but that was probably based on immediate triggered impulse as much or more than a real dietary need, caused by an intake gap.  It's not problematic, eating a half a cup of mixed nuts a day, so it doesn't really work as an example of "corrective action," but the theme isn't different than if it had been chocolate, ice cream, chips, or whatever else.  I've eaten a lot of salads at different times, but cycling back to that as a habit is another example.  

Living in Honolulu with my wife in grad school (where we met) if I ever asked her what she wanted me to make for dinner she would always say salad, every time.  Then I would make an elaborate version of that, with greens, lots of vegetables, extra inputs like raisins or sunflower seeds, home-made dressings, something like soy and sesame, a fruit input, homemade croutons from seasoning and toasting bread, and often with chili seasoned fried tofu.  She loved it because it's not a typical Thai food, and no Thai would ever experience such an elaborate version.  Even if they wanted to vegetables are different here (I'm in Bangkok now), and the set in the US somehow seems really well suited for that.

People in that Reddit fasting sub are more concerned with dieting than I am, naturally.  They will use rotating fasts (rolling 48s or 72s, two or three day cycles on and off eating), or 2 or 3 week long fast durations to maximize that.  I could also stand to lose a few pounds, I guess.  Some people in that group talk about shifting habits even more than I've described, cutting out more negative inputs.  Here's a typical example, from the thread I mentioned as a main starting point:

It’s because the ultra processed / sugary stuff that most people eat is addictive. If you cut it out you won’t crave it anymore after awhile.

That probably works.  Two separate comments second what I've said about the fasting experience time-frame shifting with exposure:

I also have noticed that I lose my food cravings as well after day 3 😜

The first few times I fasted I obsessed really bad, that was the most difficult part. Over time it has mostly gone away.

There isn't that much discussion input in that post thread because that sort of question comes up over and over, and people tire of answering the same question.

The linked article says a lot more about study input about related patterns: 

(Symposium on ‘Molecular mechanisms and psychology of food intake.’  The psychology of food craving*)

So it wasn't only a research review paper, it summarized a series of papers and ideas presented together, back in 2006 ("The Summer Meeting of the Nutrition Society, hosted by the Rowett Research Institute and the University of Aberdeen").  An excerpt of the abstract points to more overlap with what I'm considering here:

Cravings are hedonic responses to food, characterised by their intensity and their specificity.  Food cravings are extremely common, reported by the majority of young adults. They are closely associated with liking but not synonymous with increased intake...  Taking dieting as an example of an assumed influence on food craving, the outcomes of cross sectional studies are mixed and unconvincing. Prospective and experimental research shows a clearer relationship. Dieting or restrained eating generally increase the likelihood of food craving while fasting makes craving, like hunger, diminish. Attempted restriction or deprivation of a particular food is associated with an increase in craving for the unavailable food...

It's all worth a read, just a little dry.

To add one more experiential observation before closing I've noticed since fasting that I tolerate short term hunger experience better, seemingly less triggered by expectations.  I can skip a lunch and I get hungry, as anyone would, but if I eat a good sized late breakfast that doesn't apply, so it's not just about expectations.  Expecting a meal input and actual hunger, bodily demand for calories, seem to be two different things.  

One supposed benefit of fasting is "metabolic flexibility," the ability to use body fat as an energy input, and to some extent it seems to work out like that.  I can go quite light on eating for a day and still run 10k (6 miles) and don't really notice much difference.  Doing light runs during fasts may have helped with acclimation for that.  Before the fasting exposure it seemed like draining glycogen reserves during such runs triggered even more immediate hunger response, and now as long as I eat something later it doesn't really matter if it's calorie dense of not; a large salad will do.  

My phone health app says that I "only" burn 600 or so calories on a 10k run (actually 529 for a 10.1 k run yesterday), and supposedly we store 2000 calories of glycogen reserves in our body, which is why running a 42 km marathon has people hitting a wall when that supply runs out.  Runners can avoid that by eating energy gels and such, or drinking Gatorade, or even by acclimating to use body fat as energy better, back to the metabolic flexibility idea.  I suspect that there is a huge difference in running efficiency at different paces, that my phone app really isn't "in on," and someone running a 3 hour marathon versus a leisurely 4 1/2 hours adds extra caloric demands.  But what do I know; that's just a guess.

For me fasting is about experiencing the experimentation, along with limited interest in health benefits that I could never really confirm anyway.  My own shift in eating patterns and the experience of hunger seems moderate, but it's still interesting.  

In the long run I think it can be valuable to switch around how we see food, to change from considering only what would be pleasant to experience as a next flavor input or satiation experience and instead also consider nutrient intake, what balance of foods may support that.  Of course that process can start at the grocery store, for people stuck in the past who actually prepare foods, or it would extend to what is purchased through an app for many others.  Over time it's easy to appreciate healthier food inputs, or I suppose even to crave them, depending on how you define 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

What fasting is like when it doesn't work out

 

Day one:

This is my fourth trial of fasting, moving on to a habit or accepted regular practice.  It made perfect sense to try it out as an experiment, but I could be clearer on what I expect from this.

It's not losing weight; I didn't weigh myself before or after the last five days, less than a month ago, but at a recent health check I'm 1 kg over my normal weight last year, up to 75 (165 pounds).  My blood pressure was up too, so general health isn't looking better, instead worse.  I've been running a lot lately and wonder if I'm not stressing my body a bit much, if recovery isn't a burden for it.  Of course I ran today, on the first day of the fast too, so it's not as if I'm acting on that as a concern.  

The theory behind that was from online discussion input that if you can burn up some available glycogen reserves on the first day that can speed up switching to ketosis, use of stored fat as energy (mostly that, at least; your body can use your own protein based tissue too, muscle, per my very limited understanding).  Supposedly even hunger might seem less an issue.  It is strange how I keep forgetting I'm fasting today, when in the past days 1 through 3 have always been rough.

There are a list of supposed, somewhat mysterious health benefits attributed to fasting (especially autophagy), and maybe it really is all that, the appeal of something wonderful being possible, just not clearly defined.  I'm also curious if the experience keeps changing, if it gets easier and easier, and some degree of benefit emerges with more exposure.  I may be slightly clearer mentally; something like that.  

I've been eating a continually healthier diet since I've started fasting some months ago, but it seems like the "diet reset" function is largely finished, that I'm as "switched over" in terms of clean diet as I'm probably going to get.  Most sugar and processed food is already out, and I eat a bit like those people who go on and on about it on social media, the streams of ultra healthy meal photos, I just don't mention it.

Day 2

Done already; I woke up in the night and couldn't go back to sleep, and felt an odd and disturbing sensation in my chest, and eventually called it.  I woke to drink water, with some extra electrolytes, but then over an hour later it wasn't resolving, so I ate a snack.

Maybe an electrolyte imbalance?  Seems most likely.  I was very careful about measuring out recommended amounts of sodium and potassium, and took a mid-level supplement range of magnesium, in pill form, in a multi-vitamin, and in a dissolving tablet, about 500 mg worth in total, but it still may have been that.

Two variable conditions came into play, which could've worked together.  I ran yesterday, thinking that it might help switch me over to ketosis to clear glycogen stores.  Since it was a short run (2.1 miles) I bumped intensity, to see how that would go, running that as 4 fast half-mile (800-900 meter) sections.  Of course that went badly; I don't train exactly like that, even though adding a fast 800 meter section at the end is normal for me.  Making a change in form might've been a bad idea.  I hadn't eaten for 15 hours or so at that point but I was expecting reserve energy level to hold over from the day before.  It kind of did, just not completely.

That step definitely seemed to help to smooth transition; I wasn't hungry at all yesterday, and an hour could go by without me thinking of being on a fast.  When I did walk by a snack food I'd often not notice, or the inclination to eat seemed muted.

A second variable was going to a health check-up a week or so ago and registering higher blood pressure than I've ever experienced (150 / 85).  I don't know why that happened.  My mother said that high blood pressure runs in our family, that she switched to experiencing it quite suddenly in middle age, in "spells," and there is probably a trigger I'm not clear on causing it.  

I've been increasing running distance, frequency, and intensity over the past 3 weeks, and that breaks a golden rule of running training, exceeding something like 10% weekly increase in any one or set of those.  That alone could be it, that my body is shocked by the change, experiencing higher recovery demands causing stress.  Or I suppose it's easy to see how working with a standard electrolyte supplementation input may not apply at all coupled with increasing running training.  

I checked total weekly running distance while editing this and I covered about 27 miles in a week, 43 km, when my past total never amounted to half that, at the same time I've been dropping pace down to around or under 6 min / km, around 9 1/2 minute miles, across run distances up to 10k.  Stopping eating without stopping running was foolish, even if it was the plan to take a couple days off for the fast.  It was surely too much recovery demand to put on my body even if all the running occurred just prior to the fast, with the last run in the first half day.

I'll move to Hawaii in two weeks so there's a lot that I wanted to get in (running, fasting, and of course packing), and compressing it together is probably not a good idea.  My kids are there now, and have been there, and I spent last Sept. and October there, so it's an odd staged move.  

I've "trained up" to a point where a lot of new running options are open to me, I'll just have to not rush to try too many at once.  I really should start tracking my heart rate, and just eating a good diet may not be enough, I may need to check into a few extra key supplements.  I switched over to running 6+ miles in distance back in Honolulu last year, including hills there, so it's not really sudden, but checking timing and pace recently probably caused me to increase that.

my longer running route there goes around this, Diamondhead

we live in that background shown there, with my heart and soul in the foreground

I want to distill this to what I take to be a lesson, to advice, but to be clear I'm no authority on any of it, and the main thing I would recommend is caution (so don't do what I do).  Fasting seems like it can be quite safe, interesting to experience, and probably healthy, but dialing in electrolyte supplementation, drinking enough water, and eliminating other variables seems helpful.  Going into it with concern over a health condition is probably always going to raise level of doubts, and with or without that activating a significant risk it could be quite uncomfortable.  Stepping up to longer time-frames seems much better, which I didn't do earlier, but then I pulled the plug on my first fasting trial after three days as a result.

Then there is an odd balance theme that comes up, how keeping busy enough to not focus on not eating seems critical, but being over-taxed by physical and mental demands won't work either.  Something like watching a movie can provide enough distraction, or cleaning the house.  I packed for the move yesterday, or started to, and I suppose it's conceivable that embracing the stress of wondering what I'm going to need, and what's going to happen, could've added mental burden.  During fasting would be a fantastic time to get out and experience a bit of nature, which luckily is all around me where I live now, even though I'm in Bangkok.

papaya in the yard; that squirrel just ate another one, long before it was ready

I don't feel bad about this test not working out.  Of course I'm more concerned about my general health; I keep saying that I'm going to moderate running intensity but I'm addicted.  Maybe I'll test how slowly I can run this evening, or taking a day off would make more sense.  [later edit:  of course I ran, and tried to keep it slow, but did drop below that 6 min / km pace on a light 4 mile run, which seems moderate because it's normal now].

More on electrolytes

It sounds like it should be simple to dial this part in, right?  There's an RDA for minerals like potassium and magnesium, and surely some normal range for sodium, and ingesting that should keep you in the clear.  One problem is that people claim you go through more of those in ketosis, and if you end up drinking a lot of water (which is recommended, to support different body function using different internal energy source), and add in exercise, then who knows what the actual suitable input level is.  

Let's take a look at what I'm working around, that Reddit fasting sub reference, cited in high level of detail here to talk around (but there is more to check out; the rest is worth a look):

So potassium deficiency can cause irregular heartbeat and low magnesium levels insomnia; sounds about right.  Fasting is no joke; I get it why people often recommend consulting a doctor before trying it, which of course I didn't do.  Then you would have the problem that if you talked to 10 different doctors you would probably hear a range of advice, from some seeing it as a great idea with low risk and others saying not to do it, with advice in the middle varying.

Checking RDA is pretty easy, since you just need to look at the back of a multivitamin bottle and multiply out the percentage value (in the US; the same approach could give slightly varying results elsewhere, but it would be similar).  Magnesium (on mine) lists 50 mg as 12%, so that's just over 400 mg per day.  Then it's a bit complicated sorting out bio-availability concerns and amount of a compound in a salt form.

I had read through all this, made simpler for taking a 300 mg magnesium supplement capsule that first morning.  As best I could I sorted out using a variation of what they referred to as "Lite Salt," filling a container of water full of the sodium and potassium mixture for a day (the "chloride" version of both; I had tried mixing baking soda as an input before, as they recommended in one place, but it's disgusting).  It should've been fine.  Maybe especially the magnesium input, since I ended up taking around 500 mg, versus that 300 - 400.  Mixing a day's worth in advance like seems best because you can not worry about tracking amounts, and can mix that solution with water or an herb tea as you like.

Adding running is a variable though; it has been cool out, for us, so level of demand seems to be not as much an input as when I'm running in the mid 90s F (mid 30s C), but I should've tried out a slow, easy run.  I was still undergoing muscle recovery from a run the day before too; it's hard to factor that in, but I guess that process may or may not also utilize electrolytes (why wouldn't it?).

Related to taking it easy, or not, I ran another "short" 4 mile / 6 km outing the evening after bailing the night before, and 10k the next day, and as I finish final editing I'm forcing myself to take a day off.

I discussed in a recent post how getting new running shoes is part of wanting to get out more

I think if people had to wait until conditions were perfect to try out fasting, or extend duration of trials, that they never would get to it.  Work is always going to enter in, or exercise, family demands, or other external stresses.  Some degree of moderation must be required though, which of course I didn't factor in.  Naps are perfect for adjusting energy level imbalances, more of an issue in early fasting trials, but that's not a standard practice most people could include, outside of during weekends.  Days 1 through 3 seem the hardest, so starting on a Saturday could include the first two then.

I was awake in the night some last night, not related to fasting, and it's obvious then that if I had been fasting I might see that as a potentially significant side effect, when really it just varies how long it takes to fall back to sleep.  A lot of it is psychological, that if you expect it all to go well and see minor issues as minor then it's not so bad, but with the opposite negative expectations little issues could add up.  I think that I really did screw it all up for not moderating exercise, as described, that it wasn't mostly about expectations this time.