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.

Experiences with offsetting aging effects

This theme came up from discussion in a Reddit aging related sub-group, here.  The title for that post was "experiences with reversing aging," which this title version probably corrects a bit.  You can really offset some of the effects, maybe even reversing what is regarded as an irreversible outcome in some cases, but in general it's about positively affecting general health, not turning back the clock.  

To me it's not about aesthetics, but it could be for others.  It also doesn't tie so closely to health markers, from doing bloodwork (general health assessment), but I did just check those results within the last couple of months, and they look ok.  I missed the last two company health checks or I could've assessed changes.  I've started fasting practices and have escalated running volume over the last 2 1/2 years; those recent markers should be better than earlier ones.

Let's start with that post; it also includes limited intro, so a lot of that would be overdoing it:

It's not really one of my things, as it is with Bryan Johnson and those other typically sketchy aging research guys, but I've had limited experience with seeing the effects of aging reverse. My hair was greying some years ago, and it has almost entirely returned to the original color. To be more specific my son counted 13 grey hairs about two years ago, and there are just a few at my lower temple now.

To back up a little I'm 56. In some other ways, partly related to appearance, I haven't aged as fast as I might, with my skin holding up decently, not using reading glasses, still exercising, etc. I can't know direct causes but I'll speculate about that here.

I took up periodic fasting just over 2 years ago, now fasting 5 days at a time, 4 times a year, but it was more that first year, nearly a month in total. I've been running a lot for 3 or 4 years, but I've levelled off at being able to run 10 km three times a week; I can't seem to recover from more than that. I don't know if it makes a difference but I've been eating a little goji berry most days for a number of years (said to help maintain eye health). I've improved my diet quite a bit based on resetting it related to fasting, and have been keeping up with sleep for years. A long cycle of meditation practice may have helped with memory issues.

I have kids, and had them late, so most of that didn't apply in my 40s. I was definitely out of shape over that decade, not exercising much, but I stayed active. I suspect that being a little underweight during my 20s and 30s, related to being a vegetarian then, may have been an earlier cause for slower aging.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend that people try to suspend aging, but maintaining exceptional health seems reasonable.

Feb. 2025; looking a bit middle-aged, ok for 56

The "typically sketchy" part, about aging researchers, relates to them often seeming to package a product as much as search for answers for the benefit of society.  It's as well to not get side-tracked on that critique; parts of the research must hold up to further review, and will benefit many people.

Commentary

That group focus on a narrow range helped shaped what I tried to communicate there, on aging as affecting appearance and some narrow ranges of health.  Without that group-location framing I'd tend to focus more on discussion of just improving health, in general.  I'm also in a biohacking group on Reddit, which I might comment in but never post to, which would be more concerned with supplements, especially experimental versions.  Some people there see fasting as a functional form of biohacking.

Since I don't know the cause and effect sequences of making a few lifestyle input changes it's all vague enough.  I think fasting made a lot of difference, but any positive changes could have related mainly to better diet and getting more exercise.  I'll run through some potential positive changes in more detail here.

Life and location change as a possible input:  three years ago my family moved our kids to Honolulu, Hawaii to go to school here instead of Bangkok, intending to relocate my work, which never worked out.  I've been back and forth since, spending most of my time still in Bangkok, and working remotely part of the time.  

It may be that living a more active life in Hawaii changes things, even though I've only been spending 3 months a year here, while they spend 9.  I swam a lot this spring (in March through the end of May); an input like that couldn't hurt.  "A lot" is relative; I was swimming about 500 meters about 3 days a week, in the open ocean, out to a flag and back in a swim lane.  My son trains for competitive swimming and his daily practices cover a lot more distance, every day versus my weekly total.

out for an early run around Diamondhead

I swim out to that flag, and see turtles there (tourist for scale)

Diamondhead from my daughter's former school

Genetic factors:  one input I see as relating to appearing younger is kind of a random thing:  I have oily skin.  If I don't shower twice a day I end up looking a bit greasy, while living in a warm or hot climate.  That may be relatively equivalent to people using a lot of moisturizer in a cooler and dryer place (which I don't use).  My sister also looks quite young, also in her 50s, and good genetics for aging gradually probably go well beyond that.

these guys are holding up well

Food preferences probably have a lot of effect, along with eating what might be considered a good diet.  The luck of the draw might factor in, related to the former.  Thai food is typically based on natural, whole foods, not involving that much processing, even though use of frying and addition of some sugar does come up. 

I drink an awful lot of tea; it's odd that I didn't mention that in passing in that post.  I've considered before that beyond some polyphenols potentially supporting health, or offsetting aging effects, just ingesting extra minerals every day might make a difference.  Tea plants collect and store minerals, in addition to some contaminants, so I may be keeping topped up on a range of minerals.  Who knows about effects beyond that; maybe it is unusually healthy.

I started drinking coffee again within the last 6 months.  I can't imagine that's having a lot of effect either way, especially since I never drink more than one large cup a day (maybe 10 to 12 ounces), but it's an example of how other inputs keep shifting.  I last meditated regularly nearly two years ago; that's another example of ongoing changes.

Supplements, including anti-aging supplements:  I mostly take a multivitamin, magnesium, and D when I'm not getting that much sun.  I was also taking fish oil for awhile, and replace some salt intake with a potassium chloride based salt product; that's about it.

I also eat some goji berries most days, which is said to contain zeaxanthin, one of two compounds that promote eye health (along with lutein).  My wife said that it would help with eye health and hair loss, but who knows about traditional Thai medical claims.  It seemed like a bit of extra vitamin A couldn't hurt; those are supposedly a good source of that.

There are a broad range of other supplement or drug compounds being developed and tested now, but I don't really investigate those much, never mind taking any.  I'm more ok with aging normally than being a test subject, even though I am concerned enough about health to put effort into all of it.

Recommendations, and justification for them

Exercise:  there's no need to justify endorsing exercise, right?  I can add that running just a little early in my practice, starting nearly 7 years ago, seemed to make a lot of difference, but my cardio conditioning only improved once I ramped up volume.  I run 20 miles / 30 km a week when I'm more active, and maybe two thirds of that when I'm inconsistent, with some extra multiple week periods "off" in the past year or so.  I was more consistent and diligent before moving back and forth to Hawaii made that difficult.  It's not about making the time, or jet-lag disruption, but instead valuing the time with my kids in a different way after we re-unite.

If I run consistently for about 6 weeks my conditioning will change a good bit right around that time, but if I run consistently for only a month it won't.  I'm not implying that your health would change a lot, if you could lean into it all for 2 to 3 months.  Maybe that's true, and probably race conditioning works like that, but I don't know what supports general health well enough, versus what will "drop time" on training paces.

Fasting:  I suspect that fasting makes a lot of difference, but I'm not completely sold on hearsay related to autophagy, the process of your body recycling mis-folded proteins or whatever other damaged material.  Supposedly this always occurs in your body, and helps offset varying long term health issues, but vigorous exercise triggers more of it, or fasting for around 48 hours or longer does.  But if you try to look up research papers linking that this does occur, and that it relates to specific health-related outcomes, it's not easy making the connections.  

Again this isn't a claim either way.  I suspect that I am slightly mentally clearer related to periodic extended fasting, but who knows.  You could observe what you expect to, to some extent.  I also feel like I have more energy when running, that maybe greater "metabolic flexibility" helps with that, training my body to also use fat as an energy source.  I don't mind at all when meals run late, or skipping one is fine; I'm a lot less constrained by habitual eating now.

Diet changes:  my diet was never bad enough for me to see change effects in the same way someone moving off a truly bad diet could.  I took up being a vegetarian over 30 years ago, and tried to eat a healthy, balanced diet based on essentially no actual meat input for that next 17 years.  I was the "lacto-ovo" type; I still ate dairy and eggs, thinking that it would help me avoid deficiencies.  Then I think the deficiencies did enter in, around 13 years ago now, and my immune system stopped working normally.  I had been fine for that first decade, living in the US, watching my diet and eating supplements to help, but after I moved to Thailand I ate meat-based dishes without the meat, and it wasn't the same.  More idle speculation, probably, but that was my take.

So I'm describing improving an already pretty decent diet over the last few years, already based on input of plenty of fruits and vegetables, and whole grains, along with good quality meats input.  I've not eaten much for junk food, processed snacks, and fast food for a long time, with the exception of eating a good bit of ice cream.  Moving back to the US did add some challenges, since it's easy to appreciate different kinds of snack foods, that weren't options back in Thailand.  Those tubs of chocolate chip cookie dough are nice; I may have noticed the input of eating that on my body weight and cholesterol score.

Summary perspective:  the implied claim here, in all of this, is that I feel like I'm really 30 or 40, and not 56, and I guess that sort of holds up.  My exercise recovery is a lot slower; it's all that I can do to recover from around 30 km of running a week (20 miles), which to me doesn't seem like that much.  I switched to 12 km runs here in Honolulu, with hill sections (running around Diamondhead), and I could keep that up indefinitely on an 8-day, 3 run cycle, but not quite 3 times a week.  With more conditioning I could've got there; I was trying to ramp up and maintain that within a 2 month or so cycle.  But it's hard to make changes to training volume or intensity at this age, and I've experienced very minor injuries before that highlight that those can only occur gradually.

I guess that I feel fine.  I keep busy and active, walking a lot, doing many other things, and never feel like it's too much.  I don't notice much for aches and pains, or digestive system changes, or whatever else.  I really did feel less clear in my early 40s, when I was still adjusting to a busy office-life experience, but adding running seems to have resolved some of that.

I wouldn't consider TRT / HRT because all of that seems fine to me.  I don't see anything wrong with others making that choice, but I don't experience any of the other symptoms it's supposed to correct for (low energy, mood issues, problems with exercise, body composition, or sexual function, etc.).

Recommendations:  I should close this by recommending truly low-hanging fruit, what I think would make the most difference the fastest.  It's diet change.  For people accustomed to drinking soda just dropping that out would make a lot of difference.  Drinking water should be fine, or tea or coffee as a healthy input, or tisanes, herb teas.  Maybe drinking enough water alone would make a difference, versus falling short daily, or just getting enough sleep.

Changing diet could relate to making small, periodic changes, like swapping out fast food for cooking healthy natural food versions, or chips for nuts, or maybe replacing processed deserts with fruit.  Fasting makes this easy, because it's easy to see each break and renewed eating cycle as a reset.  But there must be other ways to push the same effect, like making a few small changes at the start of every month.  I "only" fast about 20 days a year, so not a high proportion, and I've gained weight over the past two years, so using fasting to lose weight would require a more specific focus on that.

Listening to your body is important.  The amount of sleep that's enough would vary by person.  Poor diet inputs or unusually helpful inputs also would vary by person in relation to positive or negative impact.  Related to exercise more would be better up to a point, but at middle age injury is an early warning sign that you're progressing too fast, and that's no good.

Being open to life changes may make a difference.  Of course it would help if those are positive.  I went through a period of meditating a lot, the second I've experienced in my life, and that seemed to help.  Getting a new pet can change things in a positive way (although losing one can also be really rough).  Life connections and activities seem to make a lot of difference.

Having kids late seemed to help.  I've been playing in kids' play areas for years (14 or 15), going to water parks, ice skating (a lot; the kids took lessons), biking and hiking with them, and so on.  That decade off exercise involved a lot of activity.  Some of it is just mental, not seeing yourself as sedentary and inactive, but it seems important for that to connect to physical activity.  I don't think it needs to be all that strenuous; hanging out laundry or doing gardening could be enough, to maintain flexibility through varied movement.

my other babies; I miss them terribly, while I'm away for this month

Beyond all of this I think accepting long-term transitions like aging is helpful.  You can focus on health, and change that, and some "symptoms" might diminish.  But in general life is about change, and walking a changing path, so feeling negatively about that context could be unhelpful.  Leaning into whatever activity works for you could tie in with feeling positive about your capacity, and enjoying different activities.  We--as a family, essentially--took up pickleball this year; it's nice when those can involve some limited exercise.

more on this here, especially relevant to people in Honolulu

good experience of meaning can't hurt

Potential fasting health benefits; normalizing fasting practice

 

The last post about fasting experience settled in on "why?," never fully resolving that, and I'll only repeat that theme a bit here, extending it to two different directions.

The main answer in the past has been "to experiment."  Of course most people fast to lose weight, but my own body weight seems strongly inclined to return to the previous level (about 74 kg or 165 pounds), and since that's reasonable I don't try to adjust that.  Maybe I should shift back to more like 71 kg / 160, and will at some point.

After 20 days of experience of not eating that initial experimentation phase is kind of done; so what's next?  Any answer would relate to potential or expected health benefits, so lets summarize that, after placing why I'm trying to communicate this.

I would like to share these ideas to make the option to practice fasting open to more people.  I don't need to validate what I'm doing, to get others to join in so it makes it seem like it really does make sense.  For the most part I don't care what other people do, or think.  Related to helping other people I make an exception, and then if I can I do.  So I guess all this is a claim that I buy into the health benefits?  I'm a bit skeptical, but otherwise I do.

On to potential benefits.

Fasting may enable metabolic flexibility.  This would allow someone to use body fat energy more effectively, which could apply well to exercise, not just to not eating, although I guess also to being able to skip lunch.  I do seem to experience improved energy level on longer runs.  

I last tested out running four miles on day 4 of a fast, so completely into ketosis, with glycogen reserves long since expended, and that went ok.  I was experiencing minor knee soreness (so probably shouldn't have even ran that), so I didn't try out a longer test.

Fasting reduces insulin resistance:  This actually seems to work; it seems more clearly documented as an actual positive effect.  For people at risk of developing adult onset diabetes--which is a significant risk for me; both of my grandmothers and one uncle developed that--they can reduce that risk through fasting, moderating body weight, and reducing high levels of intake of carbohydrates, especially refined sugars. 

There's nothing necessarily dangerous about all refined sugar intake, per my understanding (which is not necessarily well-informed), it's that it's easy to bump that to very high levels, and then actual risk does come up.  Drinking 32 ounces of soda relates to about 100 grams of sugar consumption, at around 336 calories, or one sixth of a normal day's dietary caloric intake.  That's like eating 6 1/2 apples; which would take longer to digest for all that fiber, even if you could eat that many.  Risk also relates to that being empty of any other nutrient content, to that potentially adding to a positive caloric balance (more taken in than used), and to problems with your body handling the related blood sugar.  Conversion to body fat can occur, and some other negative side effects, and to developed insulin resistance.  

It's probably better to moderate body weight and mind dietary inputs than to use fasting to offset impacts of being overweight and eating a bad diet.  Or doing both is an option.  Maintaining significant muscle mass also helps (not like bodybuilders, I mean average or more than average), for different reasons, especially since muscle tissue stores glycogen (reserve energy), but I don't want to write out too many tangents in this.

Fasting may reduce visceral body fat.  There are tests for this sort of thing, so I could be documenting this (my actual proportion of body fat by location), but I'm not.  The idea is that fat in or between organs is used first when fasting, and that first change is not at all just a cosmetic concern.  Liver function should improve as a direct result of regular fasting, if fat deposits in the liver were an issue to begin with.  How often is that relevant though?  Who knows.  Blood compound markers would show that, but I'm not minding those, and missed my last annual health check at work due to being out of the country then.  

I can add that I've put on about 3 kgs (6 1/2 pounds) over the last two years and my waist size was a little larger a year ago, and then bumping running volume and perhaps fasting dropped it back to where it had been.  Thinking it through storing visceral fat in the form of what is in between internal organs may or may not be a bad thing, but it seems clearer that storing fat within your liver is a problem.

More mental clarity, reduced aging effects:  hard to say about these kinds of changes.  I feel ok, probably a little clearer, but that's hard to track.  Maybe I do have slightly less grey hair than a year ago, which is odd.  I can even sometimes see eyebrow hair change from white to brown again, since those being two colors stands out more--hard to place that.  I've been running more since then too, really keeping up with sleep, exercising a lot more, and my diet has improved a bit.  

And I've ramped up intake of goji berries as a daily supplement; that might've helped.  I finished a kg I bought in mid-June recently, so I seem to be consuming 350 grams or so per month, just over 10 grams a day, a good bit.  Why?  My thinking was that I try to eat a lot of fruit but don't get to that every day, and I definitely can put 10 grams or so of dried berries in hot water and then consume the infusion and fruit, every day, regardless of what I happen to be eating that day.  Supposedly one compound in those offsets aging impact, but even if it's the nutrients in them that are healthy instead that also works.

Fasting may offset cancer

This is a big one, and this tangent runs longer than I intended, since I've been reviewing this subject a good bit lately, just not necessarily in a focused form.  

I have no idea if fasting does really offset cancer risk or assist with resolution, but many, many sources claim that both do occur.  I can't sort out which potential claims work or don't work, or when and how they apply.  From catching a bit of cancer experience related Youtube content--which I'll say more about here--cancer cells do consume a lot of blood sugar, so that a main way of tracking growth of such tissue is to just monitor where the most is being consumed in the body (after you ingest some radioactive sugar; kind of a strange process).  I'm not really caught up on what my cells are using for an energy source right now (it's day 2 of a fast, as I write the first draft, long before posting this), but of course my carbohydrate intake is over, for now.  I'll probably be "in ketosis" later today, whatever that means.  

Autophagy is said to occur during fasting (and it really does, but exactly what that means is harder to pin down).  At a minimum your body consumes internal body fat (of course; how else could you stay alive, since only using muscle tissue as an energy source would make less sense), and it may recycle all sorts of damaged cells.  It's a complicated subject though, one that's hard to sort out.

Someone could easily turn up a lot of content saying that fasting really does offset cancer risk (this is an interesting example), or support treatment / resolution, but how good any of those sources are would be hard to settle.  Cancer isn't just one thing, and experiences would vary, and a topic like that naturally relates to a lot of people repeating what they want to be true, filtering their own reference source input.  A lot of light medical advice looks more solid than it might really be, and a source citing other sources isn't clearly well-grounded until you also evaluate those.  That linked video reference cites a lot of research background, but even for those kinds of sources you need to be careful; you might read only about studies supporting some claim, when conclusions from other studies also reject that connection.

Those cancer related accounts come from running across a Youtube channel about someone experiencing cancer, Paul in Perth, and then the Youtube algorithm showing me plenty more of that since that's how it works.  If you watch one channel about puppies, even if you're not subscribed to it, you'll see lots more of that in your feed there.  It can be a little depressing, watching people talk about dying, but for the most part those stories are about being hopeful and positive when things are dark for them.  To me those people tend to be more inspiring than any other accounts of any subjects.

In a comment I asked Paul in Perth if he could use fasting for cancer resolution and he said that it could have potentially helped at an earlier stage, but for his disease being so far progressed negative effects related to recovery from chemo treatments made it relatively unsuitable (per his understanding, related to his own condition and type of cancer).  

I just saw a video of a guy literally at the end, Daryl, saying that he was signing off since he would die within a day or two, and he was much more positive and upbeat than almost any movie review content.  He showed a box / urn he picked out, shook it, and said "this is light; I guess I'm not in there yet."  A 16 year old girl, who goes by So Fia, ended a long series of posts about her struggle focused entirely on the positive, about her love of life, and appreciation for what she had.  She was so much stronger, braver, and more wise than any other "healthy" influencer type I've ever seen.  The main message is usually one of hope and optimism, about appreciation for life, not fear of death.

None of this related to fasting, to be clear.  None of them even tried it out as a form of partial resolution, although there surely are videos out there about people who did feel fasting helped them, which again would be hard to evaluate, or people trying it and not noticing any positive difference.  

Should those people have tried it out?  I have no idea.  According to health claims within "fasting circles" of course they should have, but personally I can't place that.  There is no clear cause and effect for why they developed cancer, or why others experienced miracle recoveries that they did not, some related to fasting and many more not (the first guy I mentioned a video channel for is still alive; the other two are not).  

In many cases people link cancer experience to high carbohydrate diets (back to hearsay input from cancer patients, to be clear).  Discussion of treatment experimentation comes up more related to keto-oriented diets (more than fasting, I suppose, at least per limited and random sampling).  That's not intended as a claim that generality or that resolution practice is effective, I'm referencing their understanding.  In looking up those video links this content creator thinks his cancer stemmed from a vitamin D deficiency, oxidative stress (from multiple inputs), from alcohol exposure, and a high carbohydrate diet.  Who knows; maybe those were the main causes, surely along with genetics.  

I've skipped including links to people claiming fasting helped them resolve cancer experiences here; even a post focused on that topic would be taking on a lot.  I'd also be careful of trusting what seem to be very well grounded but light information sources online linking fasting with cancer prevention or resolution, of which there are many.  It can seem that if one source might be valid or could be questionable that 10 taken together must be reliable, but many people make videos citing the same studies on mice that may or may not mean a lot related to actual human experience.  They might be generating that content with a slightly different spin mostly to draw viewership, without really turning up any new insights, or in some cases even without reviewing more grounded sources.

Why would I embrace fasting as a means to potentially offset a risk that's not necessarily high for me, when it's hard to clearly determine the linkage that it even works (beyond a lot of claims floating around)?  One partial answer is that I'm discussing potential reduced risk of dying, at a cost of not eating sometimes.  I've spent roughly 20 days fasting over the past year (25, after editing this; I just finished another 5 day fast), and the main cost or impact was increased hunger and reduced clarity and energy level over that time.  All of that was much more moderate in the last fast, and hunger is much more of a non-issue this time too.  People actually claim that fasting improves mental clarity, but what I mean here is that energy level fluctuations have an impact, especially in the first 3 or 4 trials.

Another partial answer is that reduced cancer risk isn't really the main benefit people associate with fasting, beyond weight loss, and it's not necessarily a main reason I'm doing it.  Supposedly--as mentioned--it offsets effects of aging, increases mental clarity (when it's not offsetting it), reduces visceral fat levels and impact, and offsets risks from insulin resistance, lowering risk of diabetes.  Autophagy is another subject I won't really get into here, closely linked to potentially reduced cancer risk, which I've covered more in the past.

Why wouldn't people fast then?  There seems to be a lot of potential benefit, and most people could use to lose a few pounds.  Let's address that separately.  

Why not fast?  Normalizing fasting practice.

In discussing that in a health related thread someone commented "that sounds like complete torture."  There's that; hunger experience is profound over the first few trials.  It's so negative that exposure to a consistent problematic condition like that works as a mindfulness tool, a way of experiencing the present moment differently.

In light of that it would be natural for people not to fast if they aren't sold on any of these benefits, if they have no clear reason to.  I'm only going to mention it to set it aside here but it's hard to be certain any of these claims completely work.  What someone considers good evidence would shift what any individual review would turn up.  If it's only to find documented research of multiple independent findings then maybe that would be possible, but you would still need to interpret what a number of narrow studies really mean in actual practice.

If finding a couple of dozen "health expert" claims and personal experience accounts is enough then that would be an easy bar to clear.  I'm a bit skeptical by nature, so I tend to arrive at probabilities related to what I think is accurate, not necessarily even trying to sort out the final facts of the matter.

Some people might actually regard fasting as posing health risks, although anyone unfamiliar with the subject also couldn't be clear on what those are.  Vitamin deficiency, stomach problems?  The second is mentioned more, when you tell people you practice fasting (per my experience, at least).  

Oddly people who eat continuously throughout the day would actually routinely experience stomach problems, and I never do, because I eat moderate amounts of foods almost entirely as three meals.  That was true before I tried out fasting too though.  I'm unfamiliar with what it's like to regularly experience an upset stomach, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, or any problems with digesting food.  By "regularly" I mean that I might eat something that speeds up my digestion process once a year, or every other year, or that makes me even sicker every half dozen years.  That's not bad for eating a broad mix of local foods in Bangkok.  The rest I essentially never experience.  Some vegetables, legumes and beans, or high protein foods cause gas; that range of experience is familiar, especially as a former long-term vegetarian.

Fasting hasn't caused me any noticeable stomach problems, in those 25 days.  I get hungry, but not like during the first three trials.  That relates more to an empty feeling than other types of discomfort.  Really empty; it's hard to describe.  As of writing an initial draft of this, on day 2 of 5, I could go for most of an hour without being reminded that I am fasting, and the next day maybe even longer, but that's not to say that I felt no negative side effects.  I was hungry, with a low energy level, but I might not notice either for awhile if I'm busy, or even watching a video.

In bodybuilding circles rapid fat loss is very desirable, but muscle tissue loss is a serious concern, so fasting can be applied, but only in limited forms and contexts.  One of the main intros to this subject, that partly led me to explore fasting practices, was from one longevity related "biohacker" bringing it up, and one bodybuilder (Leo and Longevity and "Vigorous Steve," who isn't as far out there as his Youtuber brand name implies, but a little maybe).  

Steve used fasting to rapidly resolve fatty liver disease, even though applying a fasting mimicking diet for weeks cost him plenty of muscle mass loss.  Most of that muscle came back fast, and it seemed the very real health risk caused him to reconsider even trying to be as massive again (the 250 pound or up range, I think).  Leo explored fasting as he did many longevity related pursuits.  Steve feels absolutely certain that fasting does definitely reduce visceral body fat, from experiencing that, and perhaps Leo's direct experiential claims are harder to evaluate.

Most people in a Reddit fasting sub-forum I follow practice fasting mainly to lose weight, which makes sense.  It's a somewhat radical approach, but it should work.  Often people either struggle to make it through 24 hours there or else really swing for the fence and go straight to attempting 21 day fasts, which I see as unnecessarily difficult and risky.  With more exposure people seem to settle on alternating fasting and eating, on a 2 or 3 day cycle, which they might refer to as "rolling 72s," the hour duration.  Since the benefit of autophagy is said to "kick in" after 2 days I would think using a 3 day cycle might be better than 2.  Or 4 would work; for me the second day is hardest in terms of hunger and the third is most disruptive for experienced energy level.  

Few people would be familiar with how fasting isn't as unpleasant an experience after repeated exposure.  I can compare it to how running can definitely seem distinctly unpleasant prior to more exposure than most people would ever experience, and then it's kind of pleasant, even addictive.  I think fasting ends up being more neutral, not so difficult, and definitely not pleasant, but just normal over time.  

Maybe level of discomfort can be comparable to when you get 5 or 6 hours sleep instead of 8 (which I don't do; I need my sleep, and I put my time in with sleep deprivation working night shifts when younger and raising young kids after that).  For many people that's a normal trade-off, a way to go through life, so that eventually they wouldn't even notice feeling a bit hazy and off, after their body adjusts to it.  At this point I'd much rather not eat for a day or two than try to function on 5 hours sleep.

My take on fasting benefits

I've really not been clear on how many benefits I buy into here, or which I seem to directly experience.  That only works so well because the largest scale benefits you can't pin down, like reducing cancer or diabetes risk.  Maybe I'm mentally clearer, but that's really hard to track too.  So many things factor into that.  My experience of digestion can't improve because I've never had problems, but it hasn't worsened.  

Resetting my diet to a somewhat healthier form has definitely happened, but oddly I was eating a really healthy diet a year ago, before a first trial.  There were a few snacks to shift to a healthier form, and I could've dialed in generally healthy food intake to a level that may be a bit extreme, and did so.  I think all of that has supported taking my running habit a lot further over the past year, but again inputs and outcomes are complicated.  I know that I've ran between 15 and 20 miles a week for all this year, but I can't trace that directly back to diet improvement; maybe I could've did the same eating worse instead of better.  I feel like it helped my energy level when running, the metabolic flexibility theme, but who knows.  

It's too bad I skipped my annual health check-up last year, due to being out of the country when my company conducts those, and probably will again this year; that would be a good way to track some change, potentially, and undergoing that is a good idea in general.

Fasting has changed how I experience an urge to snack between meals, which was always somewhat limited.  I had switched from eating a bit of chocolate--or potato chips, if they were around--to some mixed nuts between meals around a year ago, and after fasting I tend to snack as a habit even less.  Fasting highlights how much of that practice relates to immediate triggers, like seeing something, or to boredom, and it can become more normal to drop out both cycles.

In conclusion...

Fasting is an option?  But then it always was.  

I've taken up and set aside a lot of atypical practices over the course of my life, and it's interesting considering why others don't do those things, or when maybe more will, or I guess in some cases to what extent I'm making any sense at all.  I was a vegetarian for 17 years, which I ended about a dozen years ago, due to not putting the right effort in to get it to balance, and experiencing immune system problems.  Since then it has become a lot more mainstream.  

I was into rock climbing in the early 90s, and thought this is so cool it will have to "take off," not noticing that it being gear intensive and difficult would probably prevent that (and has).  I explored Buddhism for many years, but then I always knew that was for my own reasons, that there was never going to be broad uptake.  This being a tea blog of course that pattern applies to that beverage choice too.

Fasting will probably never really have its day as a broad trend, at least not in the immediate future.  People only need to skip breakfast and lunch to see why it's not a standard option; you get hungry.  That gets worse on day two, even if it's much diminished on a third or fourth fasting experience.  "Biohacking" is much more approachable; taking a lot of supplements and drugs.  I get it.  I'm not on that page myself but I get it.

I reset to a healthier diet but it's still based on normal food

Re-trying a 2011 FT Xiaguan mini cake

 

It's been awhile!  I don't know if I've ever taken a full month off posting here, or even off reviewing, but that just happened.  I moved back from Honolulu to Bangkok again, a cycle that will seemingly keep repeating for awhile, so things have been busy.  It's odd being slightly overwhelmed by the heat and humidity, again.  Running has been rough; a lot of outings cut back slightly for distance while I acclimate.

Nothing is really new related to tea, except that I recently met one of those next level tea experts, Olivier Schneider, which I don't plan on covering in detail here.  He's nice.

This post is about retrying a sheng version I've not checked on for a couple of years, a Xiaguan mini cake, not so different than their tuocha shaped versions, but for whatever reasons not as earthy.  This earlier vendor description (it's from the Chawang Shop) covers what it is:

FT(For Taiwan)" means this small iron cake was a special order of "Fei Tai" Company. Fei Tai Company is the biggest Xiaguan TF and Menghai TF pu-erh tea distributor in Taiwan. It is claimed that the customized products of Fei Tai company reaches a higher quality in Xiaguan TF. The high-level "FT" tea chose better raw materials. Iron cake is tightly compressed, so its qualitative transformation is slow. Definitely tea for longer-term store. High quality early spring large-leafs material from 2009 and 2010, and was used Cang Shan mountain spring water for the steaming process. This cake is not too smokey, typical for Xiaguan teas. The taste is strong and powerful, floral and sweet huigan.

Odd that FT stands for "for Taiwan" when it's that vendor name's initials, right, Fei Tai?  I've seen that for Taiwan reference before; maybe it just worked out that it could mean two things.  It's interesting that this is a blend of material that is now 13 to 14 years old, even though the cake is 12, the pressed version of that older material.

Review:

First infusion (after a rinse):  brewed a little strong, so the effect is a bit intense; I guess I was still trying to get it to open up.  Flavor range seems positive, not atypical for Xiaguan, but on the fruity side as those go.  I just re-tried another larger size tuocha version recently that includes more of the smoky and mushroom range, which isn't a favorite.  For that tea I was wondering if even another decade would shift flavor profile, feel and the rest, into a place I really like it.  I do like this.

Earthiness is present, for sure, which people could interpret in all sorts of ways, as aged wood, tree fungus, leather, or however else they might see it.  Feel is resinous, full, and a little dry, so better brewed a little lighter than this round.  Beyond that there's a fruitiness that I'll try to unpack better next round.

Second infusion:  by fruit of course I mean warm, towards-earthy fruit, maybe most like dried Chinese date (jujube).  This isn't so complex that there are lots of layers to it, or a very refined character; intensity and complexity is good, but it's straightforward.  Bitterness hasn't dropped completely out but this might be another half dozen years away from a more fully transitioned, aged character, or maybe a decade.  Then that's a funny thing, because teas age really fast here in Bangkok, so that fresh, floral sheng versions seem much different a single year later when stored here.  I don't remember this being any different several years ago.  The earliest impression I have is from an early round of a review 4 years ago:

There's a faint hint of smoke, a decent level of bitterness (especially for being a light infusion), and an unusual oily feel to the tea, along with dark mineral content that is somewhere between petroleum and well-corroded metal.  Oddly that's all pleasant. 

I mentioned that I liked this enough that I might buy more to age, and I finished that 125 gram mini cake later, and bought two more to store, one of which I'm first trying now.  I think I remember this tea differently because it aired out a good bit as I drank it over the course of the year or two after that.

Smoke is not noticeable now, and the oily feel I would now describe as sapiness.  What I interpret as fruit I remember from trying this before, not that early time, but over the course of drinking the rest of that.  It seems a little odd that I liked this that much for the description, and for not really loving edgy, dry, smoky sheng versions back then, nearly as much as I could relate to them a few years later, after a lot more exposure.  I've been considering buying another cake of a standard full size version in a Chinatown shop here, one I've barely touched for it being not quite ready as a 2006 version, but one I see a lot of potential in (this one, an 8653).  It's odd that spending 17 years in Bangkok isn't enough aging transition time, but in a few more it should come together.

Fourth infusion: there's something really catchy about the way those flavors balance.  I might be missing an input people describe as camphor; it's hard for me to isolate anything as being like that, in most instances, but this is in that range.  It's not that one part of the flavor is so pleasant, it's the overall effect.  The sweetness and range I interpret as fruit helps it achieve that balance.  Probably as with the 17 year old full cake needing more transition time this 12 year old version will be considerably better in another half dozen, and I shouldn't be drinking much of this.

Fifth infusion:  a little stronger, brewed a little longer; the earthy rock and rusted metal range really picks up if you don't brew this light, which is the only way to drink it at its best, it seems to me.  Not using a maxed out proportion would help with that, but it's longstanding habit, so I go with really short infusion times to compensate.  I could imagine this including a touch of mushroom more than smoke, but it's not as heavy on both as the other Xiaguan tuo I mentioned.  That's this one, a 2010 Xiaguan Teji Tuo, identified as special grade.

To be clear where I stand on all these I really like a completely opposite style of younger sheng as much or more than this range, even if these were optimized, aged for 20+ years instead of less than 15, or 17 for that larger cake.  Some versions I love as brand new tea, and some really shine after a couple years of transition, or in some cases can be great after 4 or 5.  I only took one sheng version in this age range to Honolulu for that 2 1/2 month stay, a purple leaf version, and I kind of missed aged teas, but it was nice going through that different cycle of experience.  Experiencing variety is nice, and sometimes I crave older sheng experience, or teas like this in the middle, with some rough edges but also interesting character.

Sixth infusion:  a bit lighter again, brewed faster, and better.  It's not transitioning enough that I'll keep up with notes; it is where it is.  The mouthfeel and aftertaste inputs are more positive than I've described so far, a nice resinous structure, and a sweet and mineral intensive aftertaste.  It's nice.  I've been able to appreciate a one year younger Xiaguan tuo version that I keep buying from a local shop, reviewed here along with two Dayi versions, for appreciating the pleasant range mixed in with some relative harshness.  I might be as interested in how slightly aged sheng varies along with having the experience itself, not just learning about and experiencing the end-point potential, but the stages the teas go through leading up to that.

A tangent about goji berries

Kind of taking this tasting summary off the rails a bit I tried mixing the next round in with some goji berries I have soaking in hot water.  I drink that infusion and eat those berries about every other day, when I think to get to it, as a diet supplement of sorts.  They're a "super food," but who knows what that means.  I suspect that them being high in vitamin A content is a lot of it, but it could go beyond that.  The taste was interesting; that's one way to try sheng with a lot of fruit input, to mix it with a dried berry infusion.  I just looked for a good reference source on that "superfood" claim but mostly only turned up light references, like this one:

...this small red and shiny berry is a real source of essential nutrients for the well-being of your body. It is particularly rich in vitamin C and polysaccharides which are two powerful antioxidants. There are also vitamins A, B and E, but also 18 amino acids, 8 of which directly participate in the proper functioning of the body. Otherwise, organic goji berries also contain 21 minerals and trace elements, including iron, selenium or copper...  The composition of goji indeed includes zeaxanthin, an antioxidant that promotes better and lasting vision... 

That reference claims that it helps preserve organs, slow aging, and protect against cancer; who knows?  Looking further here's a peer-reviewed form of source; it does sound good, as they summarize it:

Goji Berries as a Potential Natural Antioxidant Medicine: An Insight into Their Molecular Mechanisms of Action

The health benefits of goji berries include enhancing hemopoiesis, antiradiation, antiaging, anticancer, improvement of immunity, and antioxidation. There is a better protection through synergistic and additive effects in fruits and herbal products from a complex mixture of phytochemicals when compared to one single phytochemical...

There are studies that reported the presence of riboflavin, thiamine, nicotinic acid, and minerals such as copper, manganese, magnesium, and selenium in goji berries [7]...  The high biological activity components in goji berries are polysaccharides, carotenoids, and phenolics [8]... 

One of the most common carotenoids found in goji berries is zeaxanthin in the form of dipalmitin zeaxanthin...  As for now, the best natural source of dipalmitin zeaxanthin is goji berries. The fractions of beta-carotene (35.9 μg/g), cryptoxanthin, and neoxanthin (72.1 μg/g) are also detected in goji berry extracts [8]...

Sounds good, I guess, but of course I can't connect their claims about health benefits with that information about compounds present.  It is odd that I'm not experiencing greying hair much, beyond my beard, even though I'm 54, and haven't needed to use reading glasses yet, but I have no well-grounded idea what main causes for that might be.  Exercise, eating a good diet, and sleeping enough are supposed to improve general health, and I attempt all that, and have other more exotic theories about inputs I'll skip passing on here.  

This aside is more about passing on a potentially helpful diet input suggestion than a claim or endorsement; it's easy to buy some goji berries and eat a little every other day, much easier than including foods like sweet potatoes and blueberries in a normal weekly diet.

I did recently write about Bryan Johnson's attempts to stop the aging process, here, and I don't think I mentioned goji berries in that.  Other than ginseng I can't think of another input described as offsetting aging, not that I follow such subjects.

I am losing my hair; it's not as if I'm not aging at all

Conclusion:

This version is pretty much how I remember it, since I probably drank the last of that small cake two years after first trying it, so two years ago now.  I don't necessarily think this needs more time to age, in the sense that it's not pleasant now, but I think it will be more pleasant in another 5 or 6 years, so I probably won't drink much of this over the next few years, just checking on it once in awhile.  For these kinds of teas it seems to make sense to buy even more than I did, if budget allows, since if I do drink this 125 gram cake over the next 5 years and it really is optimum then I'll be down to 125 grams left, when it's actually at its best.  I'm on a tight tea budget, so it is what it is.

I like this version a little more than maybe all the Xiaguan tuocha versions I've tried so far, which isn't so many, maybe only half a dozen, totaling to a dozen versions of related forms (Xiaguan full cakes, other similar style but different producer tuos).  It's not refined, or amazing in quality level, just pleasant and nicely balanced, with good intensity and transition potential, and essentially no aspect range I interpret as negative.

nice visiting the Bangkok Chinatown again

reunited with this family member!

an iconic part of my work commute

a baby monitor lizard in a tree joining my lunch in a park