It is over. I made a gourmet stew that waited in the crock pot for my wife to get home from her vacation at an unknown afternoon-evening time. It was excellent. Turns out I really like food. 😉
It was not easy. I do not recommend what I did, known as an extended water-only fast. Most of the important results can be had with more convenient, accessible options that I outline below and in the video to the right.
I know of no other person who has deliberately denied themselves food beyond one day. It is, however, a healing tool far more valuable than having your own personal MD on call. Extremely rare is the person who succeeds in fasting strictly for weight loss goals, though their stories are impressive.
Fasting is documented in CURING type II diabetes, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, chronic high blood pressure, autoimmune disorders, arthritis, cancer, tumors, and in my most recent case, it made a major reduction in my serious chronic congestion from a chest cold.
The AMA alternative is far more normal and a heckuva lot easier. Pay your doctor eighty bucks, the pharmacist a hunnert bucks and repeat until your reduced health has stabilized. Then live with your compromised health knowing you trusted the best science in modern medicine. In all their years of rote training, they spend zero time on nutrition and fasting. If they find anything at all in those realms it will be the same way you would.
Many of the destructive invaders that attack our bodies thrive when we feed them regularly, but cannot access the ketosis system that fuels our bodies when we fast. In fact, the good guys can attack and consume the bad guys for fuel! A fast longer than a week can cure us of diseases that we don’t even know we have before those infections become unpleasant.
Some interesting side effects were that I skipped putting my can out for weekly trash collection today because it was still empty. I made no trips to the grocery store and spent exactly zero dollars on groceries for over a week.
While not the prime motivator for me, every little reward helped keep me on track and the hoped for reductions in excess fat storage did indeed take place. I am down from 41″ at the navel to 40″, and from 175 pounds to 164. Some of the weight will return as the cells throughout my body take back their personal stashes that they gave up when food became scarce (or different). I still have plenty of fat reserves to go many weeks on water only.
One bonus I find mentioned by none of the proponents is the superpower of knowing you CAN survive an extended time without food should that situation be forced upon you. Exactly like pre-agricultural humans, when their food ran out it could be a while before they found new forage or meat. Homo sapiens were designed with that possibility in mind. It is in all of us, though few modern men find it.
If some disaster emptied the grocery stores in your area, nearly everybody would suffer psychological devastation. Their crises would be crucial and urgent. The fasters have time on their sides, enabling much more rational, measured responses.
The state of ketosis is where your body has access to your fat reserves as a fuel source. By Day 4 of a water fast, that conversion has taken place. Easier ways to get there include alternate day fasting, paired days of fasting weekly, random fasting and my recommendation 20 hours of fasting every day.
The latter can be developed with mild effort and discomfort. I spent a couple of years with extremely rare social lunches only. My Circadian Rhythm got quite comfortable saying “Feed Me” only at breakfast and dinner times. It only took a couple of weeks to get there.
The next level came by skipping breakfasts… A couple cups of coffee and I was on to my day. With zero research and study, I went to Intermittent Fasting to bring my stabilized weight and shape within the parameters I wanted. My “Feed Me” enzymes began triggering at dinner time only – actually not at all as I pretty much ate dinner at the same time they expected it.
That’s IT. I was Intermittent Fasting without even having heard of it.
I keep writing of tertiary benefits. One more is the time savings of the 4-hour evening feeding window. No time preparing, seeking or eating mornings or mid-day. Trips to town or city no longer include the “what’s for lunch” stops. Get up and go in the morning can be very quick.
My future plans to stretch the benefits.
To enjoy some of the Ketosis benefits and keep me fit for potential periods of non-eating, I will shift to a diet leaning heavily, but not strictly in the KETO direction.
I looked for KETO crockpot stew recipes for my BREAK FAST as I theorized it would be easier on my digestive system rather than to suddenly reintroduce sugars and starches (another form of sugar). A surprising idea that I tried was using radishes (KETO) instead of potatoes (starch). The people sharing my stew said “what are these?”. I told them they were KETO potatoes… then confessed. They gave their radish flavor to the stew and carried only the stew flavor with a potato texture.
Fad diets for weight loss have proliferated in the last 40 years as people seek magic bullets to get closer to a shape they wouldn’t mind looking at in mirrors. I watched them come and go, watched people try and mostly fail with dispassionate interest.
“Keto” was in that category for me until my fasting research taught me about KETOSIS. Okay, this is a state of being worth continuing. By combining a mostly KETO diet with a mostly 4-hour/day eating window, I expect my new weight to be long-term stable and transitioning to a water fast much easier.
The other thing my wife and I will be doing is MOSTLY Intermittent Fasting where we have two breakfasts per week with 20 hour fasts five days a week. We want the benefits of continued Ketosis without the extremes of regular 10-day fasts.
More Information
I produced this video earlier in my fast to explain the “How” and “Why” I was undertaking it. It covers some of the same turf as the one at the top, but is mostly different.
The links below go to great resources about fasting. Keep in mind, we ALL are learning. Their hard, fast rules today may be supplanted by things they learn in the next few years. Due diligence, open minds and thinking for yourself are always useful.
Water Fasting for Health
Extended healing fasts (14-40 days)
