Any good resources on guidelines for fasting? (How often, how long, etc.)
Discussion
Start with skipping meals, don't push it. We all are eating way too much.
Good channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUp8SWTLsEC6Mn8ExztMIjA watch all of Dr. Pradip Jamnadas videos.
Great resource list - have some listening and reading to do. Thank you!
Here is my guide, based on what I did in an experiment of sample size 1:
Do high protein, extremely low carb (keto). Eat plenty of salt and whole food low carb, high protein things like beef, broccoli, fish, eggs, soybeans, spinach, organ meats, almonds, whatever, to get you into the fasted state. You can also eat these during your fast as a crutch if full-on fasting is too much (this food actually keeps you in the fasted state and does not break the fast, so it's not a cheat). Track everything with an app called cronometer, and set your protein requirement high. It's fine if you don't hit the target since the goal is to fast.
Drink water and have some salt with every meal and through the day. You will lose a lot of water weight for the first week or so. Fast or do keto for at least 10 days for a good solid benefit. I would recommend a month. When you eat keto and are in the fasted state, you will barely even feel like eating. Makes it easier to jump to a full-blown fast. If while fasting you start to get a headache or have strong cravings for greens or fish or almonds or beef or whatever, eat it. Your body knows what you need. Headache can also come from a lack of salts and water.
You can also do things like one meal a day, but I don't recommend that unless you're eating high protein low carb. It's not very beneficial otherwise and can lead to headaches and metabolic swings if you eat a lot of carbs and not enough protein, and you get no benefit out of that. I got into a rhythm of eating 2 to 3 meals one day with about 2200 Calories, and 1 meal the next with only 1500 Calories, on repeat. My maintenance Caloric intake is considerably above 2200. I lost about a kilogram of fat per week and actually gained muscle, gained better mood, better energy, better focus, gained all kinds of things.
At the end of your fast, if you feel like you want to eat carbs again, and you don't want to watch Black Tie Kitchen on YouTube for lower carb recipes for the same foods, then simply gradually introduce a little complex carbs into the mix and eat whenever you are hungry, which will start being more often again. Introduce sugar last.
Hava and DietDoctor.com on YouTube have the best stuff out there regarding nutrition science for fasting, low carb, and high satiety eating. They were both founded by the same guy, and they take two different but related appraoches to eating healthy. DietDoctor is more geared toward being in the fasted state.
Wow. Thank you for taking the time to share this. Incredibly helpful!
Welcome! Glad it helped! I took the time to figure it out, so I was hoping it would end up helping more than just me. I'm just glad people can use the info and find it helpful at this point.
Excellent 👍
Also, just wanna clarify and add a few things:
Protein is the most important thing when you eat. Fat is also good for you, depending on its composition and heating (avoid soybean oil! highly heat-refined polyunsaturated fats are carcinogenic and they make you feel like shit). Carbs below around 30 grams per day is essential for being in the ketogenic state, which is the fasted state (though that number varies by person), and you wanna get the most protein-rich whole foods you can find within that guideline, whether the assortment is piscetarian, meatitarian, vegetarian, vegan, or omnivorous.
Omnivorous or carnivorous diets are easiest to maintain on keto as far as I could see, but once you find what works for you, you're golden. You can be vegetarian and eat hard boiled eggs and spinach every day if you wanted to, or go vegan, every day eat a salad of high protein vegetables and mushrooms tossed in olive oil and vinegar with a sugarfree Red Bull as a supplement for water soluble vitamins, or instead of Red Bull, nutritional yeast as your supplement. Sprinkle that shit on everything! I varied, ate some of all of this. Some days I had nothing but In-N-Out meat patties. It was cheap, easy, and had all the nutrients I needed.
Also you can keep doing keto indefinitely if you want. Just always eat when you are hungry. It's impossible to overeat on keto, and your body is right when it says you need to. Ketogenesis is like a metabolism recalibration. All of your senses will indicate real needs. If you customized your cronometer targets based on accurate data about yourself and scientific studies (the defaults are pretty good too, just adjust your macros!), then you will see that your cravings are almost always in line with what cronometer says you are missing, nutrient-wise. It's pretty cool.
In order to build muscle like I did, you must work out. You might lose muscle if you don't eat enough protein during this or if you are sedentary. It's not any easier to build muscle on keto, aside from the effect of having more free amd stable energy to be able to work out. Bring a keto-aide for workouts. You need water and electrolytes (salts). One good salt supplement is LMNT.
To really understand this stuff and get the most possible benefit out of it, do research on how the metabolism and ketones vs carbs work. Insulin to glucagon ratios are key in understanding it. Do your own research on optimal levels of protein and fat, and how much carbs will trigger a switch to low glucagon/high insulin. Do your own research on different kinds of LDL cholesterol, which the medical industrial complex still pretends are all the same. Remember there is a shitload of misinformation out there from random idiots and the medical industry alike. DietDoctor and Hava are the only sources that readily come to mind that I trust. There were only a few other sources that had a clue what they were talking about, and only in certain specific areas. You have to reason it out. Ketogenic state is great for your health in a lot of ways, and the details are fascinating.
