The incredible things that happen in your body when you fast
Discussion
it's dumb and doesn't do anything really. I did it once and all it did was make me hungry, tired and dizzy.
You tried something once and it didn’t work straight away the first time? Then surely it must never work
This is why I fast
Not as great for the ladies, especially during luteal and menstrual phases (not a good plan). But I do a 24 when I can tell that I need it 🤙🏼✨
I've never eaten breakfast, I don't feel hungry in the mornings, which means I naturally fast daily for the 18 hours between dinner and lunch.
Everyone claims that fasting for 3 days and 5 days helps lose weight but no conclusive study says fasting does all the things the video claims specially repairs. People could be losing weight and that could be muscle or fat as energy has to come from someplace. No one can put a finger on it.
Cool. 48 hours fasting 3/4 times per year.
I'd like to reach 5/6 times per year.
The untold flip side is that you need to face nasty hunger waves along all the process. But it is definetely manageable. Worth it.
The body needs this kind of occasional resets.
Current advice is to not go much past 36 hours straight fasting. Somewhere between there and 48 typically your body switches into a starvation mode. Your thyroid hormones shift dramatically, you will feel abnormally cold because your body starts conserving instead of burning, and stress hormones start to rise.
Once won't kill you but repeatedly entering that state isn't great for your long term health.
Tried it on myself going well past 36 hours and the S curve of weight loss gets really flat because of the heightened conservation mode you enter. 84 hours is around 1.5x the fat loss I get out of 36 hours even though it is over 2x as long.
You'll get more positive health outcomes by refeeding for a few days and then starting a new 36 hour fast.
0 calorie electrolytes like relyte or LMNT will also reduce stress on your body and hunger sensation while fasting.
36 hours does have dramatic positive benefits compared to 16/8 and 18/6.
My current protocol is 36 hours once a week. I do dinner Monday and then don't eat until breakfast Wednesday. Every other day I eat a typical 3 meal day.
This is all based on years of experimentation on myself with different fasting protocols and comparing my bloodwork results, athletic performance, and waist size.
I ran an experiment with eating every day all day and am very unhappy with my bloodwork and waist though my athletic performance is better than it was doing 84 hour fasts. I'll probably space out my fasts to every other week, every 3 weeks, or once a month once I get back to where I want to be. I see no future where I go beyond 36 hours again. I'll do 36h 2x a week if once a week doesn't get me the results I want.
Hope this helps another #fasting n00b get up to speed and get the results they want with less hassle than I went through dialing in my protocol based on health influencer bullshit combined with trial and error.
Question 1:
Is the autophagy and other cleanup mechanisms not rather linked causally to protein consumption (or rather lack thereof)?
I'd speculate that just withholding protein alone - without any calorie restrictions - should already force our body to do significant shifts in its metabolism.
Because it basically _must_ cleanup some lying around protein in order to synthesise any urgently needed new ones.
So I'm wondering if one could maybe achieve some of the benefits of fasting without actually having to stop eating.
Question 2:
Is it possible to shift the onset of the effects of fasting - basically fast forward - by beginning the fasting with a medium to heavy sports unit?
Let's say you do a 10k run or some good workout .. shouldn't everything shift to a few hours earlier?
Because you're basically directly in a calorie deficit after the workout.