Fasting: Your Experience?

[Mehdi]

I'm talking about 24-36h fastes and longer. Not warrior diet/intermittent fasting.

Read first about fasting in Steve Justa's book "Rock Iron Steel" years ago. He did it once per week to clean body of toxins and what else. Note that he's a big & strong guy: quarter deadlifts with 2000lbs, Quarter Squats with 800lbs for 2000 reps or walking 2 miles wearing a 200lbs weighted vest.

So I finally tried it yesterday for the first time. Had last meal I think Tuesday at 10pm. No meals until Thursday 6am. So that's about 32h. Note that I wake up at 6am during the week.

Stuff I experienced:
* Hungry Wednesday until about 8pm. Then the hunger started to go away.
* Felt tired, but that could be because I only slept 6h that day + didn't nap. I was tired on waking up already.
* Day felt longer. But maybe that's because I wasn't losing time eating every 3 hours.
* Thursday on waking up (32h faste by then) I didn't felt hungry. Even while cooking my breakfast, didn't really felt like eating.
* Training Thursday, 2h after breaking the 32h faste, felt really good. Either because I slept longer or the faste, no idea.
* Didn't take a dump during the whole faste, usually it's 2-3x/day. After breaking the faste I think I spent 30mins on the toilet.

What I did
* Drank water + apple cider only. About 1.5 gallons during the 32h. 1tbsp apple cider per gallon water.
* Every time I was hungry I drank water, but slowly. Chewing on the water. Helped with the hunger.
* Igorning the little voice in the back of my head that sometimes said "stop with that stupid fasting stuff". Especially when it started rationalizing.
* First meal after the faste was eggs + peppers + brussels sprouts + tomato + sjallot + ground round + orange + pompelmous + kiwi + green tea. It went in easily, but I didn't felt hungry.

I plan is to do this once a week. I'm thinking of substituting the traditional Sunday junk day by a faste day. This book has good info on fasting.

I'm looking for other people's experience on this. If you've done fasting before, please share experiences/tips/etc. Thanks!

[ricepower]

To clear the body of toxins doesnt seem a good enough reason to go to such lengths. Im sure there are other things that would work a lot better. Also, would it not go against the philosophy of eating small meals regularly to keep metabolism active in burning fat etc? Might it actually make you store more fat?

I have experiences of fasting for Ramadan, but that is no food or water during daylight hours. I must admit I havent done it for the past 2-3 years due to it falling in summer which makes it extremely difficult, especially when trying to be active and being involved in sports. For this year it will fall in the hottest part of summer, so was in a bit of a dillemna as the regular huge eating I have gotten so used to. I would have to give up workouts for a whole month if I tried it. So I was pretty sure I would skip the whole thing.

But in general with hunger, by the afternoon - as you experienced. It passes. So by the time you get to eat you are not that hungry. I just made sure to drink a lot of fluids including milk.

Oh, and in the UK 'Cider' is alcoholic drink made from fermented apples. More alcoholic than Beer. Is that what you were drinking? -LOL

[Rokku]

I've been following, off-and-on, 18-24hr fasts for the last 6 months or so. When I did it regularly, I lost weight and had much more energy (especially the day after breaking a fast). Generally I start a fast after my midday meal, and break it with either a mid-morning snack or lunch the next day. Fasts include no calories at all, but plenty of water!

For some great, scientific info check out eatstopeat.com and the author's blog at BradPilon.com. Brad's basic premise is that, after 16 hours of zero calorie intake, your body's production of growth hormone increases rapidly, helping in fat release hormones etc. I'm no scientist, Brad explains it much better The idea is to eat a diet of good, whole foods and let the intermittent fasts take care of one's calorie deficit.

I'm gearing up to begin intermittent fasting again from this week to include 2 24-hr fasts a week. Based on past experience I expect to drop a good amount of weight, and also have plenty more energy for my lifting days.

[Cheyman]

I have fasted for up to 4 days multiple times. I enjoy doing so, but I don't feel I gain much from it. Usually after the first 24 hours, I start to get a light headache in my forehead and temples, similar effect I have felt when going on AD. I tend to drink nothing but water during the fast.

I have a friend who fast for 2 weeks at a time a couple times a year to battle his psoriasis. It seems to work well for him, cleans it right up.


By the way, my name is Cheyenne. I'm 29/m (6'2 90kg). I've been moseying around the nutrition boards for a few months now. Felt I finally had to contribute. I'm currently on day 10 of the 12 day AD start-up. I do not do Stronglifts 5x5 nor Bodybuilding. I have more of a militaristic/guerrilla approach to fitness combining free-weights/BW/martial arts/yoga. It works well for me.

[Mehdi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_cider => non alcohol.

Eating small meals doesn't raise metabolism. It's a myth. Check out Martin Berkhan's leangains (intermittent fasting) for more info.

A high meal frequency does not boost your metabolism, nor does fasting or a low frequency slow it down either. The latter has been shown quite clearly when researchers made people fast for 72 hours and found no difference in metabolic rate at the 12 hour mark, compared to the 72 hour mark. That’s three days without food, yet all subjects retained a fully intact metabolic rate. There are other studies looking at one meal a day and alternate day fasting that does not find an impact on metabolism either.

Some studies have actually found that fasting boosts metabolic rate slightly during the initial 36 hours - this is supposedly an evolutionary response, mediated by norepinephrine, as the body mobilizes extra energy when food is scarce. You can imagine it would be highly counterproductive to mister caveman if he found himself slow and lethargic when he needed to find food in order to not starve to death.

Zauner C, Schneeweiss B, Kranz A, Madl C, Ratheiser K, Kramer L, Roth E, Schneider B, Lenz K. Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvation is increased as a result of an increase in serum norepinephrine. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Jun;71(6):1511-5.

Webber J, Macdonald IA. The cardiovascular, metabolic and hormonal changes accompanying acute starvation in men and women. British journal of nutrition 1994; 71:437-447.

[Mehdi]

@Rokku
Thanks for sharing. You should check out leangains http://leangains.blogspot.com/ It's the only fasting approach which is aimed specifically at lifters.

@Cheyman
It also reminded me of the first week going no carb on the Anabolic Diet.

[Rokku]

@Mehdi Yes, Leangains is a great site. EatStopEat is often aimed at people following resistant exercise programs (Brad Pilon is a fitness guy, who did bodybuilding etc), but I do like Leangain's approach of having a set window of 'eating time' every day; am waiting for his book

[nburge]

Hey Rokku - how long did it take you to lose weight on this programme, and how much did you lose? I eat relatively healthily most of the time, but feel this might be a good way for me to speed up the weight loss regime without being militaristic about exact amounts I consume every meal. Would you ever fast on the day of a workout (i.e. afterwards) or would you do it the day previous?

[Rokku]

I didn't lose a great deal, but got down to 10lbs lighter than I am now (mind you, I'm quite fat). I think I probably lost 10lbs in a month or so. I never did any weights work while fasting, although I didn't do any heavy weights really at the time. I think, going forward, I will mainly be doing cardio on days where my evening training is mid-fast.

Providing my eating was clean(ish), weight loss happened straight away. I tend to lose 4-5lbs overnight, and can retain 1-2lbs of this over the next few days after beginning to eat again.

Hope this makes sense!

[Beppe]

I plan is to do this once a week. I'm thinking of substituting the traditional Sunday junk day by a faste day.

This is interesting. I wonder if a similar approach would make sense in the AD, let's say after a saturday carb-up. It makes me want to experiment...

[nburge]

Thanks Rokku - I'm away next week with work and was unlikely to be able to eat anything remotely healthy, nor particularly to exercise either - I thought this might be an interesting thing to try for ~72 hours. Do you drink anything other than water?

[Rokku]

I drink diet coke when I need something more exciting And one can drink black tea/coffee w/o sugar or sweetener. Basically, if it has 0 (or minimal) calories, it's free to have. On Eat Stop Eat's "plan", it's zero cals to ensure you hit that growth-hormone increase created from fasting.

Check this video from Brad Pilon where he covers how growth hormone helps burn fat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6L_E0cEaZw

(Note, you can get an increase in GH from intense exercise, too, obviously)

It's great to see IF being discussed here on SL

Regarding you fasting for ~72, why not two 24 hour fasts, with whatever healthy (or semi-healthy) food you can get otherwise? I think you'd get limited benefits after 36 hrs or so...

[Dada]

I drink diet coke when I need something more exciting And one can drink black tea/coffee w/o sugar or sweetener. Basically, if it has 0 (or minimal) calories, it's free to have.

At first I thought "no way" but now that I know you can have all the black coffee you want, I guess it's not so bad.

I don't personally hae experience in fasting (at least not on purpose) but I had a guy who worked for me that fasted for Ramadan a few years ago. He seemed OK on the first couple days but was a wreck after that. He was in good shape (not fat at all) but he seemed to crash hard. Maybe something to do with blood sugar?

[Rokku]

Yeah I work with a muslim chap (converted) who did Ramadan last year and stuck with, and man he was miserable! I think the whole 'nil by mouth' aspect of it can mess with you since you have no fluids to help regulate things. I can go without food, but if I get super-thirsty I get really ticked off.

[atypical1]

I'm talking about 24-36h fastes and longer. Not warrior diet/intermittent fasting.

Why? I've fasted for several days (not my choice) and it sucked. On the one hand I was pretty amazed at how much you could push yourself while not eating but on the other it's a pretty miserable experience.

Is there a particular reason that you want to fast? Cleansing? Meditation? Pushing your limits?

james