5yrs of fasting: where I started, what I’m doing now and why
I’ve incorporated periodic fasts into my routine for the last 5 years or so and I think you should too. Before my current routine I was trying for a 72hr water only fast roughly every 2 months and a 36hr fast roughly every 2 weeks.
36hr fasts come naturally to me. I was doing them without trying throughout my adult life. They would frequently happen to me during busy work weeks. I’d eat dinner the night before a particularly busy day, wake up too late to make breakfast and forget to eat during the day. I’d get home too tired to make dinner and go straight to bed. I recognize that the behavior was easy to manage and also a good thing. I have since purposefully repeated it.
During a 72hr fast I will feel my daily aches reduce to lowest felt levels by the 24hr mark. Day 2 I feel light and energized. Fatigue sets in at the start of day 3 and the waking hours of the final day are tedious and unpleasant. Boredom causes me agitation during all of it. Food prep, planning and consumption takes up a large portion of the day and excluding myself from those activities isn’t possible with family life. My discipline is tested thoroughly as I cook for and visit with my family during mealtimes. All of it is a good exercise in discipline- a muscle that I find I need to work often in order to maintain. The first meal I enjoy after the fast is always the most delicious thing I can remember despite usually being something very cheap and simple like a chili soy sauce rotisserie chicken; a fast end favorite. This meal is always completely filling and satiating even though it is proportionally the smallest of meals I will eat when not fasting. For foodies, fasting is worthwhile simply for the added enjoyment of a post-fast meal.
For the last weeks I’ve switched up my routine. I’m doing away with long fasts for the moment and adopting a schedule with more fasting days than not. Last week this looked like a rotation of one meal a day (OMAD) followed by a day with 2 meals. This week I had a string of 2 days of OMAD and a day with a full breakfast lunch and dinner. I won’t be doing 3 meal days again soon. I felt little pleasure from lunch or dinner and noticed more bloat and less energy. I now know that two meal days feels best for my unrestricted days.
Why am I doing this? People smarter than me are telling me it is my best way to maintain low visceral fat and minimize insulin response. It allows me to eat whatever I want in any quantity I want per sitting without ever worrying about gaining unwanted weight. It balances fat reduction with muscle/strength retention and gives me better energy throughout the day than I have when I am unrestricted in eating times.
Even if none of this were true, I would want to keep at this because it feels right. No bloat. Less angst around hunger. Less aches and inflammation. Higher discipline baseline. More mental clarity. More peace and free time during the day.
In the last weeks of rotating fasts I’ve lost a few pounds but maintained the same weight on gym lifts. I don’t notice a change in body shape but I’d guess that I’ve lost some deep adipose around my low belly/back. The scale tells little. Pants don’t fit different. Before I started the daily rotation I would fluctuate daily between 213-217. Yesterday I fluctuated between 208-213.
By feel I am guessing that my current rotation will result in me reaching at or just below 200lb and will keep me there. If I get there and continue to lose weight or see reduced strength I may adjust my intake, but I’ll be hesitant to adjust the rotation.