Active Low-Carber Forums
Atkins diet and low carb discussion provided free for information only, not as medical advice.
Home Plans Tips Recipes Tools Stories Studies Products
Active Low-Carber Forums
A sugar-free zone


Welcome to the Active Low-Carber Forums.
Support for Atkins diet, Protein Power, Neanderthin (Paleo Diet), CAD/CALP, Dr. Bernstein Diabetes Solution and any other healthy low-carb diet or plan, all are welcome in our lowcarb community. Forget starvation and fad diets -- join the healthy eating crowd! You may register by clicking here, it's free!

Go Back   Active Low-Carber Forums > Main Low-Carb Diets Forums & Support > Low-Carb Studies & Research / Media Watch > LC Research/Media
User Name
Password
FAQ Members Calendar Mark Forums Read Search Gallery My P.L.A.N. Survey


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 07:09
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
Posts: 26,664
 
Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
Default My three-day fast: what happened when I tried Silicon Valley's latest health craze

Quote:
From The Telegraph
London, UK
21 March, 2019


My three-day fast: what happened when I tried Silicon Valley's latest health craze

Tom Ough


The reported benefits of fasting are so numerous and spectacular that I feel like a quack just listing them, but here goes. Raised fat burning! Lowered risk of Alzheimer’s! Longer life! Lowered insulin! Clearer thinking! Happier gut! Etc, etc, etc. It’s a full menu of bodily goodness, albeit the only full menu you’ll get your cold fingers on if you’re not eating.

The 5:2 diet is a form of intermittent fast that you've probably heard of and perhaps tried. Longer fasts, though, have gained some Silicon Valley trendiness recently without yet percolating down to the rest of us. In theory, if you're someone with good health and a few kilos of body fat, a 72-hour fast – by this I mean a water fast, in which you're allowed to drink – is probably safe and possibly desirable. Here's why: 36 hours is long enough for your body to start ketosis, which is the mode in which it uses fat for fuel instead of glycogen; 48 hours is long enough to stimulate autophagy, the cell-cleaning process that has been linked to longer life but is slowed by eating; and if you fast a little bit longer than that you'll still enjoy both of those benefits while also experiencing a sustained surge of muscle-maintaining growth hormone.

Presumably for these reasons, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, just did a 72-hour water fast. With a doctor's approval, I attempted the same.

My last meal was Tuesday dinner, a three-course restaurant meal with my friend Jen. In the style of a Death Row convict, I stuffed myself to the gills. If there had been prisoner-style arrows up and down my clothes, they'd have popped off. We finished dessert, which in my case was an avocado chocolate tart thing, at 7.59pm, and I spent the next sixty seconds smearing the last chocolately remnants off the plate. 8pm. No more eating.

Like many people, I tend not to get particularly hungry in the morning, so the first half of Wednesday was fine. I kept myself busy with a breakfast meeting, which in my case was just a "meeting", and hoodwinked my idiot brain into feeling fed by making myself black coffee before midday and then, in the afternoon, lemongrass tea.

These non-calorific drinks are considered fasting-compatible by Jason Fung, the Canadian nephrologist whose rigorous but entertaining books made him one of fasting's most well-known and persuasive modern advocates. He says obesity is a consequence not of overeating, but of the insulin resistance we slowly acquire by eating sugary, processed, grain-heavy food throughout the day.

Conventional dieting, he says, doesn't work unless we think about the timing of the meal as well as its content. If we limit our eating to a daily window of, say, eight hours, we can help our insulin production return to something like factory settings. If we go 24 hours without eating, even better. If we go even longer than that, well, the world record is 381 days. (He was a big boy, was Angus Barbieri, or he was to begin with; he checked into the Royal Infirmary of Dundee in 1965 weighing 207kg – 32.5 stone – of which he went on, with the help of coffee, black tea and multivitamins, to lose 125 kilograms – 19.7 stone.)

I'd been learning all this from listening to The Obesity Code, Fung's best-known book, during my fast. My afternoon hunger pangs came and went, as he predicted, and I listened to the audiobook on my way home. Maybe it was my incipient state of light-headed caloric deprivation talking, but Fung's encomium to fasting seemed pretty compelling. As he points out, fasting is a traditional part of pretty much every major religion; it's only in the very recent past that we've been snacking constantly. The human body did not spend its millions of years of evolution in environments that provided three square meals every day plus at least two snacks.

The human body, however, has a strong and understandable dislike of going to bed hungry. This wasn't a big problem for me on the first night, but it was harder on the second. As with Wednesday, I'd got through Thursday on black coffee and herbal tea, feeling distinctly less energetic than usual and spending idle moments thinking about food. This got worse when I went to bed. I slept fitfully and had vivid dreams about eating pizza, waking up as tired as when I'd gone to sleep and twice as grumpy.

When I'd started the fast I would have shaken Fung's hand. Now I wanted to yank his arm from his socket and gnaw every gristly morsel from his bones.

I would have cracked well before Friday, frankly, had I not been locked into the fast by professional necessity. (Here's a fun and easy fasting tip: just make it the subject of a newspaper article.) When I was hungry, it was more or less the same level of hunger that I'd experienced the first afternoon, and eating nothing was certainly easier than eating small amounts, but I was still counting down the hours to being able to eat again.

I realised how ungrateful I am for the huge luxury that is being able to eat whatever I like, and how important eating is to socialising. Free of food and free of friends, I spent more time alone, plodding slowly but steadily through housework. Time seemed to slow, an effect which other fasters have reported online.

After another shoddy night's sleep, I crawled back to the office. It was hardly worth the commute. Not only did I have a sackably unproductive working day, I also suffered the embarrassment of being caught using my work computer to look up pictures of junk food.

Fung advises fasters to slowly reintroduce food to their guts, perhaps with a handful of nuts or some leafy vegetables. On finishing work, I disregarded this entirely and picked up a truly squalid quantity of vegan fried chicken. On the dot of 8pm, precisely 72 hours since my last meal, I bit down on golden, peppery batter. It was one of the most magical sensory experiences of my life, although within ten minutes I'd eaten enough to make my shrunken stomach feel sick.

Be that as it may, I'd withstood hunger and social pressure and fatigue to complete the fast. Along the way, I'd lost 4.2 kilograms (just over nine pounds), my body fat, at least according to our bathroom scales, had gone from 21.5 per cent to 18.8 per cent. My blood pressure, according to the doctor, was already quite low but had gone down slightly. Room to play with! Cancel my gym membership!

Most of the 4.2 kilos had been water weight and food in my gut, and so it returned over the next few days. However, I'm now so persuaded of the merits of fasting that I've begun limiting my weekday eating to an eight-hour window, and when I started writing this piece I was attempting an entirely self-motivated 36-hour fast. Then again, I only made it halfway.

Caveat: If I haven't managed to put you off, then great, but please be careful and consult a doctor if in doubt. If you are underweight, don't fast.



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-...-latest-health/
Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
  #2   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 07:29
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,036
 
Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
BF:
Progress: 98%
Location: Herndon, VA
Default

Silicon Valley's latest health craze . . . . . . . . ohhhhh boy . . . .
Reply With Quote
  #3   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 09:04
Squarecube's Avatar
Squarecube Squarecube is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 877
 
Plan: atkins/paleo/IF
Stats: 186.5/159.0/160 Male 5' 11"
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: NYC
Default

Well Silicon Valley must be running far behind Lowcarb.ca.
Reply With Quote
  #4   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 10:53
CityGirl8 CityGirl8 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 856
 
Plan: Protein Power, IF
Stats: 238/204/145 Female 5'8"
BF:53.75%/46.6%/25%
Progress: 37%
Location: PNW
Default

Quote:
truly squalid quantity of vegan fried chicken
So, the author is living on carbohydrates. No wonder he struggled so much. I have enough trouble doing 40 hours and I'm fat adapted.
Reply With Quote
  #5   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 13:16
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
Posts: 13,368
 
Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169 Female 5' 9"
BF:45%/28%/25%
Progress: 134%
Location: NC
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Squarecube
Well Silicon Valley must be running far behind Lowcarb.ca.

Yes! we were the Bleeding Edge of the Technology of Fasting starting in July 2014. About time Jack Dorsey caught up with us!
Reply With Quote
  #6   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 13:24
rightnow's Avatar
rightnow rightnow is offline
Every moment is NOW.
Posts: 23,064
 
Plan: LC (ketogenic)
Stats: 520/381/280 Female 66 inches
BF: Why yes it is.
Progress: 58%
Location: Ozarks USA
Default

As amusing as attributing short fasts to silicon valley is, my favorite part is that he did a THREE DAY fast... and writes about it like it was this gigantic, dramatic thing. Clearly... this guy has not had to do much dieting or fasting in his life.

PJ
Reply With Quote
  #7   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 14:48
dcc0455 dcc0455 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 167
 
Plan: Low Carb
Stats: 230/165/160 Male 67
BF:
Progress: 93%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by rightnow
As amusing as attributing short fasts to silicon valley is, my favorite part is that he did a THREE DAY fast... and writes about it like it was this gigantic, dramatic thing. Clearly... this guy has not had to do much dieting or fasting in his life.

PJ


As someone who has followed low carb and fasting on youtube, reddit and here, I also find it amusing to credit Silicon Valley, As someone who has never completed a true fast longer than 36 hours, a 3 day fast, regardless of motivation, may be more impressive to me than to the average contributor to this forum.
Reply With Quote
  #8   ^
Old Thu, Mar-21-19, 23:24
Merpig's Avatar
Merpig Merpig is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 7,582
 
Plan: EF/Fung IDM/keto
Stats: 375/225.4/175 Female 66.5 inches
BF:
Progress: 75%
Location: NE Florida
Default

Three days sounds pretty impressive to me. 😀 I’ve only ever gone that long when I was too sick to think about eating food! 24 hours is doable. I just did 27 earlier this week. And I do 16-20 nearly every day. (To no dietary avail of course!). But just jumping into a 72 starting from scratch would be very tough for most people.
Reply With Quote
  #9   ^
Old Fri, Mar-22-19, 01:43
Ambulo's Avatar
Ambulo Ambulo is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 3,170
 
Plan: LerC, TRE, IF
Stats: 150/120/120 Female 64 inches
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: the North, England
Default

You know that Groucho Marx saying about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member?

I have something like that where I can never be impressed by someone who does something I have managed to do. Even when I know how hard it can be.
Reply With Quote
  #10   ^
Old Fri, Mar-22-19, 07:04
bkloots's Avatar
bkloots bkloots is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 10,147
 
Plan: LC--Atkins
Stats: 195/162/150 Female 62in
BF:
Progress: 73%
Location: Kansas City, MO
Default

Amusing. This is totally an entertainment piece, with nothing useful to say about fasting, or healthy eating for that matter. Harrumph. I'm sorry if it makes any reader reject an investigation into Dr. Fung's ideas for health and weight management because it sounds like a stupid fad.

But that's the world.

Carry on, my friends.
Reply With Quote
  #11   ^
Old Sun, Mar-24-19, 13:04
mike_d's Avatar
mike_d mike_d is offline
Grease is the word!
Posts: 8,475
 
Plan: PSMF/IF
Stats: 236/181/180 Male 72 inches
BF:disappearing!
Progress: 98%
Location: Alamo city, Texas
Default

Quote:
When I'd started the fast I would have shaken Fung's hand. Now I wanted to yank his arm from his socket and gnaw every gristly morsel from his bones. I also suffered the embarrassment of being caught using my work computer to look up pictures of junk food.
Apparently he the missed memo: the important part about avoiding carbs for a week or two before starting a fast! The 1st 3.5 days are the hardest in my experience. It's fairly routine to do a day or so for some medical preps like a colonoscopy and that can be difficult too. What do they suggest you have? Mostly approved carbohydrates. I always use coffee and coconut oil and there are no issues with the procedure. No sedation either since I have to drive home. Drinking a gallon of go-litely is the worst though

Last edited by mike_d : Sun, Mar-24-19 at 13:50.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 04:00.


Copyright © 2000-2024 Active Low-Carber Forums @ forum.lowcarber.org
Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.