Last meal I had was Monday at around 6pm. Haven’t eaten since. Only drink water and electrolytes. I’m pretty hyped. I haven’t done an extended day fast in almost a year cause I have just been super stressed with work and life. Finally had a moment where I was gonna be alone for about a week and so with no one else cooking and eating around me it was the perfect opportunity.
I’ve done several of these extended day fast over the past few years. My longest was 162 hours or just shy of 7 full days. I am tempted to go for a 7 day this time but not sure if I want to get that close to the Thanksgiving holiday. Refeeding properly takes 2-3 days minimum. The longer the fast the longer you should spend refeeding. By “refeeding” I mean, eating small portions steadily over a few days increasing size and amount as you go till you are having normal sized meals again.
For anyone that is going to go one some “fasting isn’t good for you” rant, do some actual research please. https://youtu.be/7nJgHBbEgsE There has been a lot of good research done into therapeutic fasting. It is a perfectly safe and normal thing to do if you don’t have some medical condition and are intaking the proper electrolytes. The human body evolved to be able to go long periods without food.
Only in the past hundred years or so have humans abandoned fasting at large and I feel a large part of this is the promotion of excessive consumption by capitalism. Almost ever culture on earth has had some fasting tradition in it’s history and many still do. It really is an empowering thing to do. Until I started intermittent daily fasting, and later extended day fasting I didn’t understand how much food ruled my life.
How do you deal with the pain? I feel unbearable pain if I haven’t eaten for longer than 6 hours or so. Usual repetitive noise starts to make me angry. For example, my mom took a few forks out of a drawer. I was about ready to throw something. Even light starts making me angry, and it’s not just annoyance, it’s actual, extreme anger, mostly because I can handle less sensory input and therefore am extremely overstimulated at that moment. It basically starts to become impossible to exist. This usually happens to me when I’m waiting for food and it’s taken a few hours longer than expected for my parents to make. At that point, I’ll usually grab a snack of some kind and go wait in a dark, quiet room. About 5 minutes after eating the snack, the aforementioned effects fade, but that won’t last more than about an hour unless I eat an actual meal.
I have never experienced this. Do you eat lots of high carb foods? This sounds like some carb addiction or something. When you subsist on mainly carbs, especially processed carbs, your insulin highs and lows get crazy and it really messes with you. One of the biggest reasons to fast is to help with insulin control and sensitivity. Also the video I linked on the post goes into hunger as well.
Fasting is something you have to build up to. You can’t just up and do a multi day fast on the fly. Or even a full day fast for that matter. I built up to and did one meal a day fasting for a while and generally eat very low carbs and avoid processed foods. So going into a multi day fast for me now is simply skipping one meal every day and is something I can just flow into. The easiest thing for me was just not eating breakfast and then eating lunch. That’s an automatic 16osj hour fast right there. People forget that’s sleeping is an 8 hour fast.
It is also a very big mind of matter thing. In the initial stages your body and more accurately your gut bacteria start releasing compounds that make you feel terrible and want to eat. This is even more extreme with the kind of gut bacteria that thrive on sugars and processed carbs. It’s literally like an addiction. There have even been studies showing sugar is one of the most addictive substances humans consume. These kinds of gut bacteria are generally bad for you overall gut health. Fasting is one of the fastest and harshest ways to kill them off but when they die off they will make you feel even more terrible. I experienced a little bit of this my first long fast but not super severe because I had already changed my eating habits for some time. Afterwards when I started eating again I ate lots of probiotic rich foods and my guy health was amazing after that and it drastically changed what I craved and how often I wanted to eat.
My diet is not nearly as unhealthy as most people here in the US, but it’s not too healthy either. I tend to eat bread a lot, especially during breakfast and dinner, because sandwiches are easy to make and I don’t know how to make much else and my parents are either at work or sleeping at the time. I do not, however, eat a lot of processed food or drink sodas or anything of the sort at all. I also do not like burgers, which is very abnormal for someone in the US.
The sensory issues with light and sound are caused by an amplification of my already existing sensory issues. I experience them constantly, just much more severe when I’m hungry. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was caused by low blood sugar due to the insulin highs and lows you mentioned.
As for the pain, I have no idea what causes that. I just have always felt pain in my stomach if I don’t eat for too long.