Thanks for bumping the Fasting thread caronl !!
Merry, I have never had bone broth , cream or anything but water( with a few flakes of Malden or Himalayan salt) , green tea or black coffee during my fasts, whether they be the 24 h or longer ones. Birdleg’s most recent one was 6h and neither Birdy or myself had more than those drinks.

I think you are wise to begin with a 24 h fast. I found that easy to manage very early on as I was out of the house all day and worked through my lunch hour. Then I just gradually built up and definitely found it easier as I continued. This Week we both said that we could have continued after our 66 hours ..we didn’t feel hungry.

I have also read that Jason Fung mentions adding a bit of cream to coffee.I think it was a way of saying it could help people keep going with their fast but I have never felt the need. Essie mentions hot pepper brine and bone broth earlier on in this thread.

I could never have imagined saying this just a year ago as I would have been so fearful of it but I love fasting!

Sorry …our Birdleg fast was of course 66 hours not 6 hours !

I’m just catching up with all the news, and just learned of the “birdleg” Fast. My friends, my jaw has just hit the floor!!!
Doing this together once a month is an inspired idea, and I’m standing back and applauding you both. I am so impressed
because this feat of will has always eluded me. I always hit a wall at 22 hrs, and start feeling nauseated and shakey.
You both know that the topic of autophagy resurfaces with regularity on the forums, and if it is truly effective when one
has a lot of pounds to lose and “loose residual skin” is a distinct possibility. You may both very well be our “test” cases
if you join together, and anyone else who is intrigued with Jason Fung’s findings, and continue on with it. I can only imagine
how powerful it must make you feel. Brava, x 1000!

I agree Allie! Hey Allie, what is wrong with your keyboard? Do you see that it is cutting off and starting a new line after one or two words?

Thank you Allie it is so nice having a partner in crime😂😂. I was ready to stop at 48hrs but Wendy spurred me on and I am so glad she did. It gets easier the longer you go for. I am very interested in Dr Fungs 7 day fast!! I think it might be hard but then again maybe not. It would completely reset everything for the better. His patients are usually in bed for it though. Ah well I will be fasting tomorrow as I didn’t manage to start it today and I think it was because of the booze last night😱. Birdy 💞🦜

Hi Birdy, I didn’t know that about Dr Fung’s patients taking to their beds for 7 day fasts! I have to admit I’m really disappointed to learn that because he certainly doesn’t mention it in his book on fasting, in fact he goes on about how fasting is easier when you’re busy at work etc etc. Given that fasting is supposed to lead to more energy, and that hunger is supposed to decrease dramatically after days 2 or 3, I was kind of thinking that a long fast would be a really interesting challenge. But now I’m a bit up in the air. (I actually think I’d find it harder in bed because I’d have nothing to distract me… I can see myself eating just for a change of pace rather than because I was hungry!) I suppose I could just try it and see… and if I feel like I need to go to bed just stop, because I’m not taking leave just to go to bed and not eat lol

(And Allie, I’m not seeing that cutting off thing with your posts that Violinist mentioned, your posts look normal on my computer screen.)

Cheers, Elky

Morning Elky I think it is for his really obese patients(I hate that word) or the ones that have never done it and he wants to give them a kick start. I remember the first time I tried to fast at work when I first started fasting and I felt awful and had to eat something! I went dizzy and had a headache! I think he try’s all different ways with his patients as everybody is so different and then can give comprehensive results to all of us to help us on our way. When I did that 66 he last week I really felt I could have just kept going and I will try this the next time. I would love to completely reset my insulin and to do that I think we need to to aim for at least 4-5 days of fasting or 7. This is just my take on it so don’t take it as gospel. With everything on this woe it is what suits the individual. Sometimes when I fast I just want to sit and do nothing, so I do. I have found though that when I fast at work and because of the upside down hours I don’t bloat and I get that energy rush he always talks about! I would say it is like being on a drug like speed but without the comedown after😂😂. Well at least I think it is😂. You have brought a lovely bright and enthusiastic element to our forum and you are so helpful and kind. Thank you and I look forward to all your posts Elky. You are truly a star 🌟 Birdy 💞🦜

I haven’t read the book on fasting, I am a member of the official Dr Fung facebook group, which does have some interesting files. –
Please correct me if I am wrong Birdy, but I think he starts out patients who are very ill with a 7 to 14 day fast but only in supervised conditions. – So I suspect they take them into the clinic. There is a series of podcasts following Megan supporting someone doing a 10 day fast and the woman was working but her work is online and producing podcasts so not that physically active.
I am sure that I saw somewhere in one of his pod casts that Dr Fung doesn’t recommend fasting for more than 24 hours for people with physcially active jobs. – But I can’t remember where I saw it. I do know that in a number of his podcasts he describes his typical patients that they are working with in the clinic as very obese, and not physically active.

I find I struggle combining fasting with active days, when I get in from a full on day if I have fresh BSD friendly food in the fridge that I can pick up and eat I find it very difficult to not eat. However, I can stick with being in a calorie deficit on those days. Strangely getting food out of the freezer to cook isn’t the problem, its just having something fresh on hand that I can open a packet and eat that I struggle with. So I can only successfully fast for more than 24 hours at times if I time it with not being physically active with work and when I have an completely empty fridge. Maybe I need to incorporate more keto friendly cooking, instead of just repeating a limited range of pick up and go meals over and over. That way there will not be food to hand to eat straight out of the packet when I want to fast.

I think I need to work on Insulin Resistance and how sensitive I am to carbs, but I wonder if that is linked to my eating habits from early childhood. – I could not cope with the taste of meat or fish from early childhood, or any strong flavours. This was in the days before there was the understanding of/ or products for/ vegetarians. My mother was simply happy that she could get me to happily eat fresh fruit along with bread and butter for a meal. – With cooked meals I would be given extra potatoes, chips, yorkshire pudding, or pastry to make up the empty space from not having any meat and I continued to eat a high carb very low protein right up to the time I started on this WoE. –

Although I started eating low carb in October 2017, I am still in the place that I drop out of ketosis if I have more than 30g of carbs in a day and it will take me a couple of days with physical work to get back into getting a reading on my breathalyser. I wonder if that means my body has evolved / developed to be very sensitive to carbs and not so good at burning fat. Maybe I need to research what trace elements are needed to help the body burn fat. I am certainly increasing the amount of water I drink each day.

I did see an article in the newspaper at the weekend which says that scientists have discovered that increasing the acidity of a meal with lemon juice or a drink of lemon juice water means that carbs are not absorbed from a meal. – Apparently changes in the PH means that enzymes can not break down the carbs at the same rate so you don’t get the same profile of blood sugar increases. I may try combining that on my eating days.

I have to admit that for the last 3 months I haven’t been as strict as I was previously, I haven’t been logging everything eaten, and using my breathalyser daily. I have been feeling good, doing more each day, as well as the weight training and wanted to see what happened if I just went with that. There have been a few work related events with catering, which was all lectures, with a lunch of sandwiches and cake that was an important networking event.

I am going back to logging everything and working to stay in ketosis. – The way I look at it, someone inactive and fasting would have the same calorie deficit as someone who is active and eating 800 calories.

It takes a bit of will power on a Sunday. When guests check out of the bunkhouse they leave food behind. Its never keto friendly. There is a catering size pack of bread rolls, and 5 loaves of bread on the kitchen worktop, as well as butter and cheese just calling to be turned into cheese on toast. Chickens are going to be happy today.

I want to include a 5 day fasting mimicking protocol once a month as well.

Yes you are right JGwen they are all closely monitored and in a hospital bed for their 7-10 day fasts. They are very very over weight too. I didn’t realise that he said not to do extended fasts if your work was very active! I do between 16000 and 20 odd thousands steps at work and I do a lot of heavy lifting! Oops! Ah well never mind. I find when I fast overnight I feel much better and I sleep much better during the day. Nights mess me up anyway so for now I will stick to fasting as I wouldn’t be eating if I was in bed asleep. You sound like you have a plan and it is good. I am so used to not eating all day that I fast almost all day then eat one meal. I know that this is not good for prolonged amounts of time as it slows your metabolism down as the body goes into starvation mode? This confuses me a little because I am low carb most days my carb intake is below 20g. It is not always intentional it just is what it is. I think maybe I need to eat two meals a day unless I am fasting. I am permanently in ketosis just at different degrees on any given day, but I never go below 0.34. I am not discarding as quickly as I was but I am not putting on at all. This may change when I go on holiday as my alcohol intake will go up a little. It is the nature of being away! I will have no problem avoiding the bread and french pastries as they don’t interest me at all. There will be lots of cheese though! Come on it is France and the home Of beautiful cheeses and I don’t want to worry about it! I can get lovely veg and salad where we go so all in all I will be eating a good Mediterranean diet whilst I am there. I get so confused with this all but I see the light more when you have explained JGwen. Thank you. Birdy💞🦜

I wish I could remember where it was that he mentioned it, it was a throw away line in one of the podcasts to a question which said that someone like a farmer shouldn’t do more than a 24 hour fast. As part of my work is running my farm, I noticed it more than I may have done if he had said any other industry. There would have been days in the hunter gather lifestyle where there wasn’t anything to gather and the hunt was unsuccessful. So I think its more that people in active jobs shouldn’t go overboard in fasting rather than should never fast.
—————–
I don’t know about the body going into starvation mode if you are in ketosis. – I think from Allies results that it doesn’t. But there simply has not been the level of research into the impact of long term ketosis and calorie counting. The only research paper which looks in detail on the impact of being in ketosis in humans followed just 10 people in a lab for 2 weeks. I think there are a number of reasons for that. – Its only if you keep people in an enclosed environment where you can be sure of what food they have access to and carefully log it that you can run this type of research. – The greatest loser accidentality provided this research into the drop of metabolic rate when cal counting including carbs because it was a tv program following people living in a house with catering staff and fitness trainers. —————- Otherwise the research wouldn’t have happened because someone has to fund research. Keeping people in an enclosed environment for a number of months is costly, and the industry most likely to fund research would be the processed food producers, who wouldn’t be able to use research into keto to help them market their products. Secondly, when I read the research paper, I went ouch, the volunteers had samples of muscle taken for tests at specific intervals each day. – Don’t think people would volunteer for that long term.
—————————–

I remember Dr Fung describing his clients in the early days as came from an ethnic heritage where the traditional meals are all high carb and they were living on low budgets. —- So they were unable to afford fancy ingredients different to the rest of the family, but simply not eating was an option. – So probably he assumes that they will be eating carbs during their feeding window.

Also it is really difficult, especially if you are a vegi to get the carbs low enough to be sure of being in ketosis, and the safer option (especially if your reputation / income) depends on very obese people successfully following an eating program without supervision is to presume that people will not have the self restraint to eat keto.

I do wonder if staying keto for a long term without an occasional spike of insulin is a good idea. I read an article by a Doctor who is a member of a group of doctors who are treating themselves as their own research subjects. – He was theorising that our bodies are designed to lay down fat at certain times of year when fruit was easily available, and use that fat up at other times of year when food is not available. – So he thought that you needed to have the occasional time when you added carbs to your diet or there would come a point when your body would be reluctant to use up fat stores because it recognised that the fat wasn’t been replaced occasionally. – That doesn’t seem unreasonable, and actually given there will be occasions like birthdays, and holidays, it will happen in practice anyway.

JGwen some fantastic points and thoughts! I agree with the not staying in ketosis for the rest of our lives as a friend of mine who is a nurse, actually she is a sister and a prescribing nurse and works in palliative care, she told me it is dangerous for diabetics to stay in ketosis for too long. But it is not as dangerous for people without it but it is not advised to continue it all the time. With the weight discard we have all had and in the short time we can come out of it for a while. As you say there will always be times when we have carbs so we won’t be in it constantly. I haven’t yet tested how many carbs I can eat before I come out of ketosis as I have had 20 grams and below since I started. The reason being I needed to discard over 4 stone. So when I get to my target weight I will then start playing with my carbs. I am 1 stone and 3 quarters away from said target. I lost 3 stone in 11 weeks! It is unbelievable but wow just wow. I feel more alive and happy now. But I really want to see myself at 12 stone. 14-9 is still better than 18 on me. I am more than halfway there.

Birdy thank you so much for your kind words above, that really did put a huge smile on my face 😊 And you have done incredibly well on this WOE, you must be so pleased!

Your explanation about Dr Fung doing much more supervision—even bedrest—with patients who are seriously ill and need a kick start when he puts them on a long fast makes sense. And it’s good to hear your experience with 66 hours was positive, that you felt alert and energetic.

JGwen, I don’t think Dr Fung talks about people who are physically active in the book, but it kind of makes sense that if you’re really physically active you would at least need to be careful trying to do a longer fast. I read someone talking about seasonal fasting (I don’t think it was Fung, but I honestly can’t remember): they said that for a lot of people a longer fast (eg 5 or 7 days) or two in winter works well, but then only shorter fasts (like OMAD) in summer. This kind of models how we might have evolved to eat, with famines in the cold season and more of an abundance in warm weather. It might also align with physical work for lots of people, though admittedly not everyone. So for lots of people, there’s more physical work in summer just because the days are longer so there’s more time to be working outside. But as I say this wouldn’t work for everyone, as some jobs/lifestyles would be physically demanding all year round.

It also goes towards mixing up what we’re doing, so our bodies don’t get habituated to anything. Fung is a big advocate of having feasts as well as fasts occasionally, he talks a lot about letting your hair down for weddings, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m not North American so I’d swap out my birthday for Thanksgiving, lol But I think that aligns with your point about having an occasional spike of insulin. I suspect that a lot of the doctors working in this space are very careful about what they say because they worry their patients will treat “occasional” as “every second day” (!!!) But over the longer term I think there’s a lot of sense in the kind of “mixing it up” model that you’re talking about.

Birdy, I agree with JGwen that I think the body *does not* necessarily go into starvation mode if you are in ketosis and/or fast regularly. Important caveats being that you are staying low carb so your body can access its fat reserves, and that you have fat reserves to start with. I was really worried about this to start with because so many people said “OMG you didn’t eat breakfast, your metabolism will slow and…” So I did a bit of reading and it doesn’t seem to be the case, though I think JGwen’s right that there’s not a lot of hard data yet. A lot of it seems to come down to the view that humans had to be able to stay alert and active in times of famine so they could find any food that was available, and if metabolisms had slowed down and humans had become all lethargic they’d have been unable to find food and we’d all have died out. That makes sense of course, but I think we’ve all become very nervous about “it stands to reason” arguments in human nutrition…

I assume too that *some* high carb periods are OK, because Fung talks about fasting to balance the feasting at Christmas, and I guess he’s working on the basis that there will be some relatively high carb foods at Christmas. So I assume that high carb for just that short period would not be long enough to be a problem.

JGwen, I will be really interested to hear what you do with the fasting mimicking protocol when you start that. Just at the moment I’m obsessed with autophagy to try to manage the risk of saggy skin, and my understanding is that I need a “true” fast for that, but I think the fasting mimicking idea is really interesting. Look forward to hearing how you go and what you find!

And I salute your willpower in giving all the bread to the chickens!!

Cheers, Elky

This isn’t the best time of day for me to be posting, but I just wanted to hop on this thread to tell Elky that I’m so enjoying your
thoughtful, insightful observations. It’s always a pleasure to read your thoughts! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Oh Allie, thank you for that, it’s really kind 🙂 I have found so much support and helpful advice here, I’m glad that I can contribute to a little bit of it!

Good morning/evening guys! Wow Elky I love how you really grab onto something and give it a good think and shake up! I do love an emoji! I love colour and adding it to my posts😂❤️🌈. It just makes it less plain and they are in my phone and iPad so why not😘. Autophagy is something I am interested in to! It is supposed to get rid of redundant cells and stop lose skin but that is about the sum of my knowledge. I am sure if we are fasting for longer periods this is occurring at some level naturally? But I am not sure. Like you said more research is needed. When I am fasting and a day or two after my sloppy bits do feel more drawn in and tighter if you catch my drift? I love it as it feels good. I also feel it first thing in the morning after getting out of bed, my tummy feels flatter and I just feel a lot slimmer in general. It is as the day progresses that everything seems to pop out or drop as it were 😂🙄. Since I drank at the weekend I haven’t been able to get into a fast so I have gone for OMAD both Sunday and Monday. Today I will eat a lovely healthy lunch at the cafe and then an evening meal. Tomorrow I will hopefully slip into a fast that will last at least 48hrs. This way I know I will have energy in an abundance for my two night shifts🤗😉. I have booked a holiday next week so no nights for nearly two weeks! My OH is away and I am taking my son to his grandmothers for a few days. I can’t wait. My mum and dad are doing this woe but not as extreme as us. They have both discarded well and they have given up processed carbs! She will have all the bits I need to continue my woe whilst I am there. Gotta love our mums 🤗❤️❤️. I have been quite successful with taking a few more processed carbs out of my sons diet but he did ask how long he had to do it for. I haven’t broken the news to him that it is for the duration that he is under my roof😂. He has pasta once a week and potatoes once a week, he has a flat bread for lunch. I didn’t want him to get carb flu so I just cut his intake down. He was at about 8 slices of bread a day😱😱. My son is very fit and very slim. I have been buying fresh chicken drumsticks and marinating them so he has a non carb food to snack on when he comes home from school. I have noticed he hasn’t been constantly asking for more food as he did when he ate too many carbs. It is great. He has sausage And cheese omelette for breakfast most days and full fat Greek yogurt and chia jam.❤️ This is my little experiment at the moment. Sorry for waffling. Hope you all have a great evening/day. Birdy💞🦜

Hi everyone, just popping in to chat about fasting so as not to clutter up the “normal” weekly thread.

Birdy, it sounds like you are doing amazingly well getting your son onto this WOE and that this is working out really well for him. It’s really interesting that he seems less hungry than when he was eating bread by the loaf – I didn’t think anything would fill up teenage boys so it’s a great case study!!

Did you manage to slip into your longer fast, or not for this week?

I am on a longer fast just now. I started fasting after Sunday dinner and am now at Wednesday morning so that’s 60 hours. Water and black coffee only – I haven’t fancied any tea so haven’t had any. It has been so far (mostly) pretty easy. A couple of moments of real hunger, but nothing that lasted more than about 20 minutes so it has been quite manageable to tell myself to give it half an hour and see how I feel then. Unless I feel terrible during the day, I will go through until dinner tonight so that will be 72 hours. I don’t usually eat breakfast or lunch during the week so I am relatively confident that I will manage to get to dinner tonight.

Part of me is tempted to try to push it a bit longer than 72 hours, but another part of me thinks I should “train” myself into this. So the longest fast I’ve done before this was 53 hours and I stopped because I felt *terrible* – nauseous and dizzy, which came on really suddenly. So I think it would probably be better to break the fast before I get to the point where I feel bad. Then maybe next time try for a little bit longer, or settle into a couple of 72 hour fasts, I don’t know. I have read that most of the benefits of fasting accrue over the first couple of days, that you don’t necessarily get much more benefit from longer fasts (except longer without food and therefore theoretically more fat loss, I guess?). But OTOH I would have thought that the longer you continue then the longer autophagy goes on? Any thoughts from others very welcome!

Someone on this forum – and I’m sorry I can’t remember who – said they use San Pellegrino mineral water when fasting, and I have found that to be a genius suggestion. Huge thank you to whoever it was, so sorry I can’t remember!! I drink litres of water during the day, and often have soda water during the evening, but over the last couple of nights I have added in a bottle of SP mineral water each night and I found it really helped. Partially it’s the different taste – the change from tap water or soda water feels a bit like having a glass of wine lol But also I think the minerals in it may actually help the fast, which is the point that whoever recommended it was making. I’d recommend other fasters try it out, it really worked for me. I know it’s not as cheap as tap water, but given that I’m not buying nearly so many groceries I think it’s worth it.

Anyway, that’s it for my update, off to make a cup of coffee lol

Have a good day everyone, Elky

Hi Elky it was me with the SP😂. I drink it for the salt content when I fast to help replenish my electrolytes. Well done on your fast hun it sounds like you are doing well and I think you are right to build rather than try and do it all at once. Wendy drinks warm salt water in the mornings to get her moving as it were, but I tried it and couldn’t get on with it. It just made me feel like I was drinking a vomiting enduser🤣😢. I have not been anywhere near a fast yet! I have been craving sugar and that tells me I must be due on yet again!! 3 times in a month so far!! They are still trying to tell me I am not at the beginning of the change!! I am having blood tests in the morning though so hopefully I will know soon enough. They will be also taking blood for my BG levels as I was diabetic in pregnancy! I think they will be ok as when I tested after a couple of weeks being on this woe they were 4.1 which is normal.

I seemed to have stalled a lot!! I went down to 14-9. But I am bloated and back up to 14-11!! It is probably hormonal imbalance and with that comes water retention so I am thinking it is this. I will be fasting tomorrow and Thursday and if I feel ok and actually manage it without ill effects I will continue into the weekend.

I made Keto cheese scones today with coconut flour and my boy liked them! My OH did too and he is a real fickle eater! I had a couple with butter😱🙄, they are nice and quite light but too much like the real thing! But as this is a work in progress I will try more things out in my son so I can give him snacks that are not carbage! The chicken drumsticks went down really well. I will keep you up dated with our progress. Good luck with the rest of your fast today hun. You go girl and I am here cheering you on. Hugs Birdy💞🦜

Then thank you so much for heads up on the SP, Birdy, it’s a great tip. I agree with you, I couldn’t face a glass of warm salt water. I am happy to dip my finger tip in salt and then have a glass of water, but not the salty water <shudder>

Yep, 3 times a month and bloating sounds like your body is trying to tell you it’s changing… Hopefully it resolves itself soon!!

Can you please post a link to your scones? Merry and I have both tried to find them but are confused by all the options.

Thanks, Elky

Hi Elky, Birdy and any other fasting buddies ! Elky here is some info I picked up on the net , not sure where ..

Here is a brief write up of what I learned listening to Megan Ramos speak at a low carb conference.
Her talk was all about fasting. Why we do it. How to do it safely. What they have learned at IDM using fasting as a tool.
Fasting is a great tool to use to reverse diabetes and to lose weight. Other reasons: general wellness, reversal of PCOS, NAFLD, improved fertility, treatment of neurological disease processes such as epilepsy and Alzheimers, sleep apnea.
Fasting protocols are different timings of fasts. It’s very dependent on your individual goals.
You must inform your doctor when embarking on a fasting program. This is imperative if you are on medications that lower BG or BP.
TRE is described as daily fasting, no more than 24 hours so you are eating either 1 or 2 meals. Those meals fall into an eating window of 1-8 hours. This is really what we advise for eating days but because there are hours of non eating that is fasting.
IF are fasts from 25-48 hours. These are the ones that should be done at least 3 times weekly. IDM has the statistics that these are the fasts that work best for weight loss and reversal of T2D.
EF are fasts that are above 48 hours. These ones up 4 days can be done weekly. They are great to repair damage from holidays and vacations. Or to lose those last stubborn pounds.
Fasts above 5 days are extended as well but not recommended more than once a month. More is not necessarily better. Burn out, rebound feasting can occur. Again used to knock those last stubborn pounds off. IDM also uses them to get T2D with extreme high BG numbers down quickly.
Fasting 7-10 days can be used safely 1-4 times a year. They are usually done for general wellness, like a seasonal cleaning. These fasts must be done under a doctors supervision.
When fasting we must remember to balance it with feasting. We must be consistent with fasting to see results but we can change it up. It is very important to schedule fasting around your schedule. Be safe with your fasting. You must ensure you are properly hydrated throughout. You must break your fast if you feel unwell with symptoms such as nausea, dizziness or faintness. You can try some salt and water but if you don’t feel any improvement then you must break.

This is about OMAD …again from the net(the IDM program ?)

OMAD…it’s the one thing that’s talked about more than just about anything else. I’ve listened to the IDM Educators and Megan talking about fasting and feasting and how important it is to have a balance for both.
OMAD, or one meal a day, might work if you’re varying your eating times. So eating breakfast one day, dinner the next, so that is more of a 36 hr fast. However, for most of us, calorie restriction isn’t going to work. Especially if you have a history of yo-yo dieting and a damaged metabolism.
I had a light bulb moment this past week. Again, after listening to Nadia talk about balance. I was getting these huge regains. It was nothing for me to gain 10 lbs upon eating. Until this past week when I took Nadia’s advice and I started looking at the 60/40 balance of fasting and eating. My light bulb moment came when I realized that I haven’t been eating enough. I had only a 1 lb gain this week upon refeeding. Why? Because I ate 2 meals for the 3 days this week, not just one.
Those of us with long diet histories are so use to calorie restriction that we have a mind-set that less is better. It’ll get the weight off faster. I’m here to tell you that’s not true. It’s actually the opposite.
My new schedule has been looking like this. I fast either 3×42 or 2×48. In between I eat one meal on the day I break the fast, but then I follow it with a day of 2 meals before I go into another fast of 42 or 48 hrs. There’s always 3 days each week of 2 meals. On the other 4 days I’m eating either no meals or one meal. I feel so much better and fasting is now so much easier.
I’ve also used the fat fast list as my core diet. I’ve learned that things like dairy, nuts and even vegetables are as Nadia coins it “garnishes”. They are not the core of my meals, but small add-ons. I’ve reduced my dairy hugely. I’ve realized that was one of my biggest mistakes and as someone who is insulin resistant, the dairy is inflammatory.
One of the bigger questions we get asked is about cream in your coffee. People view it as a fat, when in fact it’s dairy. It will initiate an insulin response. Heavy cream is only 36% milk fat. The rest is proteins. Yes, you can use them as a crutch in the beginning, but at some point, it’s time to give it up.
Fasting more and not eating enough isn’t better. Do not fall into the OMAD trap. It’s so easy to do. Keep in mind it’s important to have balance. Don’t be afraid to eat. Just make the food choices the best you have available to you. Don’t be afraid to eat until you’re satisfied.
Edit: Adding blog posts to review about dairy and one meal a day: https://idmprogram.com/is-dairy-fattening/ Also, Episode #32 of Megan Ramos Q&A videos is on OMAD.

Fasting benefits.I found an infographic in one of the Jason Fung books which says this about the hourly benefits

4 to 8 hours :
Blood sugars fall.All food has left the stomach.Insulin is no longer produced

12 hours
Food consumed has been burned
Digestive system goes to sleep
Body begins Healing process
HGH begins to increase
Glucagon is released to balance blood sugar

14 hours
Body has converted to using stored fat as energy
HGH starts to increase dramatically

16 hours
Body is ramping up fat burning

18 hours
HGH starts to skyrocket

24 hours
Autophagy begins
Drains all glycogen stores
Ketones are released into the blood Stream

36 hours
Autophagy 300% increase

48 hours
Autophagy increases 30% more
Immune system reset and regeneration
Increased reduction in inflammatory response

72 hours
Autophagy maxes out

I have never done more than a 72hour fast and only once a month if that. I do feel fine at that duration but obviously the first sign of ill effects means stop. I drink the warm water first thing in the morning with salt fakes because I find I can drink it more easily than cold water. Two glasses go down easily 😉 I also love San Pellegrino and Badoit sparkling water .

My most recent experience : I had dinner on Sunday evening ..fasted all day Monday and also Tuesday ( day of my op yesterday so no choice ! ) and I didn’t get to eat until 9pm Tuesday evening when they finally let me out of the clinic. If at any time I had felt unwell ( I had a peridural anaethetic) I would have stopped but I felt perfectly fine. My grilled tuna dinner was fab !
I think it dépends what works for each individual. I understand it is advisable to mix up the durations. now I am back home convalescing I won’t be fasting so much but I regularly skip breakfast so have a fasting period daily of 18hours.
Elky just do what feels comfortable for you without undue pressure xx

Wow Wendy thank you. I am still confused a little though! It would seem the more information I have the more I get confused😂. I understand what fasting can achieve and I understand that excess protein can lead to IR and that is a big no no for all of us. I have believed from the beginning of my journey that too much protein is bad. I have also found that I am not getting enough fibre and this is something I need to address, but on that website it basically said that high fat, high fibre gave the same results of a lower intake of high fats and lower intake of fibre. My brain is a little frazzled 😂. I think I need to experiment and with my fasting buddy Wendy I think I can work something out. I am loving all the information on each stage of the fast and what our bodies do. The human body is amazing with what it does and how it handles things differently. How can expect anyone to ever know exactly what it does and how it deals with diet, emotions, eating etc……. we can’t as there is never going to be a study where results are exactly the same😂😂. This is because every body is different even when it has similarities. Ah well like you say Wendy we need to do what works for us, but we need to experiment to find out what works😱😂. I am so willing to do that as I NEVER want to be 18 stone again and I never want diabetes or any other health problems because of poor choices in diet. ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Birdy 💞🦜

Wendy, this a fabulous post, one of the very best I’ve ever read on the forum! Thank you for putting it up. 🙂 It sounds
like you had a very long day, yesterday. I’m glad that you’re home. I know that you will be well taken care of! xxx

Wendy, I agree with Birdy and Allie, that is a fabulous collection of information – thank you so much for posting it! The list about what happens at different timing intervals was great, sounds like anything after 72 hours is definitely hitting the law of diminishing returns for most of us.

Mixing it up seems to be a real key. I definitely need to be mindful of that because skipping breakfast and lunch is pretty easy for me, at least some days I clearly need to make time to have a good breakfast, just to keep my body guessing.

And the commentary about how we can get seduced into thinking longer and longer fasting is better – especially when we have a history of yo yo dieting – was really illuminating. I can definitely see myself falling into that trap so that was a really timely warning. I will be mindful of that.

I’m a bit in Birdy’s camp about being slightly confused about fat/protein/fibre and how much we should be eating. I have a bit of a suspicion that there’s actually no true consensus among the experts on that issue. I do understand that everything except fat – including protein – will trigger insulin, but I’m not sure I get how a diet that is so heavily focused on fat would work in practice. I understand how meat only would work (with apologies to the vegetarians!) but that’s still a huge amount of protein. I also understand that we don’t actually *need* fibre, because some traditional diets effectively had none and they managed just fine. (And of course the classic example is newborns, who’ve had no fibre at all and everything works just fine, if you get my drift.) But I’m not sure if that works if we’ve spent decades eating a “normal” diet that has fibre in it.?That is, can you wean yourself off fibre and still have everything work fine? I’m just not sure. Let’s just say my experience to date is that I need fibre!!

So I think for me I have to continue to include a bit of everything, and mix up the lengths of fasting/feeding intervals on a very regular basis. And I’ll see what happens with that 🙂

Update on my recent fast: got to 72 hours yesterday evening with no ill effects at all, and very much enjoyed my dinner lol I also felt absolutely fine *after* I’d eaten, whereas the first time I tried a longer fast (53 hours) I felt absolutely terrible after I’d eaten, really bloated and nauseous and had a case of hiccups it took ages to cure. Maybe I ate too quickly the first time, but I really tried not to, maybe my body just wasn’t as used to it or something. Certainly my “breaking the fast” dinner was bigger this time than the first time, and yet I still felt fine.

And for those looking at the numbers, my breathalyser got to 0.85 at 72 hours, and was still at 0.71 this morning, 12 hours after eating dinner. For comparison, when I’m doing OMAD without a longer fast it rarely gets above 0.5. I have no idea how people get above 1.0 when 72 hours with nothing but black coffee and water only got me to 0.85!!!! And – to prove JGwen is right about trying to ignore the scales – almost no change whatsoever on the scales lol!!

Have a grand day everyone, Elky.

Thanks Wendy for that incredible and informative info – I’m still digesting some of it and like a few of the others I’m a little confused on some things so it’s nice to be able to talk it out with everyone! I really liked the hourly benefits and I think that’s an important one for people to see. I know I have to manage my disappointment in myself for not being able to do these amazing fasts like others (at least , not right now) and this really helps to show how I’m still doing great things at 12 and 14 hours and encourages me to strive for more. I also liked that 72 hours seems to be the cut-off point especially since I know I’m one of those people that needs to over-achieve so knowing that it’s not worth it, kind of reins me in. I don’t know if any of you know of the Japanese theory of motivation, called Kaizan? It’s “based on the belief that continuous, incremental improvement adds up to substantial change over time. It’s fitting that the Japanese word kaizen translates to “good change.” This led to the development of just changing something by 1% each day in what ever area of your life you want to work on. It’s a small doable amount that accumulates and I really believe that habits are the compound interest of self-improvement – the same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, traveling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent isn’t notable (and sometimes it isn’t even noticeable). But it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run. Sorry, that was probably slightly off-topic but if we apply it to fasting, even if we add one extra minute a day – that’s a place to start and a way to move towards your goal, whatever that might be!
I only read what you posted, Wendy so I need to go have a look at the source, apologies if my thoughts are not complete enough, I just wanted to add my 2c worth! This woman’s schedule seems fairly intense and I’m wondering if it’s just while she’s trying to lose weight and will change again once she hits her goal. I also wonder if her comment about eventually giving up dairy is just during the weight loss process as it seems that most of the other info I’ve read is ok with cream, butter and full-fat dairy! To be honest, that kind of annoyed me! I originally started investigating BSD as I wanted a WOE that was sustainable and would help me heal my toxic relationship with food (knowing that therapy was also a big part of it). This WOE does seem sustainable to me but not if I have to give up dairy as well! I think we need to be realistic about what will help us stay on track for the long-term and removing everything that provides some joy seems counter-intuitive especially when there’s conflicting advice. There’s so little joy in my every day life that sometimes it’s the little things that keep you going. As someone that is either all in or all out with pretty much everything, I’m trying to modify that behavior a little because my biggest reason for failing in the past is being unable to stick to a strict unbending regiment with success measured only by whether I did it completely perfectly. That said, I will definitely be checking the IDM program out in greater depth!

Kafin I had never heard of that “good change” theory and it’s really great – tiny tiny changes still being meaningful, that’s a lovely and inspiring idea.

And I agree with you that I don’t think I could give up dairy in the long term, and that most people don’t need to. Some of the feeding/fasting models are pretty extreme and I think you’d have to be a pretty disciplined person to make it work. I guess for some people it works, but I like to be able to let my hair down sometimes! I also think that where we’re going with some of our conversations – and on this thread in particular – is way beyond the BSD WOE. I personally like that, it works for me, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that you have to go this “extreme” to stick to the BSD.

I agree, Elky!

Hello Fasting buddies !
It’s true..the research is very thought provoking and I find it all fascinating. I get a weekly round up from the IDM program and the articles and videos sometimes appear on the dietdoctor website.
I like reading about how people have adjusted to low carb and fasting but I agree with you Elky and Kirsten, there is no perfect strategy and we have to find what works for us individually. Making small, good changes is great, Kirsten !
I am in a quandary about dairy too . I had got used to having Greek yoghurt daily and individual pots are Ok but if I buy the bigger pot I am not so disciplined with portion size ! I have been wondering about the inflammatory effects . I don’t eat loads of cheese, ( I love halloumi) but love a thick cream I have found in France which I enjoy in my morning coffee. I am transitioning to non dairy yoghurts and have found a fermented coconut yoghurt which is a good alternative. I don’t drink cow’s milk and have almond milk in my golden( turmeric) lattes. I love butter too. I can get goats and ewes yoghurt here which are quite strong tasting but I like them.
I think I can overdo the dairy portions so am just making changes to see what happens. …and I will keep reading !
About fasting…yes, definitely not to be seen as some form of endurance test ! I see it as a useful tool and one of the benefits for me (apart from the obvious health benefits) is to feel more in control of food , rather than being controlled. I would never have believed it would be possible for me to resist certain foods but it does happen. At the clinic I had not eaten for 48 hours but I was able to pass over the cakes and sweet dessert they presented me without the slightest regret. I have said this before but fasting has shown me that hunger is nothing to fear .In fact it has taught me to recognise the sensation of hunger. For so long I just ate because I feared being hungry, I never experienced true hunger !
I agree Elky that mixing things up is the way to go. I regularly did OMAD when I was working but that was 3 days a week. I had 2 meals on Wednesday and Friday to break the pattern. Weekends are often brunch and an evening meal. The extended 66 /72 hour fasts are once a month. I don’t always weigh immediately after a fast but my experience is that things balance out over a couple of weeks and I see the discard a bit later. I love the idea of giving my system a rest and I am now 4 stone down and I don’t have masses of loose skin ( some crepey, wrinkly bits on my thighs ! )
I think we just have to do what suits us. I can never imagine having breakfast again….maybe I will test that out on holiday in Sardinia when we stay 2 days at a B and B ?? I am quite happy to extend my overnight fast to midday or 1pm.
Have a great day everyone xx

I totally agree Elky that our conversations here go way beyond BSD . I would hate to scare anyone or for anyone to think that fasting is an integral part of this woe…whether intermittent or more ‘extreme’ . It doesn’t have to be . It was just a natural progression in my reading and a revelation for me . Surprisingly it is now being discussed in France ..who would have thought it ? The initial reaction when I first mentioned fasting here was one of absolute disbelief and shock !!

I read an article in the times today about a brain surgeon in the USA who is considered the top in his field and has just published a book to dispel a lot of the myths about how our brains work. – As an aside, he says that he uses TRE on some days and particularly enjoys the clarity of mental awareness that comes with it.

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I agree with Wendy, for me fasting has been about relearning what it feels to be hungry rather than craving something to eat. – I struggled at first to go beyond OMAD, and it took me time to realise that it wasn’t hunger so much as feeling its time to finish work for the day and putting the TV on at the end of the day was associated with eating.

I really like that we are free on this forum to share information on other methods, its not a Dr MM is right and everyone else is wrong mindset like the Dr Fung facebook group. I was also very concerned about the risk of people thinking they have to fast, but then apparently in the new book TRE is recommended, and once you get used to that the idea of fasting for 36 hours doesn’t seem so scary.

JGwen, if you mean DrM’s new book then the clue is in the title The Fast 800. Although he considers going as low as 800 cals to be fasting and that is the figure we use in BSD and also on ‘fast’ days on the 5:2. But his book is mainly about fasting and TRE. My daughter bought the book for me but it is not suitable for my diabetes and insulin balance though I do sometimes try TRE say between 8pm and 11am but I know I have to keep a careful eye on my numbers. There is nothing wrong with try different methods to lose weight and no one is either wrong or right – personally I think Dr M is covering all markets.

Hi Sunshine! I absolutely agree with you that I think Dr M is covering all the markets!! His book is short on specifics
in a lot of areas, whether one’s objective is BGL or rapid weight loss. I continue to think his work is an excellent point
of departure for understanding the low carb concept, but the fine tuning comes from gathering info that is consistent
with a low carb lifestyle, i.e. Jason Fung, Bikman, Taubes, etc. Elky, it is so important to remind everyone that what we
discuss here DOES go far beyond the BSD WOE. Thank you for that, too! One can have spectacular successes by doing
no more than reading his books, but lots of us are very motivated by learning more, and it’s what keeps this forum
interesting for me. I love that we all have specific areas of interest, and this forum allows us to share them with others.
So often I am frustrated because I would very much enjoy sitting around a bistro table and discussing with many of
you all that we are learning! Case in point: The conversation today 🙂 Kafin, I’m well acquainted with the high achiever,
perfectionist personality that you are describing, for I see her each morning in the mirror, too! Everything in moderation
is a concept that eludes me. In some perverse way I seem to have embraced this part of myself, and use it as a constant
to keep me committed to the notion that if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Certainly a double edged sword though,
because it can also prevent us from trying at all 🙂 Perhaps you understand what I’m trying to say? Somehow I sense
that you do….

Stay cool in the high heat that you are all dealing with this week. Sunshine, I think I would stay in a bathing costume
all day too, and we all envy your beautiful inground pool. Enjoy 🙂 🙂 🙂

Hi guys I am also in agreement with Wendy too, that we all need to do what is right for us as individuals. I naturally progressed into fasting and the main reasons for me were my knee that I injured, inflammatory reasons and of course I didn’t want to get loose skin because of extremely fast weight loss. Who knew I would reap so much more. I have energy for days my brain is more alert and focused and I feel healthier and younger! Younger because my feet and joints don’t ache and crack like they used to!🤣💞❤️

I decided to fast from Monday evening and I was hoping to keep it going over night last night and into today, but alas I wasn’t feeling right and needed to eat and then realised that it was because my abscess was flaring up again! But I did manage 31 hours. The good things is I don’t need to put pressure on myself as I know I can fast for long periods if I want. I have feasted today on all my favourites, Halloumi, garlic mushrooms, avocado with salad and fermented veg. I am now sitting here eating coconut cream chia pudding and I love it! It is creamy and not too sweet and it has a tapioca texture which is a milk pudding I loved when I was kid, but there is still a little crunch/pop from the seed husks and the ones that have not yet soaked enough to become jelly ish. So so nice.

My OH is away for two weeks with the army starting tomorrow so only My son and I to feed which is a little easier as he eats almost the same as me. My OH did inform yesterday that he needs to go on a diet when he gets back, I said unfortunately my love you won’t lose any weight because you consume way too many carbs. He won’t eat any vegetables and lives on meat Riveta, potatoes, pasta and rice!! This is going to be a struggle but I am up for the challenge! I can buy the low carb replacement noodles, pasta and rice and I can make him the crackers Merry mentioned and of course cheese scones, but apart from that I have no clue! He has sweetener too!

Hope you guys are having a great day. Birdy💞🦜

Oh Birdy, you do have one big task at hand!!! 🙂 That’s one challenge, breaking your O/H of a hefty carb addiction. Baby
steps, my sweet! Maybe you can sneak courgette and eggplant into the pasta sauce? It’s progress though, that he’s
inspired to discard some weight because he’s been witness to your phenomenal success. The “liquid bread”, i.e.
beer may be the bigger challenge, though. While he’s away, maybe we can come up with some creative strategies???
Hw won’t know what you may have in store for him!

Hello everyone

Wendy, I’m so pleased that you’re bouncing back so quickly after your surgery!!

Your comment about not weighing immediately after a fast is interesting – I confess I was a bit disappointed to see almost no change on the scales after my 72 hour fast, but maybe I just need to wait a bit. I am also telling myself that a) there would be other great benefits like growth hormone and autophagy; and b) *something* must have moved because it’s just not possible to be as fat as I am, eat nothing for 72 hours, and not lose weight. I mean, it would be different if I was close to goal and maybe being unrealistic about how low my body would go but, trust me, entire villages could survive on my spare flesh lol So fingers crossed that it just takes a bit longer to register.

Interesting comment about breakfast, because only this morning I had breakfast as a way of mixing up my OMAD routine! I agree with you about it feeling a bit strange, but I figured that for me it was the most logical change from dinner, as it would still give me a longer break between meals than lunch would. Plus lunch on a work day is a bit of a pest for me, to be honest, when I’m so busy at present.

And yes, learning not to be scared of hunger is really powerful. I used to travel a bit with work – not much just now – and I cannot count the number of times I’d end up eating something overpriced and of really dubious taste and quality at an airport just because “I don’t want to leave it too long and get too hungry”. Or hotel room service because it was late at night when I checked in and I didn’t want to go out alone. OK the food was better than the airport, but so expensive!! Now I would just have a shower and go to bed, perfectly happy, but I really thought something terrible would happen if I didn’t eat. I don’t know what, exactly – headaches and not being able to concentrate, I think.

JGwen, you are so right about how good it is that everyone here is open to new ideas and methods. (I’m not on facebook so I also really appreciate that you share the interesting snippets you find on the Dr Fung page!) I guess I can understand that if something has literally saved your life – as I understand is the case with some of his patients – then you’re going to be evangelical about it. But all the same, I think the lesson coming out of the research in this area is that bodies react differently to interventions depending on so many things, so tweaking is good and healthy. (Plus, if I’m honest, I think it’s just part of being an adult to be able to say, “gee it’s great that worked for you, I didn’t find it successful for me, but I’m interested in your experience” rather than just “no you’re wrong”.) One of the wonderful things I’ve found about this forum is that people are so willing to share their tips and lessons without saying “you have to do this to be successful”.

I spend a bit of time poking around on Diet Doctor and it strikes me that the experts in their videos often have different takes on this broad WOE. I’ve seen presentations from conferences where two people at a conference are talking about the same data or study in their presentations but interpret the results differently. And that’s fine and normal, it’s good science. It’s how research in an area moves forward. But it also means that it’s way too early for there to be a “one true way”.

Birdy, I’m exactly with you on this one – even two months ago I couldn’t have imagined multi-day fasts, I just stumbled into it when I came along here. For me it was about autophagy, as I have lots of weight to lose, I’m no longer young with gorgeous bouncy skin, and I don’t want to look like a Chinese shar-pei if I manage to lose heaps of weight, lol But you are right that there are many other benefits that I’ve started to see. I thought a lot of it was hype until I tried it for myself.

In terms of feeding your OH, have you looked at a recipe that Maria Emmerich has called “Protein Noodle Lasagne”? (Google will find it easily, I think it’s quite famous.) I haven’t made it, but I think it looks good. She basically uses thinly sliced chicken breast as the lasagne sheets. As in, chicken breast sliced by those machines in delis, not sliced by hand with a kitchen knife so they’re really thin. Her tomato sauce is from a jar and is something I don’t think we have in Australia, not sure about in the UK. But I was thinking that when I try making it I’ll just make my normal lasagne sauce because that doesn’t have anything high carb in it. So maybe you could just use your standard sauce? But in terms of your OH, I thought it might be up his alley because it’s pretty much just meat!! Anyway, hope you can find some things that work for him

Cheers, Elky

Wendy, I have no control with yoghurt in the bigger pots either and I really don’t eat it much now but I love it. Interestingly, if I have it I buy the 0% Fage only because it’s actually the one with lowest sugar. I looked up some of the highest fat content ones and found Siggis Triple Cream which has something like 22g of fat and 320 cals for 8oz but still 6g of sugar so I’m thinking yoghurt may be for maintenance for me. I just can’t do the coconut yoghurt, it’s a bit, how do I say…yuck. Side note – I think it was you that mentioned a while ago about terracotta pots of yoghurt? I think that sounds adorable and I would want to collect a bunch 😃
I also love reading about new stuff and others beyond Mosley and I think this is a great thread!
Allie, I absolutely get what you mean and I also have learnt to embrace that all in or all out side of me. For years, people have told me when it comes to relationships to just keep a little of myself back so I don’t get hurt. But no one has been able to tell me how to do that (same goes with food!) and I’ve decided that it’s not a failure or something to be corrected and yes I do get hurt more but I also feel more and love more deeply and that’s just part of my personality.
Birdy, we will need to brainstorm to find a way to help your OH without him feeling like he’s deprived. What if he started out by making every other day a no-carb day and then limiting the carbs to a certain amount on the carb days? Then you could wean him down??
Elky – there’s no way you will look like a shar-pei! But I understand your feelings, I don’t love my batwings that keep waving goodbye, long after my hand has stopped!

Kafin, I did laugh at the image of the batwings just waving on and on!! That’s really going to stick with me I think … lol

Hi everyone, I’m popping onto this thread for a bit as I am currently in the middle of a short fast. I’m thinking of just doing 24 hours as that will be the longest I’ve gone in a very long time. My longest ever was only 41 hours but that was well over 1.5 years ago. I have been in quite a bad place mentally the last few days. I think it is because thanks to my glucose monitor, I know what I need to change in terms of my eating pattern, but I was having such a hard time seeing a way that I could do it. Very frustrating! I get home quite late in the evening and like JGwen says it feels like the end of the day should be marked with a meal. I even tried having an early meal at 4pm at work a couple of days this week before going to see my horse, thinking I wouldn’t need to eat once I was home, but it didn’t work and I ended up having a large meal when I got home that I regretted.
So I had a good lunch at 1pm on Friday and didn’t eat all afternoon as I wasn’t at all hungry. I got home at 8:30pm thinking I would cook a stir fry to have with cauliflower rice, but it was so late that I really didn’t feel like cooking. My blood sugar was sitting at a very nice 4.5, so I didn’t feel like ruining that either. I was watching a Jason Fung video earlier in the day and am quite inspired to see what impact fasting has on my blood glucose pattern. I only have 4 days left on my last sensor, so it is time to mix it up and try some different things. Really interested to see where my levels come to rest after a longer period without food. So only fluids for me at the moment. Hope I can make it to 1pm without any difficulty. I’m going to try to stay busy by going to the garden centre to get some plants and then refurbishing the pots on my balcony as all my lovely violas have finally succumbed to powdery mildew and no longer look so nice to prospective purchasers of my flat!
JGwen, I was on the Jason Fung facebook page for a bit as well as I was curious to learn more about how they do the fasts and for the supposed support throughout a particular fasting challenge, but I left quite quickly as I found a lot of the people to be very extreme, evangelical and harsh with people who are not as whole hog as they are. I did stay long enough to pick up some tips, but I much prefer this group!

Hi Arcticfox, sending all kinds of positive vibes your way for your 24 hour fast, really hope it works for you.

And I agree with you and JGwen about dinner – I just tried mixing up my meals on a OMAD by having breakfast and it was an epic fail as I desperately wanted dinner when I got home as well. So I ended up scrounging around in the fridge and ate way more than I should have. The only saving I guess was that at least I didn’t eat anything high carb. But still a bad day for me and a lesson learned: breakfast as my OMAD does not work for me. A bit disappointed as it seemed like a good way to mix things up but never mind, I’ll just have to try to come up with other approaches.

Hope you get a lovely sunny day to potter around at the garden centre!

Yes, good luck articifox…just do what feels comfortable.

Elky just having breakfast would never work for me. Breakfast is the easiest meal to skip, I am rarely hungry in the morning and apart from my coffee and cream I can easily get to 1 or 2 pm with no food. That may change slightly on holiday in the B and B in Sardinia but I would only consider eggs for breakfast then. I even found I could skip lunch on a recent trip when I had had eggs for breakfast so I will just see how it goes.

The way I understand ‘mixing things up’ is to have days of OMAD ( no matter which meal is the one meal ) and then longer 36 hours and days of ‘feasting’ ( not excessive !!) in the week. I don’t think there is a *right* way of doing things…trial and error is fine to reap the benefits of fasting. The objective is to keep your body guessing so fasting is not perceived as long term calorie restriction. The facebook group JGwen mentioned suggests different fasting protocols for the week ( from beginners to more experienced ) which honestly do seem a bit extreme to me.

Have a great day !

Hi Articfox,
I found that there were two triggers for me to getting over the 24 hour hurdle with fasting. – Watching TV was the biggest one. – If I went off and had a soak in the bath and had an early night with a good book I was fine. But if I stayed downstairs with the TV on I found myself pacing having to fight the desire to raid the fridge. Although I had worked all day, I wasn’t physically hungry, but craved eating. – Thats why fasting has been so good for me in learning to recognise physical hunger.
That’s the other interesting point for me, if I have only food which needs cooking then its easier to walk away from. My trigger point is having food in the fridge which is something you can just open the packet and eat. Its very sad to admit this but having eaten all my food supplies of food I don’t have to cook I will be fine to fast now until I next go into town. (Probably Monday). – So I have decided to get into the habit of going into town twice a week, and only buying enough “too hand” food for the time upto the next fast each time I go into town. –

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Elky and Wendleg,

I think the idea of mixing things up between periods of fasting and not counting calories comes from there not being any clear understanding at present on what the mechanism is that causes the body to reduce metabolic rates to match calories.

It could be insulin being high and calories low, but it could also be calories less then BMR long term (the keto athlete facebook group follow that protocol). I have seen an article where a doctor proposes that as hunter / gatherer cultures would have made the most of the plentiful food during summer, and gone without food during winter our bodies need to have an annual period of high insulin as well as being low carb most of the year. – Or maybe its about the combination of insulin levels and daylight hours.

I think Dr Fung is playing safe by combining fasting with periods of not counting calories.

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I will be interested to hear how others get on with working on body set point. – Someone said a while ago that we are our own personal research projects. – I think that I am still insulin resistant. – I drop out of ketosis if I go over 30g of carbs and it takes a couple of days for me to get back into ketosis according to my breathalyser. – So I have decided to change over to increasing fasting, periods for the next 3 months, to see what happens with both carb sensitivity and also body fat percentage.

Hi All,
I’m going to toss another variable in the ring here for us all to consider as we develop our own perfect plan for our own bodies — I’ve been reading a book called “Chasing the Sun” by Linda Geddes — it’s sort of popular science but footnoted and well researched — about how our bodies are designed to work in partnership with sunlight.
The daily fluctuations of our circadian rhythms affects so much of our digestion, as we have CLOCKS in our gut and in our stomachs (and others in our muscles, lungs, liver) IN ADDITION to the whole body master clock in the brain.
Keeping our daily activities synchronised, ie waking with the sun, going out in the sunlight during daylight hours, sleeping when it gets dark and eating at the same time (and in similar amounts) every day is correlated with better health and longevity.
The body becomes metabolically disturbed if we change these up too much because it interferes with circadian alignment (called circadian desynchrony).
When we alter the timing of our meals, it shifts the metabolic rhythms of our gut clocks, but doesn’t change our master clock. That causes “desynchrony “.
It got me thinking about fasting and time restricted eating, both of which I think are very useful and helpful. I’m not very good at fasting, I have never been able to go more than 24 hours, but I think it is really good for a couple of things: specifically, it teaches us that we don’t HAVE to eat, we CAN go hours and hours without food. That alone is really valuable knowledge, but also I like how it turns the whole body sort of “quiet” and calm.
However, it seems that we should at least consider trying to keep “regular” eating hours when we DO break the fast — ie eat at a regular mealtime, and in a regular amount.
And “mixing it up” all the time just might not be so good. All this “keeping the body guessing” might not be for the best. (I don’t buy that theory anyway).
Hey, it’s very good news for those who find it hard to fast!
But keeping a very regular schedule (with or without fasts) might be something to add to our regimen as we seek “rude” health (great British term for being super healthy!)

Hi CG – I like this, makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure I buy into the mixing up theory either, I think our bodies like consistency. Another book to add to the list!

I lasted the 24 hours! Not too much of a problem, although I was quite hungry through the morning. I stayed busy though and my balcony is back to being shipshape and the planters look pretty good, if I do say so myself! The last 1.5 hours were the hardest as my energy levels went down but in the end I had a nap. Throughout the fast my blood sugar levels stayed between 4.5 and 5.1 with the highest being when I woke up, so a bit of dawn effect I guess. But then in the last little bit my levels dropped to 4.3. It was around the time that I would ordinarily have had lunch so it may have been that my body released a little insulin in anticipation of my usual meal. I didn’t go hypo though, so looks like I may have been releasing less than when I actually eat.
CG – I agree about the diurnal aspect of fasting. One of the reasons I wanted to try this fast was to show myself that I can survive without an evening meal, even after a full and active day. What I’ve observed over the last month with my glucose monitor is that I metabolize food better in the early part of the day. I think if I want to lose weight I can’t continue to eat my final meal of the day at 8 or 9pm. It wreaks havoc with my blood sugar overnight. I spent a year of uni in Norway and they eat their dinner between 4 and 5pm. When we arrived in summer, we all thought they were crazy (especially the French students among us who thought it was uncivilized!). But when winter hit, it became apparent possibly why it had developed that way in their culture. There you eat your meal, have a little quiet time or maybe a nap, then to break up the long evening, you go out skiing or socializing at 6:30-7pm until about 9 or 10pm. Hot drink and then off to bed.

Congratulations Arcticfox, that’s fabulous news – so good to prove something to yourself!! And those blood numbers were really good, yes? (Sorry I don’t know a lot about blood sugar numbers but my understanding is that they were good and even – apologies if I’ve got that wrong!)

Wendy, yes my experiment with breakfast will definitely not be repeated. I will try to slip back into different fast lengths (eg some OMAD, some 36 hr, some “normal” days) as you suggest rather than messing about with which meal I eat in a day as that clearly doesn’t work for me.

CG, that’s a really interesting perspective, I will add that book to my list too. It seems sensible to look to daylight, it’s how we evolved after all, but so hard in the workforce where office hours have little regard for time of year. I admit I’ve tried to throw myself into longer fasts so quickly just because I’m in the middle of winter – traditionally a time of famine – so fasting maybe makes more “biological” sense than in summer’s plenty. But yes it’s all still very experimental.

JGwen I’m completely with you on having to stay away from normal “triggers” to manage the risk of the fridge scrounge from habit not hunger. I too head to bed with a book at a disreputably early hour on many evenings to avoid temptation- once I’m tucked up in a warm bed I will stay there lol And like you I find it much easier to stay on the straight and narrow some evenings if I would have to actually cook something: then I tell myself I’m being disciplined when really I’m being lazy lol

I will be really interested to see how you go introducing more fasting when you work so hard physically. I think I would find that really difficult though as you say some athletes do it. Fingers crossed for you!!

It’s Sunday so a normal day for me, no strange eating protocols lol And freezing cold so I’m off to light the fire. Have a good day everyone, Elky

Thanks Elky, yes the numbers are good, especially when compared to what usually happens with my late night meals. No spikes or hypos when fasting. I did have a very mild hypo of 3.6 about 2 hours after breaking my fast. I had a cucumber salad followed by some savoury cheesecake (from the recipe section). I didn’t get a spike, but went a bit low. I think it may have been due to the high level of protein in the meal, perhaps due to the incretin effect that Dr Fung talks about that can cause insulin secretion. But it wasn’t serious and came back up on its own within 15 min (glucose monitor will prompt me to check again in 15 min if I am low). Blood sugar stayed quite low but within target all afternoon while I visited and walked my horse and then went lower as I was coming home. I have been losing some of the water weight I put on as evidenced by the number of times I’ve needed to visit the toilet in the last 2 days, so I don’t know if that might also be having an impact on my blood sugar levels independent of the fasting. I felt a bit spacey as I was preparing dinner (the stirfry with cauliflower rice that I didn’t have Fri night), but felt better again once I had eaten and my levels went back up to 4.9.

Thanks CG, and JGwen for the very interesting input. I love reading about nutrition/fasting but it does get a little confusing for me the more information I acquire ! We all react so differently and sometimes I have no idea what is going on in my body 😉 I know I feel well and I have found a sustainable WOE with no cravings…so that is a real victory for me. My occasional weigh ins are not showing any movement at the moment but I am ok with that as I am awaiting a delivery of size M Gudrun outfits (gone the days of L and XL :-))

I don’t find fasting so easy when I at home, certainly not the 24 hour or extended fasts as I am too inactive right now and not distracted by work. I still don’t feel a need for breakfast which gives me at least 16 hours rest from food but I do still need to montor my intake of nuts and dark choc ( 85% these days is too tempting so a square of 100% is my objective !)

Well done on your numbers articfox ! Keep looking after yourself

There’s a lot of trial and error to find what works for you Elky but I think that is what makes the process so fascinating.
Can you try some low carb comforting soups for the winter ? There are lots on the forum. It’s weird talking to my son telling me about the winter temps when we are sweltering here in France 😉

Have a great day everyone, whatever you are doing xx

Arcticfox I’m so pleased it’s going so well! It’s great that you have been able to test so precisely what happens when you eat different things and time meals differently.

Wendy, I too find it harder to fast when I’m at home and not busy. And I would be excited by the delivery of size M outfits, I look forward to that day!! It won’t be tomorrow lol, but I am quietly hopeful that I will need new summer clothes. Fingers crossed!

And yes I’m definitely a fan of soups, I will make up a couple of batches now that winter is so firmly here!!

The weather was so cold yesterday that I spent the entire day in front of the fire reading Fung’s “Obesity Code”. I will need to read it a second time to get my head around more of the points he made, but I honestly found it more interesting – and with more material that was new to me – than I had expected. There was lots in it that I had not seen him cover on YouTube, or in the fasting book. He was also really up front about the fact that there’s a lot we just don’t know yet, which not all authors in this “space” are so emphatic about. So thank you very much to all who recommended it, it was an excellent read.

One of the things I found really interesting is his speculation that organic meat and wild seafood rather than farmed may have a quite different effect than other meat/seafood. I think because the animals/fish are essentially fed refined grains when they’re farmed? Like I say, I thought it was interesting. I confess I don’t buy much organic just at the moment because of price, but maybe I need to think about it a bit more. And if I’m fasting a lot it’ll be a cheaper grocery bill anyway lol

My take was that he is also pretty much a fan of dairy, which I found interesting given how many people apparently seem to find they need to cut it out. But maybe I misread that? Like I say, I need to read the book again.

I’m aiming for at least a 24 hour fast today (until dinner) and if I feel OK will push on to tomorrow. I managed to completely kick myself out of ketosis on the weekend (sad story on the weekly thread lol) so I am trying to get back into it as quickly as a I can.

Have a great day everyone, Elky

Good luck with your fast, Elky. I think I will try another 24 hours tomorrow.
With regard to the speculation about organic vs non-organic meat and farmed vs not farmed fish, I have to say that I wish Dr. Fung wouldn’t speculate and would stick within his area of expertise. He really shows up as being a typical urbanite who doesn’t know a thing about farming systems (and maybe has never even set foot on a farm?) by making this recommendation. Sorry, but I am a professional with multiple degrees in farming systems and animal nutrition who works in the field and has worked on farms all around the world, and I know that I’m not qualified to practice medicine and would get in huge trouble if I tried, but Dr. Fung can somehow make recommendations about farming systems when he is clearly not an expert in this field and his knowledge is based on speculative sources not backed by science? I watched a video of his the other day where he was giving out information based on the Wheat Belly Diet book about wheat breeding and he made the stupendous claim about how dwarfing the wheat has changed how we metabolize it and that this breeding somehow didn’t happen with rice. What??!! So completely unfounded in the first case and untrue and ridiculous in the second. He also made some rather silly claims based on the China Study. Both the Wheat Belly thing and the China Study are based on such bad science that they can be treated as pretty much figments of the authors’ imaginations. I’m not saying that there are not good reasons for certain people in the population to avoid eating grains, but let’s base this on real evidence, not speculation. I think a lot of his work on the physiology of obesity and weight gain is very useful and likely quite sound, but this veering into areas where he is not an expert and clearly doesn’t understand the systems and the science have made me lose some respect for him.

Anyway, my rant on that is over! Now for some information. Organic doesn’t really mean a whole lot with regard to food quality in most cases, and it can largely be viewed as a marketing technique to get you to spend more on your weekly shop. In a lot of countries, the organic certification system is a hodge podge of various bodies with different rules. Europe is probably better in this regard as many countries have standardized certification systems (I can’t remember about Australia as I wasn’t actively seeking out organic food when I was there). The US has the USDA Organic label, but many organic growers believe the standard tends to be a fairly low bar compared to other certifying bodies. People often seem to buy organic because they think it has less pesticides (which may or may not be the case depending on which sprays they are allowed to use under the certification system or under which circumstances they are allowed to use them) or that it is better for the environment (different farming systems have different trade-offs – when I was in Norway conventional grain farmers were using herbicides to control weeds but doing no-till which is highly beneficial for soil biology and organic matter, while the organic farmers were tilling the heck out of the soil to control them which is bad for climate change as it reduces soil carbon and releases nitrous oxide which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and increases soil erosion and phosphorus contamination of water bodies). Just being organic is not a good indication of whether or not the meat was grain or grass finished. Many organic systems may require the animals to spend a certain amount of time on grass in their lifetime, but not necessarily to be grass finished. If they are grain finished they will receive organically grown feed. Even with meat labelled as grass-finished, it can be a bit misleading for the consumer. I think the average person reading that label assumes the animals are finished in a bucolic manner out on pasture, which isn’t necessarily the case. The ‘grass’ can be conserved grass, either in the form of hay or silage. I’m not sure without looking it up what the fatty acid profile of hay and silage is compared to grass, but I do know that hay loses virtually all of its fat soluble vitamins within just a few months of storage. I visited a ‘grass-based’ dairy in my area and it was interesting to see that it was the same set up as a conventional dairy in our area (cows inside a barn for most of the year) except that they were eating silage and hay with no grain mixed in. In any case, if there is a health benefit to the grass-fed/finished dairy/meat due to increased levels of omega 3s and betacarotene in the fat, it is potentially a very minimal benefit.
I did see the results of one review paper that looked at a lot of different studies into whether dairy was healthy and they found that in a lot of the European studies the answer was yes, but for the North American studies, the answer was no. The authors speculated that this was because European cows have better access to grass than North American cows, but without further studies into whether or not North American grass fed dairy is healthy and European grain fed dairy is unhealthy, I think the jury is still out. I think Dr. Fung’s point from the book was that animal protein raises insulin levels more than plant protein but that dairy protein seems to be less problematic in this regard than meat, for instance. I haven’t checked his sources on this though.
Anyway, the good news is that because you are in Australia, your animal agriculture is much more pasture-based than a lot of other countries, so if there is any benefit you will likely have access to the products in any case. I spent time on a beef property in SW Queensland in the winter back in the late 90s and the grass was still growing and the animals were still out on the pastures until shipped for slaughter (although it was a wet period and unfortunately maybe not the case now in the area as I understand it has been hit so hard by the drought).
Anyway, bottom line is that if you don’t wish to pay the higher price for organic, you’ll probably still do just fine from a nutrition/health perspective.

Hi Arcticfox

Sorry, I didn’t mean to touch a nerve – and please don’t take my views on what Fung was saying as gospel, I may well have misunderstood/misquoted him!! But I did find the information you set out really interesting, I didn’t know a lot of that. You are no doubt right that a lot of it is marketing, where anything “natural” is automatically good. (Arsenic, anyone? Cyanide? Botulism toxin for heaven’s sake! Natural can be *way” less “healthful”!!) For the sake of my grocery bill I am pleased to learn it, lol But seriously, you are absolutely right to flag that it’s not nearly a black and white issue and way more nuanced than was set out.

And it sounds like you have a really interesting job!!