I wanted to return to the fasting and getting in shape themes, briefly. I don't plan to obsess about them in my blog, but I do want to check in from time to time. So where am I at right now? Well, since the last week of March, when I had that wake-up call via the blood tests I took in preparation for my colonoscopy, I have lost 17 pounds. That's about a third of my goal. So I'm well on my way. Now you might object that it's always the first third that comes off easy, and then it becomes work. I'll grant that. But if I focus on how much better I'm feeling, that will help motivate me to continue.
And I haven't even brought out the big guns yet. I have begun walking, and I've done seven walks of over five miles over the past couple of months. But I should be doing several a week. I have begun intermittent fasting, doing at least 16 hours and often 18 or 20 and fasting four fifths of the days in the last couple of months. I have done one meal a day four times and eight fasts over 36 hours. The longest, so far, has been 42 hours, and that felt fairly painless.
So this week I'm going to try a multi-day fast for the first time. I'm initially targeting 84 hours, because that would be double what I have ever done. That's three and a half days, so it's still relatively minor in the big scheme of multi-day fasting. I had a bit of a cheat day yesterday (Saturday) and then stopped eating about 6 PM. So as I'm writing this I'm about 14 hours into it, with 70 to go. The plan will be to break my fast Wednesday morning after 6 AM.
The leverage points in the fasts I have done so far have certainly been the nights. The 36 to 42 hour option has worked so well for me so far because it includes two nights when I'm asleep, which are the easiest times not to be eating. Since that has been an important aspect, how does it feel? Are there differences? One thing I will say is that since I've begun seriously fasting a couple of months ago I have noticed that I prefer to sleep *without* a full stomach. Last night, for example, after eating three meals and some snacks, I felt like I was carrying a load. Even though I stopped eating at 6 PM yesterday evening, I still feel like I'm digesting, fourteen hours later. This isn't exactly uncomfortable (I would have called it normal previously), but I don't prefer it.
The question is, what's going to happen beyond the day and a half I have typically gone? Usually, I go to bed comfortable on the second night of a 36-hour fast. Occasionally, I have too much energy and wake up in the night. I assume this is from the increase in counter-regulatory hormones like adrenalin, cortisol, and grow hormone that are said to kick in once you're solidly burning fat. But it hasn't been entirely clear to me how complete that shift to the fat-burning phase has been in my mid-length fasts. There's an intermediate step, apparently, after you've consumed the glycogen in the liver, when the liver works on turning proteins into sugars as it also begins turning triglycerides into glucose and blood-sugar levels can actually rise a bit. I suppose this continues throughout the fat-burning stage, but probably levels off after a while when the body gets used to burning fat directly (all body cells except the brain can do this) and the brain to burning ketones. At that point, if I understand the physiology, the brain still wants about 25% of its energy to come from glucose, so the liver continues making some.
The other thing that's supposed to really kick "on" during an extended fast is autophagy, which is the cellular cleanup that includes recycling of old or damaged proteins and mitophagy which junks damaged mitochondria so they can be replaced by new, more energetic replacements once I eat again. These proteins are apparently the source of some of the glucose my liver will continue to produce, since protein can be converted to sugar. This targeted destruction of weaker, older, more damaged components is supposed to result in improved energy and reduce the risk of ailments caused by these fragments being left in place. There are several theories gaining ground today that suggest a bunch of diseases like Alzheimers may be exacerbated (if not partly caused) by the fact that in our typical fully-fed all the time lifestyle, we typically never allow ourselves to reach this autophagy stage.
So I'm very curious what this is all going to be like, as I try it for the first time. I'll check in and let you know how it's going, especially as I reach beyond the fasting time I've done in the past. One of the other things I've heard and read from many sources (from recent books like Jason Fung's all the way back to Upton Sinclair's 1911 book, *The Fasting Cure*) that after a couple of days, the feeling of hunger abates and people feel energetic and good. I've not really reached that plateau, I think; so I'm looking forward to discovering what that feels like! And I'll let you know.
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Multi-Day Fast Begins