Background
While I’m a big proponent of intermittent fasting and the personal benefits I get from that, I’d never tried out an extended fast. I’d been planning to do one for a while due to the known benefits and also from the anecdotal experience of some of my family members.
Some of the known benefits of fasting are gut health and healing a “leaky gut”, and also autophagy. Autophagy is the process your body goes through to break down old cells and allow newer cells to operate more efficiently, i.e., cleansing and detoxifying the system.
Preparing for the fast
I decided to start my fast in the evening to get my sleep and workout in shortly after and not break my morning cycle. If I had started early in the morning it would’ve gone against my eating habits anyway and if I’d started mid-morning I would’ve finished my fast with a workout the following morning. For these reasons, I started at 8pm after my final meal of the day.
I took some magnesium and had some pink Himalayan salt in a glass of water before bed for electrolytes.
During the fast
I woke up the next morning as I normally would and worked out, having some more pink Himalayan salt before my workout. The rest of my day carried on as normal up until about 1pm when I really felt the hunger kicking in. I was nearly distracted completely by the thought of food for 2/3 hours and I had some more electrolytes in this time to keep me ticking over. I overcame this feeling though and felt normal up until 8pm (although I was definitely counting down the minutes to my meal).
Sometimes I feel lightheaded if I haven’t eaten for a while and I’m moving about in work or carrying out normal tasks but I didn’t experience that during this fast. I’ll attribute this to my constant consumption of electrolytes during the 24 hours.
Breaking the fast
I had my meal at 8pm that evening ensuring to include a lot of protein in my meal. I had steak, eggs, bacon rashers, a banana and an orange as my meal. I included the fruit to boost my blood sugar after the long period of not eating. This satisfied me for the evening and I resumed my normal eating patterns the following day.
Going forward
I definitely felt the benefit of the fast, my body felt great by the end of the 24 hours and once I got through the harder few hours of craving food I saw that I had the ability to complete a longer fast if I wanted to commit to it.
In the future I’d definitely like to complete a 2/3 day fast but (as with the 24 hour fast) maintaining my electrolyte consumption during the period would be key, especially during work which would be an important time where I could miss out on this intake. I’d also limit my workouts in the future. I worked out intensely for this fast but for a longer fast I would need to dial back the workout intensity and either focus on shorter gym workouts that just kept my body moving or move towards doing light walks or swims, again just to keep up daily movement.
I’d highly recommend trying it out if you haven’t before, even shorter fasts that build up to a 24 hour one, it’s been
almost a year of intermittent fasting for me before I decided to do a longer one.
If anyone has any questions feel free to ask!
Jack.