ronja Good luck with your fast tomorrow!! How is your daughter doing?

Well hello there, bumping up this thread!
Anyone interested in a prolonged fast? I have just re-introduced keto and I'm in the process of getting over the keto flu, but once I'm firmly settled I want to practice regular fasting. Since I'm not breastfeeding anymore (yay me!) I now feel like I could try 48 hours or something close to that to start with. It would be great to share the fun with someone!

Hi Ronja!

This thread sent me down a rabbit hole, for certain. So I researched autophagy, and as a result ran across Dr. Jason Fung, and dietdoctor.com and idmprogram.com and the ketogenic diet and I have read so much and learned so much in the past 6 months, thanks to this thread. I hit goal weight, I have practiced intermittent fasting intermittently (ha). Sometimes I'm great at doing daily 18 hour fasts, sometimes not so great. I've never done anything longer than 20 hours though. I do want to work up to 24 hour fasts (once daily eating). Not sure on the longer fasts. I am a firm believer in the health benefits of fasting and autophagy, for sure, though.

Hi EagleRiverDee. I was reading your posts about Intermittent Fasting and Autophagy, and I would like to hear more about your experiences with it, such as how much weight you lost doing it, how often you did it, for example, how many times per week, or did you do it every day for a certain number of days. Also, did you eat low carb while doing it when you did eat. I am interested in it but I have a hard time doing it for longer than 24 hours and for 2 or more days in a row. I have read so much from Dr Fung and I just realized I have his Guide to Fasting on my Kindle, but I'd like to hear actual experiences from someone who has done it and was successful with it.

Originally Posted by Wannabehealthy:
Hi EagleRiverDee. I was reading your posts about Intermittent Fasting and Autophagy, and I would like to hear more about your experiences with it, such as how much weight you lost doing it, how often you did it, for example, how many times per week, or did you do it every day for a certain number of days. Also, did you eat low carb while doing it when you did eat. I am interested in it but I have a hard time doing it for longer than 24 hours and for 2 or more days in a row. I have read so much from Dr Fung and I just realized I have his Guide to Fasting on my Kindle, but I'd like to hear actual experiences from someone who has done it and was successful with it.

My experience began with an illness, I developed a gut dysbiosis that made it painful to eat and I began eating once a day as a result. So the intermittent fasting didn't begin as an intentional thing, but rather as a result of being sick. At first I didn't cut carbs at all and ate quite a few- I ate "healthy" by the prevailing wisdom (meaning it wasn't actually healthy at all, but I really didn't know that at the time) and so my diet contained a lot of carbs just like the food pyramid said it should. Edit to add: I suppose by virtue of only eating once per day I did actually cut carbs- the carbs I'd have eaten in the other two meals. But there was nothing intentional about it. About 5 months after I got sick, we finally figured out I had serious sensitivities to salycilates and histamine foods which shrank my diet - for several weeks I literally ate nothing but lamb, rice and pears. So still high carb because of the rice and pears. My diet expanded from there to more foods but still a lot of carbs at the time. At this point I'd lost about 35 lbs strictly with the addition of IF by virtue of eating one meal daily. I began at this point to transition to a lower carb/paleo/primal type diet. Not keto, but keeping my carbs 150g a day or lower. I knew at this point that <100g a day is the weight loss sweet spot (as per Mark Sisson and his Primal Blueprint model), and on many days I was under 100g. I have lost, in total in the past 24 months, 70 lbs. Half of that with IF, the other half with the addition of low carb. I dabble with a ketogenic diet right now, but I have to be honest and say that I'm still more paleo/primal level with my carbs than I am keto. Some days I'm very low, others I'm not. But I do feel fat adapted, as I can easily fast for 18-20 hours and while I will get hungry I don't get "hangry" or feel dizzy or anything. I do IF about 5 days a week using an 18/6 schedule, essentially skipping breakfast and just having lunch and dinner within 6 hours of each other. I often take weekends off and eat breakfast, but I still strive to keep my carbs to a single meal at dinner so that I only seriously spike my insulin levels once per day. This weekend, however, I continued to IF because I recently found out that not only did I have a high A1C, I also have fatty liver, meaning I'm definitely insulin resistant. I'm sure this is a holdover from before and that I've been recovering from this all along. I might well have been diabetic prior to the weight loss. But my goal is to completely reverse my insulin resistance, to completely reverse my fatty liver, and to drop my A1C below 5.0. (It was 5.7 about 4 months ago so still too high). FWIW, while I know that longer fasts are good, I've never done one longer than 20 hours (barring the time when I was so sick). I prefer to do daily short (16 hr) fasts, personally, at least for now although I do know that it takes a number of hours just to enter autophagy and that the longer you fast the more autophagy you get. I may get to the point where I do the 24 hour fasts routinely. Reading Dr. Jason Fung, he tends to eat a single meal daily on work days and fasts the rest of the time, taking weekends off. I may work my way up to that. If I don't see my A1C drop to the level I want, I'll have more incentive to do the longer fasts. I am very motivated to not allow myself to progress to diabetes. I also do believe in the "leangains" paradigm of IF where IF actually helps with strength training and I want to remain functionally fit as I age (I am now 45) and of course autophagy has health benefits but also there's the vanity aspect of autophagy helping take care of loose skin. I don't have much but I do have a little. It's only evident when I'm in plank pose because my looser skin in my stomach hangs down, but I'd love to get rid of that. :) And I still have a bit of a fat roll on my stomach and the extra padding on my bum and thighs and wouldn't mind shrinking that some too.

I think in your case, maybe do baby steps which is kind of what I did. Start with shorter daily fasts. Even limiting yourself to just 3 meals in a 12 hour window at least is better than people eating 6 meals a day in a 16 hour window the way conventional "wisdom" often recommends these days. But you could then work up to 14 hours a day, then to 16. And I've read some literature that has actually recommended that women not go beyond 16 hours. I don't know if I fully buy it, but I just think if we listen to our bodies we'll figure out what works best for us individually.

Thanks for the very thorough and informative post, EagleRiverDee. I can see that you actually fell into this by accident and found that it was beneficial to you. I do play around with a form of IF. 2 meals a day. I don't eat breakfast as soon as I get up, but closer to 9-11 AM. No lunch, and dinner is around 4 PM. I do however, still struggle with evening snacking, so I don't get as long a fast as I would be if I was only eating my meals. I would like to gradually work up to some longer fasts, like OMAD, or maybe even longer, but I get resistance from DH.

In 2011, I had emergency surgery after which I was allowed no food for 6 days, and when they broke the fast it was with broth, jello and soup for 2 days. That was when I realized that after the struggle of the first 2 days it got so much easier to not have food. But it was medically supervised, with them checking blood work daily, and I don't think I would attempt that on my own. I think if I can control my night time snacking I can start with a 7-8 hour window and decrease it gradually. I am reading Dr Fung's Complete Guide to Fasting. I just read the part where he said you can be very flexible. You don't have to have a set schedule, but just fast when it fits into your life, so I think that's what I will aim for.

Once again, thanks. Your post was good information.