Once more into the breach, dear friends…
As middle age approaches, it seems that the calories become stickier. So a regimen of a proper diet, rest, exercise, etc are important routines to establish and maintain. Intermittent Fasting is a tool you can use to great effect. There are many versions of IF. What have been on is a version of the Warrior Diet. People following this diet under eat or abstain from eating for 20 hours per day, then consume as much food as desired at night. During the 20-hour fasting period, dieters are encouraged to consume small amounts of dairy products, hard-boiled eggs and raw fruits and vegetables, as well as plenty of non-calorie fluids. I generally throw in plenty of (ahem) calorie fluids that pair well with my meal.
Sometimes that’s just not how I roll, and trade the Warrior Diet for the Road Warrior Diet. So despite my success getting down to 148 lbs in March, and going to the gym on the regular, I had been on the road a lot. So after trips to Indianapolis, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Cancun, and Panama I had wound up back where I started from by July.
Yup. But as fun as all that was, it was not without side effects. The Bible (a great work of fiction, by the way) in John 8:13 says “The Truth Will Set You Free”. Sometimes you needn’t look any further than the nearest mirror to find it.
100 days later, I was back where I had started from. On the plus side, had I not fasted back in March, I might have now been an unseemly 180 pounds.
Hello Darkness, my old friend
So on July 8th I began my second week long fast. It seemed a lot easier than my first, because I did not experience the same level or intensity of weakness and fatigue that I experienced on my second fast. Not even by half. The trick is of course to drink lots of water. Some also recommend drinking water with a splash of apple cider vinegar, salt, cream of tartar to help balance your electrolytes. I find this beverage helps, but can generally not drink more than one glass a day and tend to give up on it after a few days.
The first few pounds come off very quickly. This is ‘water weight’. That is, your body is flushing the unnecessary water that is used by insulin to process the sugars your body needs. As you burn the stored carbs and fail to replace them, your body no longer needs the insulin and therefore no longer needs all that water. It’s encouraging to see, but don’t get excited just yet. You haven’t lost a gram of fat so far.
By the 3rd day, you’ve tapped out the remainder of your store of carbs and now start to burn fat. The counter-intuitive thing is that you actually become less hungry. The reason for this is all around you. You’re now doing what evolution designed into you for such a situation: you are working through your store of banked calories, just as nature intended. Except this is a new experience for you as an individual. You’re going to find yourself feeling light headed when you stand up quickly, and less motivated. This is a good time to take extra rest.
I was house sitting for my uncle, and by day 4 walking up the incline to retrieve the mail became ‘walking up the hill’. By day 5, I began to refer to it as ‘leg day’. I started to make ‘calorie choices’. Did I really want to walk down & up two flights of stairs to reheat my coffee? I noticed I never once had a headache during this fast, but standing up as I normally did resulted in becoming momentarily lightheaded, now doubt from my blood-pressure being lowered from the drop in insulin.
Dinners are a rather uncomplicated affair. Unlike so many diets out there, you have nothing to buy, measure or prepare and it is a snap to clean up. I felt I could have gone much further, as I hadn’t become hungry, but my cousin Michael was returning from Italy and I wanted to enjoy dinner with him. I had also made a small but important mistake on this, my second fast. Since I hadn’t had a final bowel movement after commencing my fast, I had become aware that my colon wasn’t free of all of its contents. When I mixed the apple cider solution, there wasn’t any cream of tartar, which can act as a laxative. Lesson learned.
I broke my fast with a can of beef broth (Note the fork, for irony). Not the best thing, to be sure but I cannot describe how amazing it tasted. I would certainly have preferred an organic veggie broth, but wasn’t about to go to the store. Many people swear by bone broth for many very good reasons, but I can’t abide the taste – even after having nothing to eat for 7 days. A few hours later, I had an apple. How did it taste? The look on my face says it all.
Even though my fast was officially over 7 days and 22 hours later, the weight loss continued into the few day, with my final weight being 144.2 pounds. 3.8 pounds less than my last fast. This was definitely easier than my last fast, and I think being alone helped, but the social pressures to eat when you yourself aren’t hungry can be stronger than hunger itself. I learned a few more things this time. I learned that fat comes off your body as a whole and that my stomach wasn’t apparently the only place I’ve been storing it. Seems my butt has a bit of insulation as well. The other lessons are to prepare for the obvious side effects. You’re going to need to evacuate your bowls. You’re going to be fatigued. You’re going to need to drink a lot of water, plain tea, black coffee. You’re going to need to break your fast gently. It’s a short list, but missing a step might leave you short of your ultimate goal.
I am posting this after completing a 5 day fast, joined once again by my Bestie. This puts my total days of water fasting for the year at 35, or about 14%. Again, I broke this fast for no other reason than peer pressure. It was her third and longest fast of 5 days. And the side effects of not eating were far less acute. I can honestly say that I never lost motivation. I’m already planning for another week fast for September.
Fasting forces your body to rely on its energy stores to sustain normal function.
Your body’s first store of choice is glucose, which is mostly found as glycogen in your liver and muscles.
Once your glycogen is depleted, which generally occurs after 24–48 hours, your body starts using muscle protein and fat for energy (1).
Using large amounts of fat as a fuel source produces by-products called ketones, which your body and brain can use as a source of energy (1).
Interestingly, one particular ketone — beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) — was observed to benefit the immune system.
In fact, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine observed that exposing human immune cells to BHB in amounts you’d expect to find in the body following 2 days of fasting resulted in a reduced inflammatory response (2).
Furthermore, recent research on mice and humans showed that fasting for 48–72 hours may also promote the recycling of damaged immune cells, allowing for the regeneration of healthy ones (3).
Highgarden 
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