by Siim Land
If you want to establish a ketogenic state faster, then you would want to deplete your liver glycogen stores to promote the production of ketone bodies. That’s why it’s a good idea to make your last meal before fasting low carb. By the next day, you’ll be in a semi-fasted state already with ketones running through your veins. Start the day with a long walk and you’re already there.
The most difficult part of any extended fast is the first 24 hours. Because your body hasn’t fully switched over into a fasted state, you may experience more hunger and tiredness. This can make it difficult to fall asleep in the evening. However, if you make it through the first night you’re off to the races and it gets a whole lot easier. Some tips for surviving the first night would be to drink a small cup of water with 1 tsp of ACV before going to bed. This will reduce hunger and lowers your blood sugar in the morning.
PRO TIP: If you want to ramp up your metabolism and raise body temperature, then you can have 1/2 tsp of Cayenne pepper in your water. This will heat up your body and can stave off hunger. It won’t break a fast and the capsaicin in Cayenne pepper actually stimulates autophagy.
Day Two - Staying Active
In the morning of day two, you’ll probably feel slightly hungry but not to the point of excruciating pain.
There is no difference in hunger levels between fasting for 20 hours or 5 days – your hunger levels stay the same and you won’t get increasingly more hungry the longer you fast.
Once your body begins to show the first signs of ketosis, it starts to use its own stored fat for fuel, which gives plenty of energy to the brain and muscles. Your mental acuity and alertness will actually increase because of elevated cortisol and adrenaline as well.
While fasting for longer periods of time, it’s important to stay active and keep moving. You don’t want your body to start wasting away your muscle tissue just because of inactivity. It’s a good idea to either do a few sets of push-ups or use resistance bands to keep the stimulus active.
When I’m fasting, I don’t sit on the couch or something. On that particular 5-day fast, I averaged about 8-10 km of walking a day, which is twice the amount people walk even when they’re eating enough calories.
Walking is also a great way to reduce hunger. My hypothesis is that because you’ll be converting more body fat into energy, you’ll feel as if you’ve consumed some actual calories because on a metabolic level that’s exactly what happens. Moving around will also get your mind out of its own rut by exposing yourself to fresh air and environmental stimuli.
The problem is that although you may be this courageous fasting warrior who’s willing to go hungry for several days in a row, the people around you don’t want to hear anything about it. If the average person can’t even skip their breakfast or morning coffee, then we shouldn’t even mention not eating for 3-5 days.
It’s true that social pressures and environmental temptations can make a novice faster break very easily. They go to the mall -> they smell fresh doughnuts -> they get the cravings -> they instantly give in to the temptation and break their fast. Afterward, they’ll get a sugar crash that makes them feel exhausted and they’ll start loathing themselves…
How do you deal with other people cooking food around you and eating right in front of your eyes? This is purely a matter of willpower and awareness.
First, you have to realize that the reason you get the cravings to eat something is purely due to you being exposed to that particular sensory stimulation (the aroma of doughnuts, the sizzling sound of steak, the pleasurable looks of your peers enjoying their food).
Secondly, once you recognize that you’ve been tricked into craving food, then you have the opportunity to manifest your willpower. The key is to start associating more pleasure with staying indomitable and to associate pain with giving in. This way you’ll feel better about yourself if you do manage to hold your discipline.
Saying no to temptations and cravings is a skill as well as a muscle that gets stronger the more you test it. Initially, if your fat-adaptation is in its infancy, you may find it more difficult but eventually you should reach expertise that resembles putting pieces of meat in front of hungry wolves but still not giving in. If you’re able to stare at other people eating birthday cake right in front of your eyes and still continue to fast, then you’re truly an expert in self-control.
It’s much easier to fall asleep at day two than it is during your first night because you’ve got more used to fasting.
Day Three - Things Are Starting to Get Good
After day two, it’s much easier to fast as well because you should be in deep ketosis. My daily liquid consumption usually looks something like this:
Rinse my mouth with salt water after waking up and drink a cup of water with a pinch of sea salt.
During the day, 1 cup of water with ½ tsp of baking soda, 1-2 tsp of ACV, drank over the course of 2 hours.
When I feel thirsty, I sip on some regular water.
At noon, I drink 1-2 cups of coffee.
In the afternoon, I drink a cup of green tea with a pinch of sea salt.
If I’m feeling hungry in the evening, I’ll make a cup of decaf coffee.
In the evening, I drink a cup of water with 1 tsp of ACV and ½ tsp of sea salt.
In total, this will add up to 5-8 cups of liquids a day and about 2000-3000 mg-s of sodium, depending on the day.
It’s not actually a good idea to be drinking a lot of water while fasting because it’ll make you urinate more thus excreting more electrolytes. You’ll feel generally better with sipping on small amounts of liquids and then refilling yourself occasionally rather than force-feeding more water than you need.
The key is to pay attention to your hydration levels by monitoring the color of your urine and the context of your saliva.
If your urine is crystal clear and you’re going to the bathroom every hour, then you’re edging on the side of overhydration and should dial down your liquid consumption.
If your urine is dark yellow, brown, purple, or pure dark, then you’re very dehydrated and have to find something to drink.
If your mouth is all dry and lips cracked, then you’re starting to get dehydrated and should get a few sips of water to drink.
Figure 91 Hydration Chart
Short periods of mild dehydration can be good for the body by triggering a hormetic response. Dry fasting for several days is a class of its own and should never be done without prior experience but it can boost the effectiveness of the fast quite a bit if you follow it up with proper re-hydration.
Dry Fasting
Dehydration can inhibit mTOR and stimulate more autophagy because the body is forced to obtain the water it needs from other cells[651]. During the entire time, you’ll still keep urinating and excreting liquids as if you were drinking water.
There’s a difference between a soft and a hard dry fast.
Soft dry fast allows you to come into contact with water on your skin such as showering or mouth hygiene
Hard dry fast limits all contact with hydrogen whether through the air, skin care products, or fumes.
This is an important differentiation because while dry fasting, your body starts searching for more water and the pores of your skin become more susceptible to absorbing water.
That’s why hard dry fasting is more effective than soft dry fasting but this can’t be achieved entirely if you live in a rural environment. The best place to do dry fasting is somewhere in nature with clean air and to not allow your skin to absorb water while showering, taking a swim or brushing your teeth.
Dry fasting is an advanced version of intermittent fasting and it shouldn’t be tried without any prior experience with extended water fasting. Prolonged periods of dehydration may become dangerous to your health and cause long-term damage. So, how to do it safely?
To prevent dangerous dehydration, you’d want to drink adequate amounts of water, sodium, and vegetables the day before to fill up your mineral stores.
During the day, don’t consume any liquids from water, tea, coffee, or anything else. It’d be better to avoid strenuous physical activities as well to prevent muscle cramps. You don’t want to expose yourself to too much heat either like with saunas, baths, or steam rooms.
If you’re dry fasting only during the day then you can „break the dehydration period“ with a glass of salted water in the evening. Then I’d continue with more lemon juice water and apple cider vinegar. After that, you can eat a low glycemic meal that maintains stable blood sugar levels and insulin.
If you’re dry fasting for longer than 24 hours, then you would simply go to bed without eating or drinking anything. In that case, you’d have to be cautious and take full responsibility for your decisions. Again – do your research and prepare yourself in advance.
At first, it may sound crazy like: “Really?!? First no food and now no water?” It’s true that anything in excess can be harmful. However, the human body has developed many of these adaptive mechanisms like hormesis and AMPK for dealing with periods of deprivation and stress.
If you’re not that extreme as to do dry fasting, then you should still try out regular intermittent fasting. In fact, you can gain about 80% of the results with just daily IF. Back to my 5-day fast story.
Day Four - Things Getting Beautiful
By day four you should be nearing the 100-hour mark of fasting. This is a significant milestone both in terms of psychological achievement as well as the physiological state.
It can be useful to measure your blood glucose and ketones to see where you lie. Ketosis itself begins around 0.5 mmol-s and within 4 days of fasting you can expect to fall somewhere between 2.0-5.0 mmol-s. If you hit numbers above 6.0-7.0 and you’re worried about ketoacidosis, then instead of bailing halfway through go for a long walk or exercise.
The reason you register so many ketones has to do with not burning them for energy and thus keeping them in the bloodstream for longer. That’s why you also have to look at your blood glucose. Generally, less glucose entails more ketones, unless you’re borderlining ketoacidosis. If your ketones and glucose both stay high for way too long, then consider breaking the fast or consult a physician.
By day four fasting also becomes the routine. You’ve gotten quite used to not eating that it has also escaped your focus of attention. Although you may start thinking about what you’ll break your fast with, the sensory temptations from your environment become less effective and you may begin to actually enjoy fasting.
Being in a fasted state is a unique and profound experience. You’re not feeling particularly hungry or tired but still somewhat limited in energy. It’s a blissful state where you can enjoy the clarity of mind and heart – free from cravings, free from attachment to food or the desire to consume something mindlessly.
Fasting not only resets your taste buds from the imprisonment of processed food but also liberates your mind from being dependent on certain types of food that you tend to crave the most. Even the healthy kind.
Not eating for several days actually changes your relationship with food for the better. You can begin to appreciate the absence of food as you know that it makes you appreciate the presence of food afterward even more. It’s like a way of reminding yourself how grateful you can be for having access to your pantry and fridge at all times.
Fasting also has a spiritual component – I feel like being in this semi-transcendental state where I’m not being influenced by any attachment. To put it bluntly, it feels like I’m about to transcend the primordial soup of existence and float around in a different dimension of mind and spirit.
By the end of day four, I had actually returned from my travels and was at home. I could’ve easily stopped right then and there as I had already accomplished quite a lot by fasting for over 100 hours.
When I arrived home it was already 7 PM and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of properly breaking a fast. It’s important to follow the right procedure when stopping fasting as your gut needs some time to get used to food again. Instead of randomly eating whatever and staying up all night eating, I wanted to savor the moment by doing everything in the correct manner. Given I’d already fasted for 4 days, what difference would it make to continue on for another day?
Day Five - Preparing for the One Meal to Rule Them All
That’s why I decided to change my initial 4-day fast into a 5-day one. I was already in a deep fasted state and past the most difficult part. It was much easier for me to continue until day 5 and really reap the benefits of stem cells.
Fasting is great for purifying your body and mind but it can’t be done indefinitely. It’s not a get out of jail free card either with which you can excuse yourself into binging.
If you’re already eating a very clean diet with a ton of autophagic compounds, medicinal herbs, and staying in a slight caloric deficit, then you’re already getting most of the health benefits of longer fasts. The difference is that with strict fasting you’ll ramp up autophagy and other longevity pathways even more.
The morning routine was the same – ACV with baking soda and water, some coffee at noon, and smalls sips of water throughout the day. Funny enough, I actually had to go for number 2 in the bathroom. It wasn't a massive dump but it was surprising that I still had some excrements after 5 days. But let's not analyze this much longer.
We talked about how to break a fast in the previous chapter but generally, you want to start off with easily digestible liquids like hot lemon water, bone broth, and stews. After waiting about 30 minutes, you move on with some fermented foods and steamed vegetables. The first protein you’d consume should be easy on digestion like eggs or fish. Too much meat can put unwanted stress on the gut.
Day Six - The Aftermath
On day 2 of eating again, you should eat slightly above your maintenance as to nourish the body and restore its energy. A small surplus of 200 calories is more than enough to rev up your metabolism and thyroid again.
What you do on day 3 of eating again depends on your body composition and goals.
If you’re overweight and have more than 20 pounds to lose, then you can immediately go for another extended fast for 3-5 days. Your body fat is food and the second fast will be that much easier.
If you’re already lean and around 10% body fat, then you can swap over to the one meal a day or warrior diet with a daily intermittent fasting window of 16-22 hours fasted. Physically very active people can adopt targeted IF. Your next extended fast of 3-5 days for longevity-boosting reasons should be in a few months.
Whatever goals you have, you don’t need to be eating any more than 2 meals a day. The 16-8 fasting schedule is a perfect sweet spot for daily use. I even think it should be the minimum time window everyone should fast for every day.
Fasting is also a great tool for overcoming any form of addictions, whether that be sugar, processed food, ice cream, alcohol, coffee, or just eating in general.
After day 3, I simply lost all attachments to everything – it was indeed like I was transcending the primordial soup of existence because I was in such a blissful state. I had low levels of energy and I carried out this transient feeling of an empty stomach but other than that I could’ve easily dropped dead at that spot and not give a damn. It was like everything was okay – it was okay that I hadn’t eaten in days, it was okay that I didn’t get to work out, it was okay that I didn’t get to make more content online, it was okay that I felt cold and tired.
I think fasting shouldn’t be done just for healing your body but for also healing your mind. It’s important to „fast“ from everything you’re attached to whether that be social media, sex, alcohol, tobacco, central heating, entertainment, and even water, just so you could become independent of those things. Just so you could remain unaffected by their absence and appreciate their presence. That’s why I’m definitely going to practice daily intermittent fasting as well as implement these longer 3-5 day fasts a couple times per year.
So, my question to you is: W
hen will you have your next long fast? What's the longest you've actually gone without food? Have you actually abstained from eating any longer than a day?
Whatever the case may be, fasting can be used as a very effective tool for improving body composition and health. It is one of the easiest miracle drugs that will heal your body and mind.
Before you start practicing these longer fasts, you have to come to terms with your medical condition and consult your physician first. All the responsibility is on you and not your doctor, your parents, not me, or your cat - everything is on your shoulders.
Chapter XX
When Not to Fast
“Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.”
David Livingstone
When you first hear about intermittent fasting, then the first questions that may arise have to do with how to actually do it or what the long-term effects may be. By now you may agree that fasting is one of the most powerful health interventions and disease prevention methods there is.
However, there are some situations when it’s not a good idea to fast. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop time-restricted feeding or fasting altogether. You can simply make some minor adjustments and in so doing maintain both the health benefits of fasting as well as the metabolic flexibility.
Although fasting heals the body, it’s still a catabolic stressor that can become too stimulating. It’s a hormetic stressor that has a dose-specific effect on your metabolism and endocrine system.
Fasting raises certain stress hormones in the body such as cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine that will heighten your awareness and mental clarity. Chronically elevated levels of these stress hormones may promote fat gain, low thyroid, exhaustion, and adrenal fatigue.