Fasting for Health

 Fasting is a word that used to cause me unease. I grew up with a family obsessed with being thin and a whole host of eating disorders and bad relationships with food because of it. I was always subjected to those underhanded compliments or outright insults because I ate what I liked and was a little heavier and thicker than they were. However, until my late 20s, I always had a healthy BMI. I’ve gone into this before, but in summary, taking mood stabilizers numbed me and all I did was sleep and eat for nearly a year and put on a shocking 80 lbs in doing so. Needless to say, I was pretty skeptical of doctors and medication for a long time after that as well.

I’ve also said this before, but don’t be afraid of anyone in a position to help you; just be prepared to advocate for your own problems and solutions. Don’t do their job for them, just make sure to suggest things if they don’t arrive there first. Respect their years of expertise but also remember you’re the foremost expert of your symptoms and concerns. You’re not going to make them your best ally if you’re overriding their training. 

That was a little aside but the main idea is this; what made fasting a viable option for me. I’ve spent the past seven months rigorously attempting to lose weight and be healthier in general, which I’ve also gone into the failures and frustrations in previous posts. I exercised to the point of pain and exhaustion, ate strictly in terms of calories and macros and types of food, but I was constantly fluctuating between 208-212 lbs no matter what I did. For a woman of my age and height, this amounts to being stuck with, in no uncertain terms, obesity. I teeter on the edge of overweight at 185 so this isn’t even close to ‘a little’ obese.

To say I haven’t made any strides wouldn’t be true. I’ve clearly built muscle and flexibility and areas like my face, shoulders, lower arms and stomach have shrunk a bit. However, my upper legs and upper arms, where I tend to hold most of my weight, haven’t budged at all. I do have better energy and moods but I still have pretty low days that are much rarer when I’m at my healthiest.

So I researched fasting. You’ll get a lot of mixed info, from both regular fasters and even medical doctors. However, I really dug into possible side effects, positive and negative, and came away with a renewed attitude towards the fasting process. First and foremost, I looked into accelerated autophagy, a process through which, once your body has depleted glucose and is burning more fat, your growth cells begin to speed up and streamline your immune system, getting rid of old, dead or inefficient cells and replacing them with new ones. This can also attribute to anti-aging. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s actually quite difficult to reach this stage; you can get there between 24-48 hours of fasting but studies seem to lean towards its peak being between the 48-72 hour mark. The second day of fasting is always a real test in discipline, even when you’re being safe and keeping your electrolytes up…

So reaching these burn stages between 24 and 72 are ideal. There are no real advantages I’ve seen to doing more than a 3 day fast and beyond that, it is highly suggested it be medically supervised. There are some pretty bad side effects and they are akin to what is termed ‘keto flu’ if you want to look at them. It’s a rather varied list like cramps, aches, decreased energy, diarrhea, etc. Long term or excessive fasting can lead to the opposite of good health; increased risk of diabetes, lowered immunity, kidney diseases, cardiovascular diseases and starvation complications. This is why long term frequent fasting is advised against when you’re not supervised or at the very least, testing your blood and vitals.

What really got me curious, more so than autophagy (which they’re really looking into as a possible treatment for chemo patients), are the improvements to gut health, hormonal levels and digestive issues, all of which really seem to be my setbacks in losing weight. I also like the idea of relaxing on tracking food intake for two days every week and feeling less guilty when I want to eat more.

You do need to go easy when breaking fasts of 36 hours or longer though. Refeeding  syndrome is a possibly deadly issue where you shock your system by eating too much too fast after your digestive system has slowed down or shut down once it’s used to not getting solid foods. I haven’t found this to be an issue personally. I’ve had issues like diarrhea and constipation while I’ve been adjusting but these have been expected and very temporary.

At this point, I’ve done a 3 day fast, a couple 20-24 hr fasts, and a couple full 36 hour fasts. It gets easier but you will constantly think about food if you don’t stay distracted. You will notice just how many food commercials are on TV (if you don’t pay for ad-free services). However, I’m happy to say that my weight currently sits between 204 and 206 now so it is currently dropping again. I was not expecting huge losses and I never wanted that to happen. There are a lot of bad side effects that come with dropping weight too fast and I definitely don’t want them. It’s not a huge health concern to do so so I won’t. I’m not at risk for diabetes at this time and my weight isn’t disabling. 

I will continue to fast for 36 hours twice a week for the next month at least. If the results and side effects are not worrisome, I may continue to do this for six months to a year. Every three months I’d like to do a full three days and will not be fasting at all the remainder of that week. I have also seen advice not to fast during menstrual periods, as it can cause shedding and toxicity issues as well as intensified cramps.

I have been very careful in my research since fasting is starving yourself, no matter how you word it. However, I am going to be very careful with duration, my weight loss and any symptoms I don’t like along the way. This can only be for the sake of health and I must be aware of any dysphoria or unhealthy body image perceptions. Anorexia and bulemia are NOT options here. There may be some maintenance fasting, for autophagy or weight maintenance, beyond this regimen but I am not taking this lightly. I am aware that, having tried everything, this is simply the last and safest resort towards sustainable results.

So I’m optimistic. I will be supplementing electrolyte nutrients (also discussed before) as well. I have no desire for a ‘pure’ water fast. Those just aren’t medically sound, especially with my health and hormonal issues. I feel like I’ve certainly researched enough to handle this with confidence and care and look forward to seeing where this goes.

Phases and Setbacks

 I’ve gone into details before about my struggles with becoming healthier. Over the past six months, I binged on exercise and dieted on healthy foods, carefully tracked. I lost 12 pounds in the first two months, then nothing. I bounced between 208 and 212 for four or five months. There was no way that more exercise or less food was healthier and it wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle change to do either so I was stuck. I never had luck with intermittent fasting or macros specific dieting either so I’ve looked into… scarier alternatives.

Fasting, which is essentially controlled starvation, is one of those alternatives. It’s always sounded like a one way trip to an eating disorder and it’s territory full of unhealthy assumptions and ‘clean’ elitists/purists. I’d tried an extended water fast in the past and it was torture. Headaches, hunger, no energy, it was like voluntarily giving myself a bad cold. However, I’ve looked into what sort of fasting is medically supervised and the key difference is that they push for the balance of electrolytes.

To my understanding, this involves four key elements; sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium. Having hard tap water (filtered with carbon but still hard), calcium deficiency is never a problem and also why I never supplement it, fasting or not. Sodium was a trickier exploration. If you overdo it, take too much too fast… there will be diarrhea. Drinking salt water is torture for me, no matter how little you add, it’s never diluted enough. I’m this case, I opted for the suggestion of bouillon. Purists might balk at it since ANY calories ‘break a fast’ but then again so does anything but water. They argue about discipline but for a great deal of people interesting in positive fasting benefits, bro-ing it out over raw-dogging the water is pointless. Only spiritual fasting seems to impose the self-torture of starvation. You can achieve accelerated autophagy approaching it more reasonably. Bouillon will not spike you out of a fast and will contribute to maintaining energy and well-being throughout. I’ve read countless medical articles on this (and not the ones trying to sell their fasting formulas; you can never trust a site trying to sell anything, as they will embellish on the truth).

Which leaves magnesium and potassium, which boost each other and regulate sodium intake better. Again, you have to look at the kinds of sodium and magnesium that might work best for you since the ways they are bound seem to alter their benefits and absorption. I opted for magnesium malate and potassium citrate.

Insofar, I did a three day fast, and two 24 hour ones. I set out to do 36 hours but I’ve been more wary about looking for symptoms that they aren’t beneficial to continue. I did the 3 day fast to know what I was getting into and it made me certain those will be rarer. I’m going to aim for two 24 or 36 hour fasts a week. It’s lumped with intermittent fasting as an option but I feel like it takes the guesswork out of calorie counting for that period of time, which is a relief. At first, I was ravenous coming off of a fast, but over the past two weeks, it’s become more manageable. I am welcoming healthier foods into my diet naturally rather than trashing the pantry and inserting nothing but rabbit food. The fasts give me more wiggle room to indulge, not right away but the day after at least.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but it’s motivated me to keep up with daily workouts and has helped with my physical progress and pain levels. I’m not getting huge results with weight loss but I was 209 pounds at my doctor's visit a week ago and 205 this morning. I haven’t seen 205 yet so this is a promising low.

I was miserable all the time on a restrictive diet and I think that stress was only gripping onto my weight. This sort of fasting is giving me both careful discipline and a break from the tracking and restricting. I have more freedom to eat and it becomes easier to make better choices with that freedom. I can essentially fast to reset my digestive system and cell regeneration.

It may or may not help with losing weight. I’m not going to go to more drastic or miserable measures to do it. I just want to be healthier, to have better control of my mind and body. It is always a balance though. It is too easy for these desires to become obsessions, to become controlled by the need for discipline and lose sight of the goals for health. I carefully track my fasts. I’m not going to keep extending them to see how far I can push when it becomes easier. I will not exceed 2 36 hour fasts a week, with maybe a 3 day fast every few months (and not doing the shorter fasts at all that week). 

It’s the benefits of fat burning states and autophagy I am most interested in. I’m not interested in super low-carb diets to upkeep ketosis. I’ve seen too many studies where ketosis heightens the chance of diabetes and other chronic conditions. If you’re not getting your blood tested frequently with these things, you’re pulling some big risks. Which is why I opted for short fasts that I give myself room to bail on. In six months, I’ll be getting a check up with my doctor to have bloodwork so I don’t want to see any startling negative changes from overdoing it unsupervised.

I just wanted to make a change that might reduce stress and achieve better results. What worked before doesn’t work now. I exercised intensely daily and ate very little. I dropped weight fast and gained muscle but it was too miserable to maintain and I completely abandoned it altogether. Trying to do it that way again because it ‘worked’ hit me with the cold reality that I’m older, my hormones are different and it won’t work like that anymore. 

So I’m going to give this reset concept a go for a few months. I do yoga stretches daily as well as some cardio boxing or weight exercises. I still exercise but more intuitively than habitually. I see and feel improvements that don’t push me to injury and setbacks. I’m regaining energy, mobility and better moods. As long as these positives remain, I know I’m on the right track.

I know this isn’t the most interesting news, but I’m very certain that my creativity will stay blocked until I learn to balance it with good health practices. I won’t be able to focus on that aspect of myself when I’m physically miserable. Mentally, I check out too. I keep hoping there will be a triumphant return to my creative productivity but that will require looking after my physical health. You need energy, stamina and motivation to be creative and I’ve been sorely depleted by these two challenging years. It will take some time to get that back and I can’t force that. Stress hormones don’t reward you when you get too pushy. They’ll just shut you down.

So here’s to finding that balance again. Small doses of all the right things. We’ll see.