Fasting

Does anyone here regularly fast, ie deliberately go without food for a period of time? I've read about fasting and listened to people who do it. There appear to be a large number of health benefits fasting. One benefit I heard about is the body well fed is in a continual building mode on the cellular level while a body without food goes into a maintenance mode.

I think I will go for a fast this weekend, try to go for Saturday without food. I'll just drink water.

Just remember that the first thing the body eats when its hungry is muscle, including your heart.

I occasionally skip or have a very light dinner.

Yes beer into an empty stomach........

I think evlPanda is right, muscle is eaten into for a time before fat is consumed exclusively as an energy source. Its the time the body switched from using glucose to another sugar for energy.

The way the human body deals with fasting is fascinating, as though fasting is a natural human condition which it probably is.

When I was a kid I do remember going hungry, not that my family was poor or anything like that. I might be out on the farm doing stuff and there was nothing around to eat. However I don't recall ever being really hungry for a very long time. Its probably not very healthy to have food digesting all the time.

I'll try to give it a go this weekend. Hopefully this is not one of these events I keep putting off.

Going without food for 24 hours wouldn't do any harm to a reasonably healthy person. I have fasted a number of times. One day isn't a long time to fast but you can expect to feel pretty miserable, especially if you're not used to it. You will feel good afterwards though.
I can't be bothered looking up articles to try and prove it but I believe fasting is a good way to detox.

For weight loss it may not benefit you, like dieting the body interprets this as a famine type situation and tried to hold onto body mass after the dieting or fasting ends. You are conditioning the body for potential famines so it tries to hold onto fat or whatever resisting weight loss.
Funny how different people's bodies react to lack of food, if my wife has not eaten in a few hours she will start to get crabby and knows she has to get some food in her, myself I can do hard physical labor all day long while eating nothing, I just don't get hungry much, my father is the same way. They say the way the body reacts like this (not sure which way?) is related to the diabetes gene.

A few months ago I experimented with a fast for five days.
Knowing about how the body will interpret not being fed food, it'll go into conserving mode, I did a modified fasting.

Every day I would have a no carb protein drink, mixed with water, once in the morning and once at night.
I exercised every morning to keep the muscles stimulated, hopefully preventing them being used as body food.

What I found was that after the first day I had slightly increased energy, each day got easier not eating and my energy levels increased quite a lot over the five days, my mood was great, I felt great.

The bonus was not having to do a crap every day, so liberating!

The fast was spoiled by having to attend a family birthday dinner, it's hard fasting when so much social interaction revolves around food.

The main thing I took away from it all was that if you are continually feeding your face, you're going to run rough, like a car with a carby running too rich, too much fuel is no good.

I find that eating healthy for the most part and letting the tank run dry in between meals gives your body the chance to properly process and efficiently use what you are putting into it.

This is an interesting read. Sounds like another diet fad to me. but that is my opinion.


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We are meant to eat daily, thats why nature created that feeling you get in your gut telling you its time to eat. That hunger feeling is there for a reason.
Its then up to you to eat what your body needs, fruit,veg,some dairy,meat,water. etc. Not fast food deep fried poo,,,,well, not for every meal anyway.


Regular descent healthy meals is what your body wants/needs, not starvation trendy cool fasting.

What do you wish to gain from this?

Try prunes. They're the fastest food I know.