As someone with extensive experience fasting, some thoughts.<p>> My goal is to get into Ketosis before the water fast begins.<p>This is great, it's much easier to start a fast when you're in ketosis.<p>> I keep my water intake high during the week, attempting to drink between 4-7 litres of water per day.<p>This is way WAY too much water, especially if you're drinking anything on top of it. Shoot for 2.5 to 3.5 liters a day maximum. If you do this for any prolonged period of time, or multiple weeks in a row, you're going to have issues.<p>> This is why the fasting once per week doesn't work for me. I think it is just repetitive torture every week with minimal fat burning and quite a disruption to normal socializing.<p>Yeah, that's because you're doing it wrong. I'm on week 4 of 5/2 (fasting/eating) and it's sustainable. So long as I don't eat pure junk on my 2 days, it's not even that bad for the first 24 hours. I have one friend who maintained this schedule for a year and a half, and another who's been at 96+ hour fasts for over a year now.<p>> Cooking whilst mid-fast is torture<p>I didn't find that to be the case. I cooked for my girlfriend plenty on my 60 day fast. Wasn't that big of a deal. Didn't start until after the 2nd week though, so that may have something to do with it. I guess I can see it on shorter fasts if you're not adapted though.<p>> "Threw some salt in my water, feel a fair bit better after that might do this once a day."<p>Yeah... this individual and I need to have a talk about that. This guy says he's 75kg, drinking 4 to 7kg of water a day, for 3 to 5 days, without _ANY_ salt to speak of. The average human is 55 to 60% water by weight. Do you have any idea how hard that is on your kidneys? Or what it does to your salinity levels?
If you are healthy with all your organs intact (e.g. - you did not have an appendectomy, any part of your digestive system shortened), you can easily do longer fasts - 10 or even 20 days.<p>Appetite generally goes away at day 2 or 3, so day 7 is usually easier than day 2. Highly recommended for physical and mental benefits, from my experience.<p>(This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor and don't play one on the internet. For all you know, I might be a dog).
This is awful advice:<p>1. As the author suggests, a lot of that weight loss is just water. It'll come straight back again.<p>2. Getting into ketosis can take more than a day. Hell your body might even still be processing the carbs for quite a while as your food makes its way slowly around your digestive system.<p>3. 7 liters of water is tonnes. You risk flushing out your minerals. It's really not recommended. Adding some salt isn't enough.<p>4. Zero calories vs low calories when doing a low-carb diet doesn't really make a difference, your limitation is just around how much body fat your body can convert to useful energy when you need it.<p>5. When your body runs out of body fat it can easily source, it starts eating muscle. That's not just your arms and legs, that's things like your heart.<p>6. If you're not eating your body tries to convert whatever it can get into food. That would include the multi-vitamins he takes.<p>7. When you come out of ketosis, you should do it slowly. Transition from a high fat, low carb, small protein to increasingly more carbs and proteins. Grabbing a take-out or ribs and ice cream defeats the point.<p>8. Fasting only really works over short periods. When your body realizes something is wrong your survival mechanisms kick in, you go into starvation mode. Your metabolism drops and you start conserving energy rather than burning it.<p>To lose 1kg, all this guy has to do is make one small adjustment to his daily routine. One less sugar in his coffee, one less take-out a month, a little more cardio, etc.
You might find this old reddi post interesting.<p>Really seems like a lot of the benefits of calorie restriction and fasting may come from the fact consuming food produces damaging by-products, note the way you cook the food strongly influences how much of these by products come in the food itself, but your body also produces the. AGE's = Glycation products.<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/iowh0d/dietary_age_products_impact_insulin_resistance/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/iowh0d/dietary_a...</a>
I plan to do a 3-day fast twice a year from now on, already did the first one in June. The main problem for me is that these long fasts take a significant toll on your muscles. After the first one, I noticed that I had lost strength <i>and</i> endurance. Basically you'll have to spend a few weeks training only to get to the level you were at before the fast.
While fasting can be very beneficial, be careful if you're going to do it for long periods. A few days is ok but I wouldn't recommend anyone fasting longer without supervision.<p>David Blaine almost dies after 44 days of fasting. Not because of the fasting but because of how they fed him afterwards. He also say he hasn't recovered and his body sometimes acts weird. There's a clip of him talking about this on Joe Rogan Podcast.
I did a 35 days water fast in July, I lost 12 kilos (from ~70 to 58) and then gained them back as I hit the gym again.<p>You can see the chart here.<p><a href="https://i.ibb.co/rydPXDR/Screen-Shot-2020-10-22-at-3-07-52-PM.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.ibb.co/rydPXDR/Screen-Shot-2020-10-22-at-3-07-52-P...</a><p>The top chart is weight and the one below is fat mass in kilos.<p>It was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life.
On day 2, add about 100ml of clarified butter or as we call it Ghee. Ketosis kicks in much faster, helps you stay strong without any hunger pangs as Ghee will usually act as a lubricant and cleanser for your inner organs. It is also all Fat and there is tonne of literature on benefits of ghee in Indian Vedas.