Water Fasting

[Michelle Marie]

That's good it will be a quick procedure and short fast, Bill. . It's great you're avoiding anti-biotics and pain killers. You'll do fine! It may seem easy since you've already done longer fasts.

Flyswim, it's funny that they speak of autophagy being a 'natural' regenerative process, then want to change (boost) it with drugs. I'll just stay natural and just fast. Fasting is one way of avoiding (and eliminating) drugs. Isn't that the point?!?


Happy Fasting!

MM

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Flyswim (here)

Apparently I'll be prescribed antibiotics and painkillers, but I won't take those, either. I'd be on liquid food only for a few days, so the solution is simple: another fast, this time specifically to support rapid healing of the wound, to detox quickly from the anesthetic, and to get back to normal immediately.

So it'll be a neat little experiment. Not looking forward to it all that much! But the experience will be very interesting.

Firstly, OUCH! Secondly, Good Luck! Thirdly, Yes !

Ouch indeed! But all good here. The guy (who was young, skilled, bilingual and very pleasant) really had to battle to get the thing out. I was somehow resistant to the anesthetic, so he had to inject me something like 6-8 times before I stopped feeling it. It was meant to take 10 mins (simple, he'd predicted), but it ended up taking 45. OMG.

I was ordered to take antibiotics and painkillers for a week, but I'm not doing that. I'm taking colloidal silver and peppermint oil with a ton of water. It's healing very quickly, and there's no pain. So it's all fine. I get the stitches out on Thursday, and I'm expecting him to be impressed.

I'll end the fast tomorrow morning, job done. It'll have been just 3 days, all that was needed.

[Michelle Marie]

Wow! Sorry for the OUCH!!

Glad it's over and healing is happening quickly.

Going to the dentist is my least favorite activity. I've had some painful and horrible experiences there.

Good choices for good health.


MM

[Bill Ryan]

Reporting an interesting experience I had yesterday, Day 3 of the short fast I did after I had my tooth extracted.

This is about what in several previous posts I've been calling healthy minimum weight.

This has to be a valid medical concept (and an important one!), but I've not yet found it described as such, that clearly, anywhere.

What follows below is purely my own thinking.

This is all related to fasting because as far as I can understand, there has to be a lower threshold of weight where fasting is no longer healthy or beneficial.

Assuming this is true, that's going to vary from person to person, of course: For a tall, muscular male athlete, it might be 180 lbs. For a lithe young woman, it might be 100 lbs.

It's likely to depend on gender, body type, muscularity, height, and possibly age.

And there'll be a maximum healthy weight, as well. Ideally, our weight will vary between the two healthy boundaries. Here's an imaginary graph over time, maybe a few months:



The difference between maximum and minimum may be something like 10% of the median (the midway point). That's purely my rough guess.

This will also vary from person to person. For the lithe young woman, the 'bandwidth' (the difference between max and min) may be ~12 lbs. For the tall muscular male athlete, the difference may be ~25 lbs.

That in turn may determine mow long a fast one can safely do. If someone starts ABOVE their maximum healthy weight (i.e. they're a little on the heavy side right now, and have a bit of fat to burn), then they may be able to go on for really quite a long time. But ONLY till they hit their healthy minimum.

All this may be simplistic and obvious. But it directly relates to my interesting experience yesterday, a first for me.

When I'm fasting, I track my weight every day. It's simple to do each morning. (That's just one metric, of course. Subjective feelings are important, as are other objective measures like blood pressure.)

I've come to fairly closely estimate my minimum healthy weight, which in my own case I think is 150 lbs. In previous fasts, I've never dipped below that, and always stopped at about the 151-152 lb mark. 150 was an arbitrary number, but it felt pretty much right, and always seemed to work for me.

I'd not regained much weight since my previous fast, 3 weeks ago. (My maximum healthy weight is probably 165.) Here's the graph of the recent three days:



As marked on the graph, yesterday afternoon I abruptly got REALLY REALLY HUNGRY.

This is significant: in all my previous fasts over many years, I'd never felt sudden hunger like that. (And it never let up. It lasted all night!) But I'd never crashed into my minimum weight, either.

This was my body saying (loudly!): "Hey! We need food! Now!"

As I wrote a few days ago:

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
My very best advice for all: Always be conscious and fully aware, and never do anything by rote or by blindly copying others' experiences.

[jc71]

Hello all fellow water fasters.

I just thought I would pop back into the thread as I am starting my next longish fast.

Only day 1 so we shall see where it goes, but I am hoping to do at least 10 days. My work schedules are such that I will be in my local office for the next 2-3 weeks which gives me a bit more control. When working in London it is a bit of a nightmare because of the sheer volume of food that is on display everywhere you go!

I'll do some usual updates as and when there is anything to report

Bill, your observation was very interesting regarding hitting the minimum healthy weight. Since I have never been near my minimum healthy weight for probably 10+ years, I am not sure I will be able to replicate the experiment this time round, but hopefully I will in the near future.

For anyone currently on a fast, good luck. I am really looking forward to mine. Only water fasters would think that was a sensible emotion when just about to go without food for several days...

JC

[Michelle Marie]

Bill...interesting. What you said makes perfect sense. Just a few days before I ended my fast, I got hungry. I don't think I reached a minimum weight, though. I can tell by how my clothes fit; I don't have scales or weigh myself. Maybe I should have eaten then, but I knew I had more healing to do and more fat to burn. I was determined to fast 10 days!

I'm still eating lots of celery and hummus! Lots of other food, too. I've been inspired to take horsetail. It kept coming up synchronistically, so I got some and started 3 days ago.

JC...good luck on your fast! We support you.

My next fast will be 3 days in July.

Until then, I'm going to eat as healthy as possible (with lots of whole raw foods), and get lots of exercise. I just got back from a walk, and a bike ride is next, The weather is great!

MM

[jc71]

Hi all,

Just a quick update. I am 9 hours into day 3 now of my water fast. So far, no particularly bad side effects. I have lost 7.5 lbs so far (1/2 a stone in just over 2 days!).

I am sort of waiting for the worst day as last time I did a long fast, my day 2 was the worst, and I haven't experienced any headaches so far, so I am wondering if that is still to come maybe tomorrow or the day after.

I'll report back in a couple of days

JC

[jc71]

Hi everyone,

I haven't had much to report really as it has been all been smooth sailing really. I think I am going to stop at 5 days (midnight tonight). I have had no headaches, which I did first time round on the 2nd day. I did my Aikido/Karate as normal yesterday. I probably would say that I was feeling 85-90 up to normal strength - just a bit off 100%, but it was no problem.

As my current aim is to lose weight (I have lost 12.5 lbs at the 4 day mark, so hoping for a full stone by midnight tonight), I am going to transition into a high protein, low-carb diet to see if I can keep my body in ketosis and continue to lose weight. I then plan to do another fast starting again next week.

This may be too much messing around, but we are all experimenting aren't we, and you never know what you might learn.

All the best to my fasting friends, and have a great weekend! The sun is out in England, which doesn't happen that often

JC

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by jc71 (here)
I have lost 12.5 lbs at the 4 day mark, so hoping for a full stone by midnight tonight

Just a brief comment... unsupported by any medical evidence.

That's a lot per day, far more than is usually reported. I'm fairly active, and wasn't overweight, and I always lose 1.5—2.0 lbs per day. I think that has to be 100% fat-burning.

What that suggests to me is that there may be something going with yourself connected to water retention. You can't be burning that much fat per day... as best I know. It may be something connected with your fast that's supporting your body to release retained water (as WELL as the fat-burning, of course).

That's a good thing! As long as the effect is permanent. This is a long way beyond my knowledge base, but as best I know water retention, if this is what's happening,. is primarily caused by electrolyte imbalance.

It's easy to find material about this on the net. Here's one result of a very quick search:

• https://healthline.com/nutrition/13-...e-water-weight

It's simple to establish electrolyte levels through a blood test, and in the UK that should be free if you tell your GP that you think you might possibly have a water retention issue. (If this IS the problem, don't take any pharma diuretic meds! Do it all naturally with supplementation to get the balance right: very easy to do.)

[jc71]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by jc71 (here)
I have lost 12.5 lbs at the 4 day mark, so hoping for a full stone by midnight tonight

Just a brief comment... unsupported by any medical evidence.

That's a lot per day, far more than is usually reported. I'm fairly active, and wasn't overweight, and I always lose 1.5—2.0 lbs per day. I think that has to be 100% fat-burning.

What that suggests to me is that there may be something going with yourself connected to water retention. You can't be burning that much fat per day... as best I know. It may be something connected with your fast that's supporting your body to release retained water (as WELL as the fat-burning, of course).

That's a good thing! As long as the effect is permanent. This is a long way beyond my knowledge base, but as best I know water retention, if this is what's happening,. is primarily caused by electrolyte imbalance.

It's easy to find material about this on the net. Here's one result of a very quick search:

• https://healthline.com/nutrition/13-...e-water-weight

It's simple to establish electrolyte levels through a blood test, and in the UK that should be free if you tell your GP that you think you might possibly have a water retention issue. (If this IS the problem, don't take any pharma diuretic meds! Do it all naturally with supplementation to get the balance right: very easy to do.)

Thanks for that Bill. I think the other factor is that I am starting from a higher position above my "ideal weight" than you were on your fasts. If you look back in the thread to the first time I did a fast, it starts off for me at about 3lbs per day, then after maybe 3-4 days it goes down to 2lb, then as I approached 10 days, it was more like 1lb per day (and I did have one day in that first fast where I lost 0lb! but I can't rule out a scale inaccuracy for that because it doesn't really make sense).

My diet is probably considerably worse than yours. Having said all of this, next time I go to my GP (I only go every couple of years) I will ask for the blood test you suggest just to see if there is anything that needs to be addressed on the electrolyte front.

Thanks for your comment - its good to get an independent view on things

JC

=====
Update
=====

I went back to check my charts in the earlier part of the thread, and I must have moved the domain where I had hosted them. So here is one of the charts I was referring to above for reference. This isn't this fast, it is the first one I did.



=====
Update 2
=====

Looking through the list of remedies to water retention on the link you posted, I could take my pick from those as I have:

* A less than ideal diet - working on it
* Stressful work - working on it...
* Too little sleep - working on it...
* Don't drink enough water - well I have over the last few days
* etc
* etc

So something for me to think about if I have a negative response to more or less all of the points on the list...

Food for thought (pun intended but doesn't really work ).

JC

[Michelle Marie]

Very punny!!!

Wow! Another fast next week! That's some faster fasting!

Sounds like you got good results, even if it was water retention clearing.
Nice info, Bill.

We're learning more and more. I like that!

MM

[TargeT]

I'm gearing up for an extended fast soon, here's a great video explaining whats happening when you fast:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=STLKL9x59d8

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ouhGnYZzABg

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bHdoAhZyP3I

[avid]

Terrifying for an ‘ostrich head’ in late 60’s, but need to lose weight, trying to get fit with moving tons of soil and heavy gardening doesn’t seem to work, love a glass of wine to destress, I was always the same weight since 18 - 30, thinking thin seemed to work, but now I'm past that, eating organic and freshly cooked food, will distill water but as local water fluoridated and chlorinated, should I add substitutes? Easy to just give up....but motivated, soporific wine will be a miss...

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by avid (here)
Terrifying for an ‘ostrich head’ in late 60’s, but need to lose weight, trying to get fit with moving tons of soil and heavy gardening doesn’t seem to work, love a glass of wine to destress, I was always the same weight since 18 - 30, thinking thin seemed to work, but now I'm past that, eating organic and freshly cooked food, will distill water but as local water fluoridated and chlorinated, should I add substitutes? Easy to just give up....but motivated, soporific wine will be a miss...

Many thanks for the post, and yes, we can all understand!

If you read through the thread here, there's a ton of good info, much of it on videos and fasting websites. My own takeaway from that is that yes, if on a water fast, you really do need to be drinking water that's as uncontaminated as possible.

If you can distill or filter your tapwater, then that should work fine. Some experts specifically recommend distilled water when fasting, and here's no need to add minerals. Spring water is certainly also excellent, but costs quite a few ££ if you have to buy it in bottles.

Many people report that the first few days can be the toughest — but some encounter no issues at all. The 'hump' (if there is one!) tends to come at Day 3 or 4. After that, it really does get quite easy.

The 'tough' bit (but again, sometimes it's not tough at all) is that it might take a few days for hunger pangs to disappear totally, and sometimes headaches kick in as detoxing starts to kick in as well.

If hunger does manifest at that early stage, just drink more water. The amount per day is something like 3 litres. You can't overdo it!

If you've never done this before, it'll feel a little odd, for sure, as the body readjusts. But the body WILL readjust, as it turns to ketosis (fat-burning), and autophagy begins (a kind of very interesting and only recently understood deep repair and maintenance action).

One can expect to lose 1.5—2.0 lbs per day, and if one has a bit of fat to burn, one can maintain this for really quite a while. And it seems it's okay to drink unsweetened black coffee, if you want to: that won't affect the weight loss or detoxing, and research suggests it assists the autophagy.

The main thing when one BREAKS the fast is (a) to do it very gently (juices, broths and fruit, etc), and then (b) to use the entire experience as inspiration/motivation to reset and reboot one's eating habits from then on out.

Go for it! We'd all be delighted to support you through the process.

[Michelle Marie]

Yes, the only thing I've ever experienced have been mild headaches that have not lasted long.

I've done different durations...3 is average. 1, 2, 3, 5, & 10. I will fast every month.

My body naturally desires healthier food. That makes the positive change EASY!

Good luck! We are here supporting each other.

MM

[TargeT]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
If hunger does manifest at that early stage, just drink more water. The amount per day is something like 3 litres. You can't overdo it!

Just a quick note, you CAN over do water consumption, but it's a pretty ridiculous amount and you have to almost be trying to do it.

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
it seems it's okay to drink unsweetened black coffee, if you want to: that won't affect the weight loss or detoxing, and research suggests it assists the autophagy.

There's a few things you can actually even eat and still remain DEEP in ketosis (which is what you want if your trying for fat loss); you just have to dilligently avoid carbs and sugars and anything close to them... you can read more about this on any ketosis focused website. In my mind the most healthy parts of the fast are the stress responses your body goes through, so avoiding consumption of ANYTHING but water makes the most sense to me (you want to TRIGGER those responses as efficiently as possible, stimulants such as coffee apparently help elevate the stress response) so I'd just stick with water or coffee.

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
The main thing when one BREAKS the fast is (a) to do it very gently (juices, broths and fruit, etc)

I've never done it this way, but it makes sense... I usualy break mine with steak (though I like it very rare, in some cases completely uncooked; so maybe it's easier to process)


Learning about this a few years ago has made my life a lot easier, I have to maintain certain weight standards while in uniform and this (well mostly it was time-restricted eating / intermittent fasting) has made it VERY easy for me to do; I even cut back heavily on exercising as I got busy; which i now regret and am correcting... haha

Anyway, it seems like it's magic and all it takes is ignoring the hunger drive; DON'T LET YOUR SELF GET BORED!!! haha when i first started i found that boredom was the worst, because then all I would do is focus on feeling like I should eat.

[TargeT]

Lets call this one a touch dangerous, but very interesting and makes a lot of sense.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VUsRld1K8Eo

basically doubling down on the stress response; sounds very familiar to things I used to do as a wrestler.

I'm going to mix a 24 hour period of this into the middle of my 7 day (maybe more, depends on where I'm at day 7) fast that I'm starting tomorrow. I'll shoot for Thursday I think.

Drinking my last beer (or three) as we speak; lots of water in my future. (I'll probably start drinking coffee again too, for the extra boost).

[RunningDeer]

I tried out the dry fast on April 29th. I went 44 hours. I didn’t follow it 100% because within that time I washed my face, brushed my teeth and had two cups of coffee. If I were to experiment with it again, I’d still do it the same way.

Mentioned in the video was Sergei Ivanovich Filonov. Here's a pdf “Dry medical Fasting - Myths and Reality”. I researched the pros and cons elsewhere as well.

Posted by TargeT (here)
Lets call this one a touch dangerous, but very interesting and makes a lot of sense.

basically doubling down on the stress response; sounds very familiar to things I used to do as a wrestler.

I'm going to mix a 24 hour period of this into the middle of my 7 day (maybe more, depends on where I'm at day 7) fast that I'm starting tomorrow. I'll shoot for Thursday I think.

Drinking my last beer (or three) as we speak; lots of water in my future. (I'll probably start drinking coffee again too, for the extra boost).

[TargeT]

Posted by RunningDeer (here)
I tried out the dry fast on April 29th. I went 44 hours. I didn’t follow it 100% because within that time I washed my face, brushed my teeth and had two cups of coffee. If I were to experiment with it again, I’d still do it the same way.

Have any impressions? seems like kind of a teaser post.. haha

[RunningDeer]

Posted by TargeT (here)
Have any impressions? seems like kind of a teaser post.. haha

I preferred dry fast to drinking a lot of water. I stumbled across the dry fast info that day and decided to try it without preparation. One major plus was I didn’t experience the body pains like I did with the 8 day water fast. That could be because of several reasons: 1) I didn't go as long as the water fast 2) I've been eating relativity clean for the last couple of years 3) I had gone through a period of turpentine detoxes.

I stopped it at 44 hours because as mentioned I wasn’t prepared emotionally but I was curious to try it. My beliefs about no water got the better of me. If nothing else, I learned that if I did a water fast, I do not need the amount of water I once thought was required.

PS Good luck on your fast.