I’ve intentionally fasted for 7 days. It was a nice goal to achieve
This makes me miss Flyingsquid.
Me, a couple of days at most when I had Norwalk.
Two and a half days. Also how I came to really understand how abusive my mother is. I needed surgery for a knee injury. I wasn’t allowed to eat since the evening before. I went in, had surgery and my parents took me home to “take care of me”. I was so hungry after the surgery because it was like 2 pm and I hadn’t eaten since maybe 4 pm the day before, so I asked if we can stop for food. I was told no, we have food at home. “Home” was an hour by car away.
So we come home, I somehow manage to get into bed and ask for food. My mother exploded, yelled at me to not be a lazy good-for-nothing that slouches around on the bed and that the only way I was getting any food was by getting up and sitting at the dining table like a normal person. I really don’t know why I thought they’d treat me better this time. I guess I thought they’d know it’s a legit surgery (unlike non-legit things like flu and fever that has never been an excuse to stay in bed). Anyway, I had my bottle of water with me but no food. Probably not enough water either. On the evening of my second day there my leg was feeling good enough for me to hobble into the kitchen and grab some snacks.
On the bright side, I learned that the stuff I’ve been telling myself like “Yeah they’re assholes but will be there for me when I need them” was a lie.
Four weeks. I have Crohn’s disease and had perforated my bowel roughly 15 years ago. I wasn’t allowed anything by mouth and was on a saline drip for 3 weeks. After my surgery I was on TPN for another week before I was allowed to eat anything. I went from 185lbs to 130lbs and it took about 6 months to get back up to 160lbs.
I’ve done 7 days on a fast, water only. My partner and I were testing if their seizures would stop without food and they did.
Well no shit. That’s fascinating. So now where are you at with the problem?
Yeah, it worked really well actually. It seems that their seizures are related to sugar metabolism in the brain and switching to a fasted state enabled the production and use of ketones instead of glucose. That leas to a reduction from seizures as much as twice an hour to one or less per day most of the time. Now we (solidarity and other benefits) eat a really simple diet of mostly simple cuts of meat cooked to medium-rare as well as chicken wings and butter. The butter maybe an issue though, so we are testing removing that too after the next long fast to see if we get better results.
So down from ~30 seizures per day to maybe 1 seems like a fairly good fix and we just treat it like an allergy. No carbs, no fibre, no sugar alcohols, no artificial sweeteners, and soon maybe no butter either. Better thab seizures, good for overall health so far, and fairly sustainable. I may miss cheesecake but not as much as I don’t miss my partner having seizures all day.
On a keto based diet, you’ll need those fats. Perhaps consider something like sunflower oil instead though? Nuts also come with plenty of fats and have a lot of fiber too. Some have carbs more than others, so you’d have to check which ones fit your specific diet, but these are a great source of healthy fats and help keeping the gut biomes working well.
Edit: just to add, you could experiment with the fiber more. Long carbs have a very different effect on the body vs. short ones, so those, in moderation to keep the keto state up, could be okay for the partner too, and perhaps give more robustness/variety to the diet?
2 days. I had hemorrhoid surgery and pooping was so painful that I fasted for two days just so I could rest for 1 day.
A week, massively depressed, no food or water, by day 3 I decided to conciously continue the fast in hope of death. by day 6 I was feeling normal, by day 7 was completely ok, had energy, no headaches no hungry or thirsty.
got so upset that I’m apparently immortal I gave up on that scheme.
I went roughly 2 weeks without food after I got out of the hospital from a severe head injury. I tried to eat, but I temporarily lost my sense of taste and my brain hallucinated this absolutely terrible taste in its place. Even my saliva and the inside of my mouth had this taste. In the hospital I mostly got my nutrients via IV.
4 days
No food in the house. Everyone who had a job bought food for themselves. I, being 16 at the time, didnt have that luxury.
Jesus christ, where the fuck are your parents/guardians. You were still a minor ffs.
I feel sorry that you had to deal with that.
37 days. One day I took a look in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw. So I changed it. Honestly it’s not at all difficult after the fourth or fifth day, it just gets really hard to sleep. I was in my early twenties and I still had the willpower for that (and probably the metabolism) but I don’t anymore.
Edit to be clear: I don’t recommend this. It was a harsh decision born out of a lot of depression and other issues. I drank a lot of water and took multivitamins. It worked but I was probably just lucky I didn’t end up in the hospital.
I once wanted to see how long I can go, at 32 hours I felt like I was about to die so I stopped. Literally one bite made all of the terrible feeling go away and to this day it both annoys me and freaks me out that it was all psychological.
Like seriously brain? Couldn’t handle not eating so badly that you decided to make me feel like shit? But also damn, if that’s how I felt about not eating, addictions sound much scarier now.
annoys me and freaks me out that it was all psychological.
It’s not really psychological. There’s a lot of physiological processes involved. One you have to go from a sugar burning metabolism to a fat burning metabolism. That can be troublesome for people, during that transition electrolytes can get out of balance.
If you want to try fasting again, I recommend starting a ketogenic diet first, get comfortable with keto, get past the adaptation phase after 2 or 3 weeks. Increase your electrolyte consumption the entire time. Salt, potassium, magnesium. Then, try a fast and see if you feel different, make sure you continue your electrolytes supplementation.
Once you’re in ketosis, starting a fast usually isn’t much trouble for people, they don’t really notice it.
Yeah no… I was not kidding, literally the second I swallowed the first bite I felt perfectly fine. That can’t be anything related to metabolism.
