First Time Fast Experiment

After sitting on this for a few months not knowing if I would ever post, I stumbled across Steem. I viewed it as a vehicle to finally getting this out and sharing a variety of health related thoughts through my own experience. While I am not a doctor, I would recommend working with one any time you make dietary or health related changes. I have been engrossed in this world of learning, experimenting and sharing for the last few years.

To provide some background I’m 29 years old and do not have a story about losing 200 lbs or overcoming major health issues; I’m just a normal dude. My background and degree in Kinesiology has driven me to where I am today. My previous jobs were in personal finance, corporate fitness, office ergonomics and currently a sales rep in the pharmaceutical industry. N=1 is the most relevant scientific study you can do for yourself, and being your number one health advocate is a must because no one else will.

Why fast?

Fasting was something our ancestors did when food was sparse. After a kill, they would often go multiple days without food.
How was this physiologically possible? The longest medically recorded fast was 382 days. Having said or thought to myself "I'm starving!" at least a thousand times in my life, this statement now has a new meaning to me. Going in, my initial hesitation was muscle loss, believing that if I went three days without food I would surely waste away. Our bodies want to conserve lean muscle mass at all costs and will choose fat as a source of energy during a fast once glycogen stores are depleted. During this time, your body is making the switch from glucose (carbs/sugar) to fatty acids as fuel. A valid question now would be finding the maximal time to gain all of the benefits of fasting with little to no muscle loss. I have a bit of a leg up being that I have been eating a ketogenic or high fat diet for the past year and a half. This means my body prefers fat as fuel opposed to glucose. I have also been practicing intermittent fasting with much success (roughly only eating between noon and 8 pm).

For someone green to this who has never gone more than four hours without food, you may want to start with eight hours and not any longer. Your body adapts to whatever environment you put it in, and no food will be a stressor on it.

The 63 hour fast

I started the fast on 1/23/17 at 7:45pm with my last meal consisting of salmon, bacon and kimichi. If you are on a high carb diet, fasting might be more difficult as your body makes the transition from glucose to fat.
During the fast, I had roughly 8-12 oz of black coffee each morning. During the day, I drank green tea, soda water,
and water with 7g BCAAs (branch-chain amino acids) to sustain muscle mass.
As for exercise, I did hot yoga both days on fast (which I will not do on future fasts because of extreme sweating sodium/electrolyte loss). For this reason, I added sea salt to water to help retain proper sodium levels.

They say day 2 is the toughest during a fast and they were correct. This is where headaches/hunger pains can come into play for someone’s first time. Fasting is like a muscle - the more you do it, the more your body adapts and future fasts become easier. Some observations were that my appetite seemed suppressed and stay suppressed which has resulted in roughly 2-3 lbs of sustained weight staying off. I have been tracking glucose and seem to have a higher than normal fasting glucose level which could be a result of a several factors. After running a HbA1C, however, it came back as 4.9% (3 month average glucose) which is well below the 5.7% which would be considered pre-diabetic.

Below will be a table posted with weight, blood sugar, and ketone levels throughout the fast.

The Results/Benefits:

I weighed 188.2 lbs immediately after eating. Listed below are the following data points:

1/24 - 8:00 am 184.6 lbs 136mg/dl (Blood sugar) (tracked with meter)
8:00 pm 180.4 lbs 136 mg/dl

1/25 - 7 am 179.4 lbs 113mg/dl
9 pm 179.6 lbs 107mg/dl

1/26 - 7 am 177.4 lbs 95 mg/dl 1.5mm Ketones
9 am 3.1 mm Ketones (after mct oil)

Benefits of fasting include:

• Enhanced insulin sensitivity
• Activation of certain genes such as AMP-activated protein kinase and mTOR)
• Pre-cancerous cell death
• Detoxification of the body
• Increased growth hormone release
• Increased willpower/mental clarity
• Body homeostasis
• Improved memory and mood
• Reduced oxidative stress & inflammation
• Reduced hypertension
• Improved immune function

Overall, I found fasting to be a great metabolic reset for the body. I’m looking forward to seeing how my body reacts with frequent implementation on a monthly to quarterly basis.

Future posts possibilities that I'm considering:

• Wearing a continuous glucose monitor to tract glucose response of to certain foods
• Analyzing blood panels and ways to improve markers
• My experience with 23andMe DNA testing
• Product reviews on foods and supplements

Please leave comments below, all 3 of the people who actually read this!

Article by Mark Mattson Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins
http://www.johnshopkinshealthreview.com/issues/spring-summer-2016/articles/are-there-any-proven-benefits-to-fasting

328 Day Fast Study - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf

5 Day Water Fast (Much more in depth)
https://thequantifiedbody.net/5-day-water-fast-results/

Clinical application by Mattson and Longo on fasting
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946160/

Fasting has also been shown to increase release of growth hormone (study)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10619983

Mark’s Daily Apple also in podcast form (15 minutes, does an excellent job of breaking it down)
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/long-fasts-worth-the-risk/