RE: Was I dying or was it all in my head? (Part II)
I wonder about your use of the phrase "eat healthy" since that means so many different things to different people. If your diet was or is high in carbs (more than 30% of calories from carbohydrates), I would expect you to have those symptoms including the symptom of low testosterone. You may not know that testosterone is actually made by converting cholesterol, something that many "healthy" diets lack.
Further, as a long time fasting proponent, I would not expect one 8 day fast to cure your symptoms, but a three day fast once a month might do much more. The goal is to depend on the clean fuel of your own body fat for long enough to heal damages to your digestive system (leaky gut, yeast, gluten sensitivity), and to relieve inflammation due to insulin swings, but not long enough to worry about consuming muscle protein. Unless you are already keto-adapted, you risk damage to important muscles, like your heart.
Fasting more than three days is okay and may be beneficial. After three days the body changes to ketosis mode and stops burning muscle once carbohydrate stores have depleted in the organs. This is why someone can fast for weeks and have more energy than some other people. But of course pay attention to your body as we are all different in nature and our imbalances. Also suggest intermittent fasting for a few days monthly , more or less. This is what I do and I find it to work wonders.
Fasting ketosis in a non-keto-adapted person can still affect muscle loss. It's fine if you are already low carb or fast fairly regularly, but can be dangerous for high carb dieters.
Yes true. Good to balance things however we may.
Have to check on you too :)
Good points. I will have to give that some thought (regarding the periodic fasts). My diet in general has always been one that is fairly high in carbohydrates. I have always been involved in athletics and needed the carbohydrates to keep up energy levels and keep the weight from totally falling off (I was always skinny but that's a problem I don't have so much now) ;)
Interesting add, I have to check you out, I'm still figuring out the dietary thing, me personally, I spent the last 2-3 years stacking the pages, for two of which I was mostly eating healthy, vegetarian diet, without meat, mostly milk from the animal products and cheese. apart from that salads, soups, potatoes from the stove, but yes that's about it. for the most part, at the start I went about eating too much oil, and sugar, then got rid of that, found the fact that oil is essential, lowered my sugars, started eating non-white bread then tried getting the healthy baked bread, costs too much for my lack of finance, and I have to say I was feeling amazing when I was going about that, I was exercising at least two times a day, sometimes 3 and on the off chance 4 times :D I was able to run for miles in both directions and all, but I overexerted myself from time so i gave myself a few days to recover here and there. Anyways the fasting got to me and I failed miserably :D I tried the 1-2-3 day fast, with my social circle it was next to impossible, I had to keep silent, if I said anything everybody tried to get me back to "normal" then yeah, I still have to learn I'm still picking up speed, since I kind of trailed off for the past year, my daily regiment kind of changed and I lost the momentum. Anyways that's my story :D I'm still learning on keto diet and tried intermittent fasting ,the problem is what you stated above and the fact I'm rushing through many topics one by one.
Yes social circles can really ruin fasts. I was able to go for 8 days because I didn't tell anyone about it until I was on day 4 :)