We talked about this on another thread, not sure where. I just finished fasting for 72 hours, from Wednesday evening until Saturday evening. It was surprisingly easy.
Here's my notes as I went along, taken from my cancer blog.
Fasting 15 hours
Last month I decided to do a 3-day fast. But there has been one reason after another why I couldn't start fasting. Dinner with my boss. An important presentation that would fall on day 3 of fasting. Breakfast party at work. And on and on.
Now I've got a little vacation time, and of course vacation is for eating good food! And I've been eating lots of good food and maybe a little too much good food. So this morning I realized my schedule for the next few days is perfect for a 3-day fast. No big plans. I just wish I had decided yesterday that I would start fasting today, then I would have eaten a much healthier dinner. Instead I had very little dinner: corn chips and cheese dip and a couple of glasses of wine.
It's hard to find data on what is allowable to drink during this kind of fast. The goal is to kick the body into an immune system regeneration mode. This happens with 3 days of complete fasting, or 5 days of restricted calorie fasting (750/day). Some folks say coffee is ok, a little oil is good, boullion is ok, some folks say vegetable or berry juices are ok but not apple or orange, some folks say only water, some folks say only steam-distilled water (which they claim actually sucks out impurities from your system (cough-cough-bs).
There's a lot of folklore out there. The scientists who ran the studies on mice and humans show that a 3-day fast does indeed stimulate new stem-cell production and kills damage immune cells, results they ascertain through blood tests. So that's real. All the other stuff is mostly people talking. It's again the question of how much should you believe folk wisdom. There is truth in folk wisdom, but without science it's impossible to tell what is real, what ideas were formed through superstition (or correlation if you will), and what is wishful thinking.
And the problem is, the scientists aren't putting out claims about what you can and cannot eat to trigger the bodies starvation response that produces stem cells.
It seems to me that it is best to just drink water. No nutrition at all. However, if the response can be triggered after 5 days of restricted caloric intake, it seems to reason that a small amount of nutrients is allowable. Some plans allow coffee and encourage oil and say minerals are ok.
So I'm going to allow myself water, tea, coffee (which contains oil), and a cup of boullion a day (which contains salt and fat and 15 calories). I do like salt.
15 hours in and I'm not so hungry.
26 hours
Today I rode a bike a couple of miles, played pickleball for a couple of hours, and ate nothing but a sprinkle of salt. Resolve was tested when on the way to the movies we stopped at a restaurant ... and the restaurant was a buffalo wings joint. My favorite. Onion rings. And deep fried pickles.
Still, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I've not been hungry today although a little tummy rumbling. So far, so good.
37 hours
Slept great, woke with headache. Not hungry.
46 hours
So far today I've had 4 cups of coffee, a cup of green tea, many glasses of water, and few pinches of salt. The salt really makes my mouth happy.
I'm surprised at my good energy today. In the morning I did stretching and pushups and lots of writing with very good clarity. Then I played 2 games of pickle ball and went to the range to shoot clay pigeons. On the way back I began thinking of food. How delicious it tastes. And while I'm not physically hungry, mmmm food sure does taste delicious. Maybe this is hunger? I often don't feel hunger. Sometimes when I'm on my own I will forget to eat, and only realize that I need food because I get cold. So maybe it's no surprise that I have't been that hungry.
The family is cooking out right now and they've just finished preparing food. I'm going to excuse myself and not watch them eat dinner this time around.
63 hours
You have a lot of extra time when you're a nothingtarian like me. We spend a lot of each day in pursuit of eating. Yesterday as we drove past the Meijers at 3:00 I wondered if we needed to stop to get anything for dinner. My mind automatically ran down a sequence of events to follow - buying meat, coming home, summoning help, gathering utensils, setting up the kitchen and the grill, preparing vegetables, grilling and cooking and whatnot, dinner, cleanup, and then freetime. About 3 hours of food rituals.
But I would not be eating. What would I do with all this time? Dinner was already planned. The sausages on the grill smelled good. I enjoyed their smell and put a little salt on my tongue. They looked good. But they could wait. I excused myself from the meal last night and no one seemed to mind. I did miss the ritual and the company, though.
So much empty time without eating! If I were a supervillian, I would not eat. I would use all the extra time planning how to take over the world.
Going to sleep last night felt awesome, like I could skip ahead 8 or 9 hours in the program. But I felt different when I woke up this morning. A little dizzy, a little buzzing in my bones.
My stomach hurt for a few minutes at one point, but I still wasn't hungry. To test myself, I cooked up bacon and pancakes for the kids. Oh, that bacon looked and smelled so good. And those pancakes fluffed up. And the kids were scarfing them down with butter and maple syrup and orange juice. But it was okay. I cleaned up while they ate. You have a lot of extra time when you're a nothingtarian, didn't you know?
I can continue to feel a strangeness, and I know that something is happening inside of me. My body is shifting into a mode where my immune system kills off any weak cells, including those damaged from chemo. At the same time, new stem cells are growing which will build a new immune system in its place.
Fabulous!
69 hours
Went to the movies. The kids had popcorn. With extra butter.
I'm getting hungry now, I wonder if it's because I know I will eat in a couple of hours. I wonder if I knew I wouldn't be eating until tomorrow if I would feel hungry. I don't think I would.
I'm feeling good. I haven't pushed myself physically today, but I have plenty of energy. Think I'll go do some pushups.
72 hours
Dinner tonight was tasty. I have read folks recommending things like start eating slowly after fasting – just a small amount of yogurt to get your stomach used to food again! I didn't really believe that, I ate like normal, ate a little more than usual in fact, two helpings of chicken and mashed potatoes, coleslaw, broccoli, fruit, milk and a pile of honey-roasted peanuts.
The fast is over, and it was easy.
I did it all on water, coffee, tea, and a little salt. No boullion.
3-day fast, the morning after
Immune system reboot is underway!
Wasn't sure what to expect this morning. My intestines would be filling up with food during the night... would it be strange? It wasn't. I feel great this morning, not hungry but a little bit sore from all the physical activity I've had the past few days.
It's nice to know that if I ever need to go without food for, say, a week, that I can do it with little difficulty and still have energy (to gather and hunt for example). Certainly my stone-age ancestors went for long periods without food.
Great stuff Mike. Very inspiring. Thanks. I'm currently at hour 38 of my fasting. Things are going well. I too, am surprised at how I'm not craving food as badly as expected. It sounds good right now, but decaf green tea and a cup or two of coffee are surprisingly satisfying. I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I have so much time on my hand. I've also been surprised to find that eating is such a routinized part of my life. Have you found that you've changed your eating habits since the fast? I can imagine that I'll be cutting some part of my eating time out. I'm now able actually recognize that I consume more calories than my body requires. Ammar, a friend of mine, a physician and muslim (fasts during Ramadan), whom I consulted before fasting, revealed to me that he only eats one meal a day regularly. He estimates eating between 1200 - 1800 calories daily and never thinks twice of it. For a 48 year old guy, who notched a game changing goal in our mens over-30 soccer league Monday night, I see this working for Ammar. I'm reconsidering some large post-fast changes in my diet. Have you made any long-term changes?
Awesome Jeff! Keep it up! I've noticed how easy it is now to skip dessert. Pass up extra calories I don't need. Or if it's late for dinner or I miss dinner, it's easy to say "oh well, I'll eat tomorrow." I'm gluten-free now, also, which makes a difference (I have a rare allergy, not an intolerance or celiac disease). When we have tacos for dinner instead of a tortilla I wrap up my tacos in big leafs of lettuce -- wonderful! And at restaurants I'm ordering a salad instead of a burger because of the bun. My veggie intake has gone way up and that is making a difference I'm sure. I feel extraordinarily good as of late. I'm keeping active, walking every day, doing pushups, and doing hard work in the yar. I see a change in my body, leaner and more muscular. I think I'm doing pretty well for "an old man" of 46. Three years of chemo were pretty devastating to my body, but you wouldn't guess it to see me know (except for the tatoos from radiotherapy). Have I grown a new immune system? It will interesting next month when I get a scan and blood work and can see if there's any change in my numbers. The last 24 hours of my fast were really interesting. It felt like a buzzing in my bones, which was probably psychosomatic, but fun to feel anyways. Kind of like a phantom phone vibration. But while those are annoying, this felt wonderful. I'm going to do a 3-day fast every six months. I've got everything to gain!
Thanks Mike. 21 hours to go and I feel great. Freakishly good actually. I've been running 2-3 miles every other day prior to fasting, and I think that if I feel so good tomorrow, as I start the third day, I may just go for my run. Two miles seems nice. Glad to hear you're doing so well man. I've been hitting the veggies too. Slipped some as the summer months hit, but since last fall it was veggies or fish. I've been throwing in lots of exercise too. Used to hate running. I always laughed at the t-shirts the kids who ran high school cross-country wore, "Our sport is your sport's punishment". Now though, I find it really satisfying and relaxing. By the way, I look forward to hearing about your blood results. My chemo was a walk in the park compared to the beating you took. Rock on bro.
Hi mike. I'm finishing my three days without repast midday tomorrow (it's 10pm here) and I thought I'd revisit this old thread while my housemate cooks himself a steak. Do you mind if I ask how your last round of tests went? More specifically, do you reckon the fasting made much of a difference?
Hi, thanks for asking! The last tests were a few weeks ago and they came back clean. Impossible to say if it made a difference, as they could have come back clean regardless. But I like to think it helped. I'm going to do it again in December. Every six months. How has your fast gone? Harder or easier than you thought?
That's extremely good news to hear! I hope you celebrated in suitable fashion with large glasses of tempranillo and a stroll around a nice park. It's remarkable how much your commentary at the start of this thread mirrors my own, especially the part about being confronted with lots of spare time. I've also found myself dwelling far more in the present these past couple of days, but perhaps that's just a natural consequence of spending more time paying attention to how I feel. All up the hunger is certainly bearable and more than balanced by the novelty value; I think once every six months like you plan would work well. I do find myself thinking a lot about food, however. I should also note that, while I recently resumed running after a long hiatus, I've held off from strenuous exercise for the duration of the fast, primarily because I wanted to be confident that I could still manage my workload.
I think most people consume more calories than are required on a daily basis. Similar to Ammar, there are many days when I only eat one meal a day, such as today. Logged my walking, running, and food from today and came out at a net of about 1400 calories. Usually hover between 1500 and 2000 on days when I don't eat out with friends or party. On the same boat as you with running, used to hate it but nowadays I'm on the 2.5 - 3 mile boat just about every other day. It's a good excuse to be outside when it's nice out.
Now I am intrigued. I have some vacation time coming up, I may very well give this fasting thing a try. Thanks for sharing.
I reread this today, just because I loved how aware you became of food and how it influences our behavior and lives. Do you feel like generally you are able to delay gratification? I am very impulsive so I feel like as soon as those kids got the pop corn I would be secretly squirreling it away embarrassingly.
3 days is the length of time recommended to start immune system regrowth. (link). It was my first fast, and I think the length was perfect. What do you want from the fast? Some people do one-day fasts but I don't know what the goal is. I researched only the 2-4 day fasts because that was applicable to me. Everyone says to talk to a doctor first -- I did not as I am in good health and was in a good environment for the fast.
Here's the original post with link for anybody who missed it. Thanks for letting us know how it went, Mike. I'm keen to try it myself sometime soon.
Awesome post, loved it. I just had a question about how your body reacted to the moment in which you started to fuel it back up with nutrients? Did you go slow or just stuff your face?