Hello. I am new to dry fasting, but am an experienced water faster. My goal is to overall become more healthy, however I definitely could lose some weight. I have shed quite a bit water fasting but get very discouraged when more than half of what I lost comes back when I rehydrate / refeed, which is why I’ve switched to dry fasting.
This week I did two, 36-hour dry fasts with a day in between to rehydrate and get electrolytes in. I then took two days off to rehydrate / reefed and am currently back on another 36-hour dry fast.
I (F26) started the week at 226lbs and I am currently weighing in at 217lbs. During my days off of fasting I did not restrict my diet and ate a ton of carbs (pasta, potatoes, etc.) I was also on my period so I even satisfied my chocolate cravings as well, however I did not gain back a bunch of weight as I usually would have with water fasting! I also have endometriosis so I usually have extremely painful cramping however this time around it was much more manageable which surprised me. I broke each fast slowly by sipping water, then bone broth, then some eggs over the first 4 hours. After that I went back into regular eating / drinking.
I feel as though I could continue on this trend with alternate-day 36-hour dry fasts, but wanted to check in to see if anyone has done something like this before / if it is safe? So far I’m only seeing positives but this is my first time attempting this method of fasting so I was hoping for some advice / opinions!
The main benefit of the dry fast imo is not directly to lose weight, but to re-program your body to allow weight loss to come naturally while not fasting.
For example, a long enough fast will accomplish these things:
-Get you into ketosis. Then its easier to continue in ketosis after the fast.
-Rebuild your gut microbiome. Your microbiome and parasites are one of the big things that give your food cravings and probably even affects part of your personality. When you fast long enough, it stresses your microbiome. Then when you re-feed, you only want to feed the good organisms so that they outcompete the bad ones. So don’t eat sugar or junk food or carbs directly after the fast, because then you are doing the opposite…you are feeding the bad organisms and the good ones die off.
-Reset dopamine in the brain. This will give you more self control and reduce impulses.
-Increase insulin sensitivity. This will reduce the need to snack and bad cravings.
Its just like exercise. Exercise doesn’t build muscle. But it does stimulate the body to build more muscle to adapt to the damage that exercise does to the muscles.
Fasting shouldn’t be to lose weight, but to reprogram and rebuilt the body so that you naturally eat healthier when not fasting.
Some of those effects listed above only kick in on the longer dry fasts, so when you are ready, it would be good to do a longer to reprogram things more deeply.
This is just how I view things anyway. You can use fasting to lose weight, but to me thats secondary.
I also noticed this. I ate normal this weekend, burgers, pasta, chocolate, weighed myself today and didn’t gain weight like I would after a water fast. Pretty cool, it’s definitely discouraging to see it go up.
I only fast to lose weight, autophagy sounds cool and everything but I don’t really care for that at this stage. I have been doing 36 hours dry fast, eat and repeat and it’s been working for me. I have dropped 7kg in a month so far but I don’t fast on weekends, just during the week.