I’ve been fasting regularly, have done 7 days successfully multiple times.
Last night I was 50 hours in and couldn’t get to sleep for the life of me. I finally just ate some carbs knowing it would make me fall asleep, but I wasn’t hungry and didn’t need it.
Does anyone else have this issue? Do you have any helpful advice for when you have insomnia while fasting?
I took melatonin and that didn’t help. CBD, that didn’t help. I was just left stuck awake and hating it. I had been trying to sleep for 4 hours at that point.
I have a long history of horrible insomnia made worse by fasting. Usually, if I’m heavy carb prior to my fasts, it’s harder for me to fall asleep than Keto, but I still have a difficult time falling asleep.
I’ve never been a huge fan of melatonin because studies show people can become dependent upon it/it can lose its effectiveness…but one night I was desperate enough to try it and, like you, it did nothing for me.
One thing that helped me was actually taking my magnesium at night (200 mg), around 30 mins before sleeping. Benadryl also helped one night that my allergies were awful.
How are your electrolytes/do you have issues sleeping in general, fast or no fast?
Also, did the carbs help? Because that also might help identify what’s going on
This is the reason i don’t usually go more than 48+.
I view sleep with as much weight (no pun intended) as diet and exercise when it comes to health, so i no longer try… No coincidence that i tend to make bad dietary decisions when I’m exhausted.
Sometimes that’s just how it is. I just broke at 2am/126h partly for the same reason
The past 3 nights was at best broken dozing. Did nothing different than other attempts. Kept waiting for things to turn normal but they never did - just kept getting worse so I broke
If you don’t think you did anything wrong or can’t note anything specific, just accept that this particular fast didn’t want to take as good as others
Hope you got some good sleep for it, though!
This is really the only reason I don’t do longer than 24-36 hr fast. I get shit sleep when I push past those more intermittent fasting ranges. I’ve tried pretty much everything and it just is what it is.
To each their own, but for me trading sleep is not worth the benefits I gain through longer fast. I exercise pretty heavily too so that might be a big part of it.