I have always had a problem with fasting and cortisol… I had to give up on ADF ing last year because my cortisol was through the roof. Anyone else have this issue.
But I tried a modified form of ADF where I ate about 500 calories on the fast day.
Now, however, I have reason to believe that it is creeping up again. My BP has been creeping up and yesterday I took it on a feast day and it dropped pretty significantly as compared to my other readings on the fast day.
I think I might have to go to time restricted eating.
The only other issue is that I also need to lose weight. I gained 20 lbs last year after stopping ADF. And I need to get that off. I am think IF most days and then extended fasts like 1x per month.
I honestly don’t think it’s safe to assume that fasting is for everyone. You’re bound to get some variance from person to person in how you react in terms of hormones, physically and psychologically, and I think it’s reasonable that some people just don’t react well to fasting.
If you’re sure that you have your electrolytes under control and you’re still not feeling well then I really wouldn’t double down on fasting.
> I gained 20 lbs last year after stopping ADF.
Fasting won’t solve your relationship with food. At very least I’d consider trying to maintain a sustainable diet (one that involves eating at least once per day) with decent weight loss results before considering longer term fasting to speed up that process, else you risk just having that happen over and over again.
Whenever you’re “crash dieting” (and I’m including fasting on this) I think it’s important to make sure that you have the knowledge and willpower to at the end transition to a sustainable diet to sustain those results, else you just get into this frustrating cycle of pretty much torturing yourself for weeks~months just to get back to square one shortly after.