(condition where stomach takes a long time to empty food).
i’ve heard of gordon ryan on JRE recently explaining how he’d unintentionally (water?) fast for like 5 days out of pain and nausea but when he’d resume eating seems like it’d start back up.
i have gastroparesis and have done different kinds and lengths of fasting. what i noticed was that IF i do eat i have to basically commit to it in the morning and start eating something stimulating like a smoothie with lots of ginger or a boullion (salt stimulates my stomach, not sure if thats the same for everyone). if i dont do that and i decide to eat later in the day i will for sure be in pain the whole night or have to throw up cause somehow its too late for my stomach to get it and get going. edit: so intermittent fasting would not work for me.
liquid fast: i dont water fast but when i do liquids only, after a couple days my body gets so used to it that it will be painful to go straight back to all food groups and i can only do fruits and very slowly reintroduce the rest. in that phase im the most sensitive to proteins (just a couple grams of yellow lentils or kidney beans or nuts will be hours of pain), then heavier grains like barley down to lighter grains like oats, then fats i can have a fair bit before ill be in pain but still have to watch my intake.
dry fast: i have done one 3.5 day dry fast (after liquid only for a couple days) and i didnt dare go back to normal food right away so i tacked on a couple days of liquid only, then went through my normal phase of reintroducing normal foods. so idk how my body would react to jumping from dry to solid food. but i did read of someone who died from eating potatoes after a long dry fast (not sure if thats true) and that scared the shit out of me so im not about to try that.
1 day dry/week: i did a couple months of every monday between 24h and 30h dry, the rest of the time my normal routine (stimulating breakfast, then light foods that my body is used to, very light or no dinner) and i think for me this was the healthiest cause i almost never was in pain and only seldom threw up or got a migraine (dont know if you have that as well but when my stomach is still i usually get a migraine with throwing up for like 5 hours). and my body didnt have to go back and forth between extremes which was nice.
one important observation for me was that if you restrict you basically teach your body to need less food. so after the 3.5 day dry fast i didnt require as much food for quite a while after that which obviously is great for people like us. this effect was there as well with the 1day/week dry routine and even now i basically eat less than 1000 calories a day and im neither losing nor gaining weight which is such a relieve cause i dont have to choose between looking like a walking corpse and being in pain/throwing up every other day.
long term effects: overall my symptoms have drastically lessened over the last 2 years since i started all this experimentation and i do think it would be possible to heal faster than me if you do more multi-day dryfasts so imo it is definitely worth trying. of course all this is just my observation on my own body but i hope it might give you some insight :)
p.s. also the more liquid my food is, of course the lighter my risk of a flare up is so at the moment im just living off of apple sauce with ginger which is so freaking soothing on my stomach and like lentil daal or humus with fruit for lunch and other really soft food and i dont have any pain or vomiting from that which is nice