I was thinking about the past when I was fasting every single day. Pushing myself through so much discipline in so many other ways for no real reason. Now I’ve found a better middleground. But I clearly fast often just through habit. Always with no routine attached. Just listening to what body is saying.
I only came back to this sub because I was searching through subs to see if I could find thoughts on overeating after fasting periods. As I find myself having almost zero issues with overeating. The past day I decided to eat A TON. And for some reason, because I keep up with my health in so many ways, I feel almost no different. My body is feeling a slight benefit. Although clearly have a slight haze, as your body can’t eat all that and feel the true heights of clearer health. Easily 6000 calories in 24 hours. I don’t feel full or unsatisfied at the same time. Although I made sure to keep posture in check and breathing posture, which helped. I feel zero guilt because I maybe truly overeat 5 times a year as of now.
I think my fasting history has made it so much easier for me to randomly fast all the time, just because I’m listening to my body telling me to let things clear up on certain days. And that has given my body long term health that helps me process things more easily. Like say a huge day of calories.
Tomorrow I’ll probably do an easy 20 hour fast, small meal, 100% back to normal. I’m just blown away how unaffected I am by so much food. And it’s not the greatest food either. I only feel a slight sense of a food hangover. I do feel like I could eat 2-3000 more calories and still feel great and go to bed with some deep sleep. I think fasting does play a role in some longevity to do this.
I’m of the belief that fasting should be as easy as possible. When that happens you can learn a lot. the option is to make it a struggle, at which point the struggle sucks up all your mental energy.
My first fast was 4 days. I wanted to rely on my natural stubbornness to take a full view of fasting throughout a reasonably long span of time. I identified a bunch of things that made fasting a lot harder than it needed to be, namely my tendency to snack a lot in the evening, primarily out of boredom. Fixing those things outside of my fast (giving up snacking) helped to fix my fasting experience. On the other hand my fasting experience helped me with quitting snacking; if I could fast for 4 days I had to be mighty stupid not to be able to say no to snacks for a few hours.
The other important thing was to fast around my life, not to live around my fast. My ideal time to fast is weekdays, so I start my fasts Sunday night so for my 4-day fasts I’m Scott free by Thursday eve. That frees up the entire weekend for whatever socialization happens. I just try to avoid breakfast and don’t do snacking.
Keep in mind that I’m also fasting to improve health markers. Once those are under control I’ll pull back from the 4-day fasts and into something more flexible.
This is a bit different as I’m new to fasting but I’ve started taking cold showers every morning and the discipline of forcing myself to take a cold shower has allowed me to be more disciplined in other facets of life. But since I’ve started fasting I have better control over telling myself what I’m going to eat. I don’t feel like a slave to habits as much.