I did a 33 days fast as type 1 diabetic

Basically the title. Read the post and AMA. As my experience with fasting was good, I still would not recommend this to any typical t1d without decades of knowledge and experience. Everyone’s diabetes is unique and acts differently in same kind of situations. Maybe this is too unorthodox take on diabetes and for that reason this post got deleted from diabetes sub-reddit.

TL;DRt:

This was my third extended fast, previous ones being somewhere around 10-17 days longs so this one was by far the longest. I have been diabetic for almost 30 years. Currently I’m at multiple daily injections therapy with libre2 as I don’t have felt need to get a pump. I have had a1c of around 6-6.5% for years now.

During fast I consumed tap water, more water, mineral water, zero calories flavored water, tons of mineral-salt, daily coffee w. milk, at the latter part of fast bonebroth and when needed some high quality juice.

During fast I lost a ton of fat, lost hardly any lean mass, slept well, didn’t have much a difference in mood, didn’t really have hard time with diabetes because its not my first rodeo.

So how it went?

What did I “eat”

I didn’t go for a strict waterfast obviously, and because I think it is just stupid. I did my salts and at the start of fast with other recommended electorolytes, but later on I figured out I really don’t need extra magnesium and that it actually gives me a diarrhea. What I only “ate” was 1) tap water, 2) different kinds of mineral waters/zero calories waters, 3) coffee (with a small amount of milk), and of course if necessary 4) some good quality juice to balance my hypos. Later on (somewhere around day 22 or so) I added some bonebroth. This wasn’t really necessary but I didn’t really see any downsides, and I was getting really bored for not tasting anything else than water.

Bloodsugar:

During fasting I had (according to libreview) avg. BG of 125 mg/dl/6.9mmol/L, 79% time-in target (70-180 mg/dl, 3.9-10 mmol/L) and calculated a1c 6.3%. SO nothing drastic changes happened there although naturally I didn’t had huge crashes or spikes in bloodglucose. I tend to go a bit low during nights but I really didn’t want to tone down my long lasting insulin because of the elevated risk of DKA. Also I got some over the target values because I didn’t really mind my sugar hovering at 10-11 range, and didn’t really want to correct those because my body was extremely sensitive to insulin. I also used ketones-strips when necessary.

Insulin:

I had to be really careful about my corrections. figured this out the hard way at the first week. My insulin sensitivity was out of the roof and this made corrections really hard. Usually I have to correct BG of 196mg/dl / 11mmol/L with something like \~8units or so. During fast I went hypo with just 3units. Naturally I had to lower my long acting insulin. Currently I’m using really long half-life long-acting insulin (around 72hours or so) so I had to start lowering this around a week before fast. It was still not enough and because of that I had some hypos during first week of fast. At the end I was using just 1/3 my normal dose. What I have learnt from previous fast, this is pretty close to the lowest dosing I can go without DKA. I was too close to going to DKA last time I fasted but managed it with ragebolus combined with rage juice drinking. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to risk it, diabetes comes first, fasting is just a curiosity.

Mood:

No change. of course first couple days was somewhat hard because I was thinking food all the time. after that nothing special. For some reason during fasts I like to watch a lot of cooking shoes, which I don’t normally do. Fasting is a great holiday for a diabetes because there is so much less things to consider during day. Normal days I average something like 6 injections daily, and this is cut to around 1-2 during fast.

0 crash hypos, 0 sudden spikes, whole month, felt almost like healthy human being.

Physical strength:

Really low. I’m active gymgoer and with my lifts I could compete. During fast I got winded up really easily and could not do any seriously burdensome tasks, and of course I didn’t go to gym during fast. However I did kept training my other sport, one could compare it to a bowling with strength aspect, and I noticed that I could not train as long as when I’m eating normally. I did help my friend do move at day 30, because well he needed some muscles to move heavier stuff. It was not a pleasure experience, but doable anyway.

Sleep: No change, or maybe a bit better. first couple days was somewhat harder to fall a sleep. Didn’t had a need to pee during night once.

body composition:

At home I’m using high regarded body-analyzer/scale. Although these kinds of scales aren’t exact, they gives reasonable assumption of the change of body composition. I lost around 35lbs bodyweight, of which non-muscle weight 34lbs. This might be a surprise for some readers, but this is exactly what current academic literature suggests; during fast body starts producing human growth hormone (HGH) in such a way/drastically that it preserves as much lean mass as possible as long as there is some other fuel (ie. fat/ketones/dead or damaged cells, see autophagy) to use. Also keeping your body active and not just lying down helps preserve mucles.

End:

After all the biggest problem of a fast for me is that I really like my current souvenir belt but it doesn’t fit me anymore. I don’t yet know if, or how much, my gym lifts took a hit.

For now I’m getting slowly back to eating normally. I broke my fast yesterday with bonebroth, homemade tomato-paprika soup, low fat Greek yogurt and some fresh cabbage. Today I’m going to keep eating just some vegetable soup and maybe day after that getting some low-carb solid food.