I just don’t get it plain and simple, I’ve read the fasting thread/wiki multiple times and I just don’t get how to start, I wanna start a 16 hr fast for now but whenever I have attempted I feel light headed despite drinking plenty of water. I also don’t know if it’s safe to weight lift while on a fast as I never found any straight answers. if anyone could please throw me some pointers ands tips I’d really appreciate it, thanks.
Before you jumping into your first fast, it helps to cut out sugar and reduce your carb intake. That will help curb your feeling hungry. Once you do that, you won’t think about whether or not it’s okay to work out in a fasted state. You will just feel great.
Other than that, don’t overthink it. A 16 hour fast is nothing more than having dinner, avoiding snacks until bed and then skipping breakfast when you wake up. Chances are you’ve done that dozens of times throughout your life and never thought about it.
You simply stop eating. That’s how you start. Nothing dangerous about weight lifting while fasting especially for only 16 hours without food. If you’re experiencing light headedness from only 16 hours then you need to seriously look at your diet as you sound very dependent on processed sugars and carbs.
My suggestion is to start with a food curfew. No food after 11pm. Next day, no food after 10pm. Then scale back to no food after 8pm. Assuming you wake at 7am, that’s 11 hours there. After doing that for a bit, try skipping breakfast or pushing it later and later.
The other tip is never eat when you aren’t hungry.
That lightheadedness you feel is your blood sugar dropping. It sounds like your diet had a lot of carbs in it and the lightheaded feeling is caused by all that glucose suddenly going away.
For most people that isn’t dangerous unless you’re diabetic or have some other metabolic disorder, you’ll feel uncomfortable for a while as your body adjusts.
If you want to make fasting as easy as possible try eating ketogenic for a few days prior to your fast. That’ll get the glucose out of your body after a few days and when you do decide to fast that lightheadedness should almost be non-existent.
I found it easiest to ease into the process when I first began. Giving your body a little time to adjust may help prevent the light-headedness, fatigue, etc. So if you currently eat 3 regular meals a day and want to work towards an evening window, start this week by skipping breakfast and don’t eat til lunch. if you can’t make it to lunch, have a small mid morning snack and push your lunch hour later. next week, don’t eat lunch, but have a small snack of protein/fat/carbs (whatever best holds you over) around 3 or 4. and then the following week, push that snack back even further to the beginning of your eating window, and make sure to plan a nice healthy large dinner.
also don’t just drink plain water ALL of the time. make sure to read about the electrolytes and find a solution for adding that to your water some during the day. this will help tremendously.
yes it is safe to weight lift while fasting, though you may want to start a little lighter as you are adjusting to the fasting. many people come to find out that they actually PREFER exercise while in a fasted state. I am definitely one of those people. however if you move on to do extended fasts (multiple days of water fasting/no food) you may find you need to go much lighter on the exercise and weight lifting during the extended fasts.