Started fasting a few months ago with 24 hours once a week, then slowly worked up to 24h fasts twice a week. A few days ago, I tried going past the 24h mark just to see my body’s response. I ended up breaking my fast at 30 hours, but not because I was hungry…. it was cos I met up over food with a friend I hadn’t seen in around 3 years & felt it was well worth breaking my fast to commune with him over good food hehe.
Now, I’m thinking of trying to do a longer fast again (i.e. more than my usual 24h), but wanted to know if there’s actually any incremental benefit if I fast 36 hours vs. 48 hours vs. 72 hours? Like at which time marker does the fasting benefit plateau (think law of diminishing returns, but the line is flat) — or is there even such a time as plateauing for fasting?
Would appreciate the helpful responses!
This is an chart I found back when I was research fasting before I started. Don’t really understand most of it, but perhaps someone more informed here can actually go in more detail if you have questions.
People fast for different reasons. For regenerating your autoimmune system and healing, 72 hours is when “autophagy” peaks.
There are lots of websites with the stages and benefits of fasting and I’m no expert. Here is an example of a website with the benefits of different durations. https://perfectketo.com/the-5-stages-of-fasting/
Dr. Jason Fung has a very well researched and well written book about fasting which includes information about the benefits of different durations of fasting that you could probably check out from your local library or convince the librarian to get if they don’t have it. Or kindle it. The title is “The Complete Guide To Fasting.”
After 6 months of random fasting, I believe any length of fast is beneficial.
Probably the main benefit of longer fasts is more autophagy. And more weight loss (maybe)
I’ve only done 1 ultra long fast of 90 hours.
Then 1 month of inconsistent ADF of 24-42 hour fasts.
Then the rest was just mainly between 16-20 hour fasts. With lots of breaks from fasting in between.
It takes a little time to really experience the benefits. For me, the 90 hour fast was SUPER effective… but I don’t want to stress my body out with too many of those extended fasts. Maybe 1-2 times a year max!
ADF was great, but hard for me personally.
16-20 hour fasts seems to be the sweet spot for me with occasional 24-30ish hour fasts once a week.
From my own personal experience, I think it’s not that important to stick to a strict schedule. I just work fasting into my schedule and I either fast more or less than planned depending on how I feel.
But any fast you do, it’s gonna be beneficial. Play around with schedules and experiment.
Fasting has made such a HUGE difference in my life and helped me get healthier, leaner, stronger and more energetic even though I’m not a strict faster :)
Good luck!
Depends on your goals but some studies state that over multiple days your HGH keeps going up (I recall reading one that said up to 1,200%?). Also if your goals are HGH or autophagy or immune cell regeneration, it makes more sense to “get up to speed” and then ride out the benefits rather than stopping and starting continually
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For example my fasts are illness related so my personal goal is to get up past 72 hours and ride the wave to soak up as much benefit as I can before my body tells me it’s time to refeed
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HOWEVER! I’m actually really happy to see you’ve been slowly building the skill and my actual advice is to just keep doing what feels right for you. You get more “return on investment” the longer you fast, yes, but the fasting method you stick to is the one that will give the most benefits so keep doing you - you’re already doing great in my opinion
Not sure your goals.
If it’s weight loss, fasted hours past 12 each week isn’t a bad measure. It’s fasted state hours.
So if you are doing a 24 hour fast a week, that is 12 hours in fasted state a week. If you do 2 24 hour fasts that’s 24 hours. If you do a 36 hour fast, that’s also 24 hours fasted state. A 48 hour fast is 36 hours.
If you do 16:8, that’s 28 hours. If you do OMAD (recommend one large heathy mean every day), that’s 77 fasted state hours. I think that’s the most effective.
