Wanted to share this here as a gentle, healthy reminder that things can obviously be taken too far. This poor man attempted a 40 day dry fast and died during it (25 days in?). There’s no real context given as to whether he had done any sort of preparation, etc … though I think most in this group would agree that a full 40 days is unreasonable, if not downright impossible. Be safe out there and please be sure to set reasonable goals for yourself.
Yeah, sometimes you have to listen to your body. I hate that phrase but it’s true. You can always refeed for a while and start again.
It doesn’t scare me. If I had a reason to fast for that long, whether spiritual or physical, the risk would probably be worth it.
The conditions of a fast can have a huge impact on the fast outside of just the not eating.
On a youtube comment, someone also mentioned they DF’d for 30 days and got a stroke. I don’t understand why people do it for so long. I feel like you could only get away with it if you have lots of fat and water weight stored for your body to feed off of. And you’re sedentary.
Looks like he was already pretty slim too. We need to always be aware of our limits. I’ve already realized as I continue to lose weight I will soon reach a body fat percentage where I will probably actually do harm to myself for doing really long fasts as I get older. While I have been overweight it makes sense to consider weeks of fasting.
I think fasting, especially dry fasting, attracts the very competitive folks who naturally want to go hard with goals. I know I am one of those people. I recently fasted for 6 days, first two being dry, which was after a 3 day fast with only one day of refeeding in between. My goal was to fast for at least two weeks…but it’s wrong to think of all that fasting I did do, especially while still working full time and exercising daily as a “failure”. I didn’t break my fast on impulse, I just considered that doing multiple one week fasts over these next 3 months will be great for me as well, and possibly with better muscle gains in the long run than fasting for the entire month.
I tell my friends this all the time - it’s not about being perfect. You don’t need to eat perfect 24/7/365, only eat after 10am but before 4pm, never any sugar, and fast constantly around that. Never forget to enjoy life too, or it will slip by. If you are intermittently fasting often, working out, eating a wide array of real foods, and these are your daily habits for 95% of the time, you are doing well for yourself.
He doesn’t look like he had enough fat(water) stored before the fast for something this long. Aka he wasn’t fat. If you have at least 30-50 kg to spare it’s doable. I don’t know how much you can do right to make this happen without fat
doing extreme things people need to be very knowledgeable on what the body needs to function for example what are all the electrolyte deficiencies called? what happens when the body goes into hypoglycemia or hyponatremia and what are the symptoms. plus other stuff like monitoring their blood pressure, heart rate etc
dude probably did not have professional medical supervision and like others have mentioned already did not have large amounts of fat storage which significantly lowers metabolic water production.
too much ego can kill you.
and let’s argue this person successfully went 25 days. if the refeed was not carefully planned he could also die here. for example he immediately eats fruit after breaking a very long dry fast, that would cause a seizure from the immediate insulin spike and most likely cardiac arrest from the pancreas and kidneys extreme stress.
this story also remind me of that lady faster RIP on yt that went into a long water fast +100 days to the point she starved herself to death . and she had kids 🤦♂️