I have been fasting for 4 days, followed by 1 day of normal eating.
That means I am fasting on 80% of days, or 24 days out of 30.
The weird thing is that if I switched to fasting for 2 days, followed by 1 day of normal eating, I would still be fasting 66.6% of the time, or 20 days out of 30.
Put in other terms, shortening my fasting periods from 4 days at a time to 2 days at a time would reduce the number of fasting days by just 4 days per month, from 24 to 20.
Another example: 3 days of fasting followed by 1 day of feeding still has you fasting 75% of the time. That means you are still fasting 22.5 days out 30. Only 1.5 days per month less than fasting for 4 days at a time.
I sometimes wonder why I should bother to do 4 days of fasting at a time when I could get very similar results from 2 days at a time (or 3 days at a time – barely any difference).
And this really blows my mind. If I switched to eating just 1 day per week (with 6 days of fasting), I would be fasting about 26 days out of the month – only 2 more days than fasting for 4 days at a time.
And a 29-day fast followed by 1 day of eating is only 5 more fasting days per month than a 4-day-at-a-time fast over the same period, which yields 24 fasting days in a month.
I’m no expert but wouldn’t you loose the benefits from the longer fasts?
Beyond 48 hours is where you get increased growth hormone, normalisation of insulin levels, and even immune cell regeneration. That’s from the literature I have read.
There’s a 2021 study that tested a 10 day water fast. Protein metabolism is significant for the first 4-5 days, at which point the most robust muscle sparing effects begin. Therefore Days 5/6-10 your metabolism is primarily burning fat and almost completely sparing metabolically active tissue such as skeletal muscle.
Your math does not account for the fact that days 1-2 do not have the same amount of fat burning as day 3 and beyond. The first 24 hours or longer (depending on what and how much you eat) are when your body metabolizes the food you ate and then any stored glycogen. There is some fat burning, but not the same amount of fat burning that you get after all the food and glycogen is used up.