I’m a 270 lb female and I have a lot of excess body fat. I’m probably around 45-50%. I watched a video awhile ago of a morbidly obese man who just fasted until he was around his goal weight. I couldn’t tell you who it was off the top of my head but I’m going to try to keep looking for the video.
I’ve been mulling over doing that for a while and I think I’m ready to just do it. The only thing that has been stopping me is that I don’t want to start or end a fast like that the wrong way. I am aware that this isn’t a fast I should do all the time, and I want to minimize the stress on my body, especially my cardiovascular system and hormones.
Here are my main questions:
-is exercising towards the start of a fast like this a bad idea? I feel like it could either kickstart weight loss since I’m so overweight or put my body deeper into conserving calories, I just don’t know enough about metabolism to tell.
-what should my diet look like before the fast and after the fast? How long should I eat like that for a 40 day fast?
-what kind of electrolytes (meaning what product) should I use? I see the recommended daily amount in the wiki, does that daily amount vary at all for long term fasts?
A 40-day fast is substantial. I’ve done 16 and 31 days; I fasted that long as my primary goals were serious health conditions beyond weight loss.
The longer the fast is, the greater risk of complications during the fast and coming out of it. Is a slight speed up worth the risk? I would consider something like rolling 72s or alternate-daily fasting instead.
To answer your question, being adapted to burning fat makes starting the fast much easier. So going very low carb for a few days before is helpful. It’s tough to switch to fat burning and tough to not eat. Why not cross one of those off beforehand?
For ending the fast, I won’t try to answer that one quickly other than: please go very slowly when breaking a 40-day fast.
ive completed a 30 day fast. what i did to prepare:
– keto for several months with a few, incidental higher carb days here and there because im not a diet zealot. when i started feeling repulsed by food, and when i felt i could go days without eating, i was ready. this took several months to reach.
– during keto, i took daily multivitamin, regular beef liver, eggs, chicken liver, generally nutritious foods that fell within what one considers low carb. doing a 30 day fast is a long time to be low on nutrition.
during the 30 days:
– weak electrolyte water (rip off ones sold in stores), varying doses of salt to the point of multi day weight stagnation, and a few water soluble vitamins (probably could’ve done without these).
– most days, i had enough energy with only, if i recall correctly, 5 days in which i could only lie down. during the last week, i had crazy high amounts of energy and did yard work and rearranged the kitchen lol.
– i broke the fast with canned meat by nibbling it in tiny amounts throughout the night, until emptied. (watch for salt content.) i also had cheesy broccoli soup in the following days. i didnt do much soup like liquids other than that. i handled it fine, although what i ate went against common recommendations.
caution:
since you are doing this for 30 days, chipping a few hundred calories off with pre-fast exercise wont be worthwhile.
a week after fast break day, do not get confident and eat a large, normal meal. you will get severe constipation from bowels being too weak to move and might make a panic doctor’s visit.
your stomach and joints could roar (painfully) to life if you have any pain normally, pain which disappeared during the fast. a 3 week fast did this to me within 15 minutes of breaking it with milk. it was an interesting response.
if you regularly exercise, doing so a couple days after fast-break will be difficult, as you will have zero stamina to jog even a few steps, but it will return within 2 weeks.
my menstrual cycle was disrupted and went from 27 days to i think 42 days, and my period lengthened from 5 days to 11, hard to recall exactly. if this length of fast is the only physically stressful activity you do, i guess it would return to normal in a reasonable amount of time, but mine took a couple years to return to normal because i kept dieting and exercising very hard after.
i cant tell you what works for you, only what worked for me. hopefully this helps out.
I started with intermittent fasting and ramped up, to 2 days, then 3 days, back to IF, then extend to a week, more IF then 10 days, etc to build up to it AND to avoid plateaus or metabolism slowing. Good luck!
You really should start fasting more slowly. I went from over 350 to 220 lbs in about 8 months and I never did more than a 72 hour fast. I often did 36-48 hours. There are a lot of complications that can happen after 72 hours that I didn’t feel competent enough to tackle. Cut sugar and carbs, go slow, and start with a 48 hour fast. It will really suck the first time you do it, but it is like flexing a muscle you’ve never used before, once you do it, you’ll get better at it and then you can tackle longer fasts.
Exercise is harder to do on an extended fast and also more dangerous depending on how good you understand electrolytes and understanding/listening to your body. If you are getting cramps or headaches then you’re out of balance.