I'm pretty experienced with fasting through Jason Fung's stuff and always had urgent, turbo poops shortly after breaking a fast. I tried psyllium husk, metamucil, various foods and macro-combinations, easing into breaking a fast and all lead me to full on scutter butt.
That being the case, I figure I'll just do long fasts with snake juice and get more results per uncomfortable poop cycle. Everything was A-ok for my first four day fast (dropped 13 lbs) but the re-feed windows are too tight for my body to actually absorb anything before it escapes me at velocity.
Any top tips to get my feed window down from 6-10 hours?
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
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Yeah, I usually got crazy shits when I fast for more than a day, and then broke with a big meal. It didn’t matter how “healthy” or “clean” I ate.
I took care of that by breaking my fasts with something small. For example, a pickle. Or a banana and an apple. And then I’d wait another hour or two before my big meal.
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Insoluble fiber can actually make things worse because it adds bulk to your feces. If you do prolonged fasts, unless your gut is extremely unhealthy or you take laxatives, shits can stay in you for days. Nothing wrong with that though. The poop makes it to your large intestine and stays there where the body absorbs water and nutrients but doesn’t absorb any meaningful calories from it by that point. You are getting the urgent need to poop because that huge meal you had is basically sitting in the large intestine ready to go once there’s a need to make room for more food.
So here are my thoughts:
- Don’t overdo the insoluble fiber. See if you can get away without adding it artificially or just take a “therapeutic” amount. Supplemental fiber is deceiving because it’s completely dry but expands a lot once we swallow it.
- Consider eating a smaller refeed as long as you get an adequate amount of calories.
- Try some soluble/prebiotic fiber and probiotics to make sure your gut stays happy.
- Look into taking a gentle natural laxative between refeeds so that you might be able to schedule your shits rather than needing to shit immediately after eating. Snake juice already somewhat fits the bill for this with the amount of potassium and magnesium.