I’m currently 3 days into a fast. I started just because I wanted to lose weight and I followed all precautions. I’m taking sodium and potassium. I have magnesium supplements. But why online is there so much negative press on water fasting. Is it really that bad for you?
There’s no one single answer with regard to this, but from observation, there are multiple elements to the negative reputation fasting has.
I remember one time when I didn’t know any better I told an online friend I was fasting, and they FREAKED OUT on me! When i asked why they were so against it, they sent me a link from a woman’s magazine that was a fluff-piece trash-talking fasting, and its terrible side effects. Know what they listed as side effects?
“You’ll get hungry. Some people get dizzy. You might get a tummyache.”
Those were genuinely their DO NOT DO THIS DANGEROUS FAD!!! justifications. Ridiculous.
It’s difficult to sell “eat nothing,” so the diet industry isn’t interested in pushing it. I seem attempts to sell programs that intentionally complicate fasting by pretending you have to do it in a certain way at a certain age to spot-reduce, but mostly, the diet industry wants to sell workouts, meals, shakes, bars, tangible items that are proprietary. The profit motive is greatly reduced if your program is “eat nothing.”
People have been told, for decades, they need to eat at LEAST three times a day, and carb-load with 11 servings of bread, rice, or pasta, if they wanted to obtain optimum health. “Just eat nothing” is entirely contrary to that. And for a person who has spent 20 or 30 years eating thrice daily, the idea of skipping even one day can seem monstrous.
We’ve forgotten that we evolved to survive scarcity!
A lifetime of being told “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, “A healthy diet has 3 square meals a day”, “Eat lots of small meals throughout the day to lose weight”, “You have to eat or else Starvation Mode kicks in and you get fat”, etc
Nobody makes any money from fasting so that doesn’t help with promotion either
I think a lot of people view it as a fad. A lot of fad diets are unhealthy. Even fasting can be taken to an unhealthy level. That said, fasting has been around forever, literally. Are bodies are designed to fast, and as long as you return to a healthy diet once the fast is complete and take care of yourself during the fast, I don’t see the problem.
The same reason people reject things they don’t understand completely
MisinformationPrejudicesStubbornnessInability to think for themselvesCultural beliefs
It’s crazy to me to think that people rather have you drinking your body weight in sugar than not eating for a couple of hours lol
It is not bad or unhealthy. Just like anything in moderation.The pushback is because people use it like a binge and purge eating disorder without addressing lifestyle issues.“I can eat this whole box of Krispy Kremes because tomorrow I fast”
There’s no money selling the nothing people who fast don’t eat. That’s it. It’s not in the interest of big buisness to promote it. I have so much mental clarity (plus I get up at 5am, which is insane for me) whilst fasting. I’m doing it for weightloss, but it has so many other benefits. Takeout companies missing out on all my money won’t promote fasting.
Probably because it can be very dangerous if done incorrectly and/or in an unsafe manner, mainly with longer fasts. Electrolyte imbalances and possible refeeding syndrome, if unlikely for a responsible and informed faster, are extremely serious and not to be taken lightly. They can kill quite easily.
Plus people probably equate fasting with starvation, and have been programmed with “starvation mode” ideas from eating too few calories.
Not an expert. Just personal, unlettered opinion.
I think a fair number are secretly threatened/jealous, they’ve never gone more than like 12 hours without food in their life, at least not voluntarily. They think just 16:8 IMF is horribly difficult and unsustainable.
People addicted to garbage foodstuff feel threatened by people trying to improve themselves by abstaining from food. Your attempt at controlling the body and mind reminds them of their lack of control over their own.
It challenges accepter wisdom when it comes to food, and it looks too much like an eating disorder to people who know nothing about it and think you will starve if you don’t eat 3 times a day.
Plus, I think it touches something in peoples psyche that makes them really defensive. Like they see their own failings when they compare their own life habits to someone who has the self control to fast. I would argue 99% of our social and personal woes come from lack of impulse control and fasting is a painfully obvious demonstration of impulse control.
My attitude regarding these people is inspired by the Greek stoic philospher Epictetus.
He said:“Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them.”
I have a really nice if and sweet neighbor. Shes a stay at home mom from China with 2 awesome kids. I was talking with her and husband about fasting and autophagy, and cavemen hunters having to hunt for days between meals and religious fasting always being a thing in many cultures.
Then she told me how fasting is bad for me because it will disrupt my “chi.” I wasn’t sure how to respond so I just said OK.
Even though it’s kinda woowoo this is the most thought out reply I get from people. Most people who know about fasting( medical professionals, dieticians….etc) write me off as some miraculous exception crazy person for being able to do short extended fasts.
But most random people and my Mom all day the same thing:
“Don’t do it, it’ll damage your system!”
-How will my system be damaged?
Crickets……..
Money (food/drug industries can’t make $$$ off fasting), registered dietitians are educated by the food industry and many, many other reasons.
Ignore the negativity and keep doing what makes you feel good.
What’s wild is that someone in a keto sub recently posted about breaking a long fast with some nice homemade food, and people were on talking about “starvation mode” and “losing muscle” when those are the exact same things people who do keto heard about, it’s just crazy how they themselves encountered that attitude but don’t hesitate to do so themselves…
From what I see online, fasting is still a new area of research with scarce studies done on extended fasts like you would see in this subreddit. If you go to any dietician or doctor, they would not recommend fasting as the primary solution to weight loss.
Most people who fast are motivated by rapid weight loss, which is not recommended by medical professionals.
Personally I think it’s not a big stretch to think fasting as a gateway to developing an eating disorder. People struggle to maintain or lose weight so they get frustrated and take the drastic/immediate solution which is fasting.
That said, there are good research backing up all kinds of intermittent fasting. Source: the Huberman podcast.
Side note: People on the subreddit always point to how fasting was a regular part of life in ancient times and our body is accustomed to fasting.
But I am confused because our ancestors definitely don’t have packets of sodium, potassium and magnesium available for you to take, so does the above point really stand?
There are many reasons already discussed, but the two big ones for me are that (i) people are often entirely unwilling to challenge assumptions which they have accepted long ago but never put to the test, and (ii) misery loves company.
Honestly, from what I read, there are some dangers when fasting for over 2 weeks, and in some cases, people have died. However, its not that they died from starvation but instead from heart related problems where their bodies ate the muscles surrounding the heart. Though the reason most likely is because they were not consuming electrolytes and supplementing their depleted stores.
I believe a legitimate reason as to why fasting is dangerous is if
Because it’s hard to do. Humans have an aversion to discipline. Also, people don’t like being reminded that their weight and overall health is their responsibility. It’s easier to “try everything” but the one thing guaranteed to work if you have the discipline to stick with it.
If you haven’t seen it, Disney and National Geographic just made an episode on fasting.
It’s probably the best positive press the fasting ever got.
(my 2 cents about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M30E3hqDaw )