Extended Fasting Help thread

Reminder that this thread is probably made by some guy who's developed an obsession with "proving" that CICO isn't real, and has admitted that he's been flooding the board with fasting threads.
desuarchive.org/fit/search/text/fung/type/op/

This is actually a common question. Women have been fasting for 6,000 years with no problems. Source: Every Religion Ever.

The only consideration is whether or not you are pregnant, no? Then you are good to go.

Children should also not fast. And you should take every other consideration that a man would take when undertaking a fast:

allaboutfasting.com/who-can-fast.html

Thanks a ton man!

Another dumb question. Will black coffee with a teaspoon of Stevia throw off the fast? Kind of addicted to the caffeine. From what I get, coffee is fine (black coffee), but the stevia is what concerns me about throwing off the fast.

>muh calories!

>desuarchive.org/fit/search/text/fung/type/op/

The 3rd, 5th and 6th posts were not me. But thanks for noticing my hard work. A reminder that I do this for free, I am not a doctor, and you should research this all for yourself. I'm only here to help because helping others, in my eyes, is the greatest joy.

I'm tired of fat /fitizens/ cutting calories and failing only to be berated in fat hate threads for not having any willpower. They were given bad advice, I'm here to change that. Proceed at your own discretion.

I should also add, here's Mr. Not Dr. Fung himself admitting that he was gorging and couldn't count calories.
desuarchive.org/fit/thread/40923109/#q40928230

>Women have been fasting for 6,000 years with no problems.
>Life expectancy doubled since we stopped doing all that crap

Ok

Black coffee is just fine. I would stay away from sweeteners just to be safe. Coffee has actually been shown to speed up metabolism during a fast and increase the gains (losses?) of autophagy.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24769862

and now it's going down. this generation of americans is the first that will die younger than their parents. could it be, dare i say it, all the insulin they're bathing their bodies in all fucking day?

You fags got memed, the insulin response from artificial sweeteners is so small it's meaningless. Of course you're doing fucking water fasts so you got memed in the ass already.

OP still waiting for your pic

>a fat fuck is going around giving advice, telling people to stop eating

lmao

It could be insulin, or maybe it's the hordes of third worlders shitting up our healthcare system and dragging the life expectancy down closer to the shithole where they came from

So I've been doing IF for like 3 months now, and the only thing I have in the morning before I break the fast in the afternoon is black coffee with a teaspoon of stevia.

Is the stevia throwing off my fasting period? I also drinnk a cup of coffee with a teaspoon of stevia before I go to bed (during my fast). For some weird reason it helps me fall asleep...

STOP EATING FOOD

You're asking if something with zero calories is breaking your period of zero calories?

>Stevia
Hey there Dan Quinn

It's almost like things without calories can cause an insulin response.

>At about 24 hours into the fast your HGH will spike. This is mostly for rebuilding the proteins that your body has torn down. It is important for maintaining muscle mass that you do light exercise. All that is explained in the link above.

Absolutely wrong. Even vastly supraphysiological doses of GH (which I have taken) have not been shown to actually increase muscle protein synthesis or skeletal muscle hypertrophy. Will it increase lipolytic effects and IGF-1 production? At those levels, very slightly.

>Yarasheski KE, Campbell JA, Smith K, Rennie MJ, Holloszy JO, Bier DM. Effect of growth hormone and resistance exercise on muscle growth in young men. Am J Physiol. 1992 Mar;262(3 Pt 1):E261-7
>Yarasheski KE, Zachweija JJ, Angelopoulos TJ, Bier DM. Short-term growth hormone treatment does not increase muscle protein synthesis in experienced weight lifters. J Appl Physiol (1985). 1993 Jun;74(6):3073-6.
>Blackman MR, Sorkin JD, Münzer T, Bellantoni MF, Busby-Whitehead J, Stevens TE, Jayme J, O'Connor KG, Christmas C, Tobin JD, Stewart KJ, Cottrell E, St Clair C, Pabst KM, Harman SM. Growth hormone and sex steroid administration in healthy aged women and men: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2002 Nov 13;288(18):2282-92.
>Lange KH, Andersen JL, Beyer N, Isaksson F, Larsson B, Rasmussen MH, Juul A, Bülow J, Kjaer M. GH administration changes myosin heavy chain isoforms in skeletal muscle but does not augment muscle strength or hypertrophy, either alone or combined with resistance exercise training in healthy elderly men. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2002 Feb;87(2):513-23
>Berggren A, Ehrnborg C, Rosén T, Ellegård L, Bengtsson BA, Caidahl K. Short-term administration of supraphysiological recombinant human growth hormone (GH) does not increase maximum endurance exercise capacity in healthy, active
young men and women with normal GH-insulin-like growth factor I axes. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2005 Jun;90(6):3268-73

If it has zero calories it cannot raise your insulin in any meaningful way

Yeah, stevia does not.

If I had a camera I would post before and after pictures, I'm going to go ask my neighbor if they have one. I WILL have a picture up in this thread. I have lost almost 45 pounds and am at 5'11 165 lbs.

Nobody is arguing that not eating will make you lose weight. You're still a fatass at heart if you can't control yourself to the point where you need to completely stop eating to lose weight.

With 0 calories an insulin response will have no effect regardless. Fuck, it might actually be *beneficial* for clearing out blood glucose and further putting you into a deeper ketogenic state.

Idk I'm not a medfag. If you were to inject yourself with some insulin while fasting (to simulate an insulin response) I can't imagine anything good happening.

The point of fasting is to lower your fasting insulin level.

Okay...so no solid response on the Stevia...

I just won't use it.

Not sure what you're on about:

>But our concern here is HGH. It starts at 0.73 and peaks at 9.86. That is a 1250% increase in growth hormone. Even with a relatively short 5 day fast, we are talking about 300% increase. All this HGH increases without drugs.

intensivedietarymanagement.com/fasting-and-growth-hormone-physiology-part-3/

Ergh mate... Stevia is very estrogenic. It should be avoided like soy.

I don't know much about stevia dude. I would avoid it just to be safe.

You'd drop into a hypoglycemic state and likely lose consciousness - unable to prevent the nasty things about to happen due to a dangerously low blood glucose level.

>fasting level

Correct. In which case it isn't *fasted* anymore, but you're still clearing out blood glucose to initiate a ketone response which will do more to reduce fasting insulin levels.

That's even accounting for the fact that very few artificial sweeteners have any effect on insulin levels - some actually promote glucagon-like peptide 1 (which fasting already promotes) but the majority do not show any statistically significant increase in insulin levels.

>care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/12/2184.full
>journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005106
>ajpgi.physiology.org/content/296/4/G735.short

Will do.

Solid black coffee it is.

Thanks for the help.

Yeah I'd rather stay fasted and let my ketone level go up by itself.

Bruh, I started doing IF, and just forgot about drinking coffee after like a week. Don't even know why, but I haven't had caffeine in like 2 months, and I don't feel bad.

After reading some of this shit, is my 18:6 daily fast worthless?

It's feminizing anyway, best to avoid it unless you are a woman.

And if you would care to look at the studies I've shown, it lists that even massively supraphysiological doses (15 IU's daily or more, which is vastly more than a 1250% increase) has been shown to have no effect on healthy men.

Your article cites a small study on 61-81 year old men with low IGF-1 levels, who had no controls put in place for diet or exercise over the 6-month period. This is not an accurate representation nor is it relevant to our particular age demographic.

>fat storage mode while fasting
And what exactly is the body converting into fat?

>is my 18:6 daily fast worthless?

It depends how quickly you want to lose fat. Longer fasts lead to faster fat loss.

Nothing, but it will take some time to go back to fat burning mode.

When you start eating again, do you eat at maintenance or deficit? How long is an "average" fast once you're acclimated?

Bingo.

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of IF and prolonged fasts, I think there are a multitude of health benefits that be gained from it. That said, I'm on exogenous hormones so I can get away with a lot more than a natural. However it appears OP hasn't done any research and I'd like to dispel some of these ridiculous claims.

But you're already in a fat burning mode because you are in a deficit of not eating.

Yea, but I have a pretty bad caffiene addiction. I get headaches if I don't drink coffee in the morning, and other withdrawl symptoms as well.

Regarding the 18:6 fast, I'm not seeing a difference from when I was doing 16:8...but I'm wondering if that's because of all the stevia I was using.

>When you start eating again, do you eat at maintenance or deficit?

A surplus.

Fasting periods are for fat loss. During feasting periods, you need to eat a lot. Otherwise you're basically just doing a calorie-reduced diet, which is shit.

>How long is an "average" fast once you're acclimated?

What do you mean?

Those supraphysiological doses aren't relevant to a natural hgh increase and all the physiological changes that would go along with it.

You are arguing that the HGH released during a fast plays no role in maintaining and even growing muscle mass? Why is the body releasing it then, for shits and giggles?

Lots of professional athletes use the eat, fast, eat method to take advantage of the HGH released. I would be happy to cite some for you.

Start drinking less and less coffee each day. Maybe supplement it with tea.
t. some guy that gets caffeine withdrawal after having caffeine for 3 days and then none for the 4th day

So if you eat at a surplus, don't you just gain back all the shit you lost? This doesn't make sense to me, but 18:6 (I know 16:8 is standard but I don't eat "lunch" until 2pm) has helped me with eating less calories throughout the day. Basically, I do 18:6 and only eat about 900-1300 calories, but I still make sure I get over 100g of protein every day. Is this wrong? If so, why?

Also, I thought the 2nd question was pretty easy to understand. I guess what I mean is, after you've done a few long term fasts, how long do you fast for on average now? 5 days? 10 days? Does it vary wildly? I need consistency in whatever program I follow. I need boxes to check, for my own neurosis.

>During feasting periods, you need to eat a lot. Otherwise you're basically just doing a calorie-reduced diet, which is shit.

Wut. But if you're not reducing your calories overall, then you're not gonna lose weight are you?

Do you mean, eat above maintenance on your "feasting" days, but your weekly total calories should be below your TDEE so you continue cutting?

So endogenous and exogenous GH have different effects now?

GH has no effect on skeletal muscle hypertrophy, hyperplasia or muscle protein synthesis (studies cited )

GH is lipolytic up to +/- 2 IU in which case the free fatty acid/glycerol metabolism of a fasted state peaks out. I.e burning all the fat your body can handle at once.

GH is required for hepatocyte growth and cell proliferation which is brought about by IGF-1 and MGF pathways - this *may* increase muscle protein synthesis via other pathways however without AAS in the mix it's unlikely to have any effect, as confirmed in the studies above (done on natural subjects).

Systemic IGF levels increase which is important for vast amounts of body processes, most of which don't affect athletes more than anyone else as they are generally autophagic/overall health improving functions. As we get older obviously our GH levels decline which drags our IGF-1 levels lower, supplementing or (as shown in the article you cited ) fasting at an age where it has declined can improve this.

GH has no effect on athletic ability.

No. Your metabolism will speed up to avoid gaining back a bunch of fat. It's more about the hormones than about calories - and by fasting, you are improving your hormonal profile.

>Also, I thought the 2nd question was pretty easy to understand. I guess what I mean is, after you've done a few long term fasts, how long do you fast for on average now? 5 days? 10 days? Does it vary wildly? I need consistency in whatever program I follow. I need boxes to check, for my own neurosis.

But the great thing about fasting is its flexibility. If you feel like you need to lose more fat, fast more. If not, just stick to 18/6.

So basically, what I'm saying is that you need to cite some studies that disprove all of the ones I have provided here. Otherwise you're just parroting common mantras.

I fast from 5-9am every day but my issue is when im hungry im super grumpy and hangry. What did you guys do to counter this?

I'm losing an average of .6 lbs a day right now (mega fatty, 328 -> 296 in 55 days), and I'm OK with that for the time being I guess. I do think I will give the long term thing a try soon though. I just got a gym setup at home, though, so I want to do some lifting first.

5 pm or am?

4 hours ain't a fast bro.

are there any refined carbs in your diet? if so, replace them with unrefined ones and natural fats.

-.-
comon you dweeb pm of course

Listen I realize that you are an academic, your write well and your sources are on point. But you are using too much medical terminology for me to follow, I am doing my best here, I'm trying to learn. That being said:

I don't think it is fair to compare doses of GH to naturally produced and released GH. There is a lot more that goes into making it effective than just one hormone being released. Your line:

>GH is required for hepatocyte growth and cell proliferation which is brought about by IGF-1 and MGF pathways - this *may* increase muscle protein synthesis via other pathways however without AAS in the mix it's unlikely to have any effect, as confirmed in the studies above (done on natural subjects).

can be used to support that claim.

>GH has no effect on athletic ability.

I find this very hard to believe, but I will have to research it in the meantime, which is exactly what I'm off to do. Thank you for the constructed bantz, I'm here to learn.

woops woops my bad im an idiot 5pm-9am""""

The image I posted in has links to the studies in the far column if you want to peruse them.

I'm all for helping you learn, that's why I'm sourcing my claims and showing you information where you're incorrect, so you can be better educated on the topic.

Who else fasting for /Jesus/?

I was about to go apeshit lol.

I used to be a grumpy asshole all the time, but it was due to other shit going on in my life (hiding shit from my wife and lying to her all the time). Once I did a week of 18:6, the hunger didn't really bother me (or wasn't even really there anymore), so just keep going user. You have to stop obsessing over food so much that it affects your mood. That shit is in your brain. Tell your brain to fuck off and get over it.

But like the stomach pain is what makes me grumpy and its not like i want to be.

>its 2017 and people are still trying the nigerian diet lmao

I think you'll find that Nigerians have limited access to sea salt and clean water.

>Your metabolism will speed up to avoid gaining back a bunch of fat
You are one persistent troll. Your body loves putting on fat, it's a security blanket for times of famine. And people fall for this faggots bait

I've heard that tea is a good supplement for coffee. I'd give it a try, but I really don't see the big deal in drinking coffee. It tastes good to me and makes me feel good. Are there any really bad side effects?

How long have you been doing daily IF?

about 2 weeks

I appreciate it. I'm reading this study:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2439518/

Its seeming more and more that you may be correct. I cannot find anything that GH increases muscle mass, but there is a correlation of GH deficiency and muscle loss. Not sure what to make of it, my brain hurts. I'm still reading.

Would SARMS be the ideal thing to take during a fast? I would prevent any muscle wasting.

It will get better user, just stick with it. I'm like 2 months in, and I don't even think about lunch until like 2pm, sometimes it's like 4pm.

I found that stomach/hunger pains went away around week 4.

I've started making my eating window less and less (down to 4 hours now) and I only get the occasional fit of stomach growls. And even then, it doesn't hurt like it used to. It's more an annoyance than anything.

Oh, also, if you're not, drink LITERAL FUCKTONS of water. It really does help.

Ok, I fucking get it now, dude. I think.

HGH is important in the MAINTENANCE of muscle and bone mass. Therefore it would make sense that it is released during a fast, to minimized muscle and bone density loss. How do you feel about this? Am I on to something?

I am interested in this extended fasting. Recently I decided I need to cut a bit (13% bodyfat atm), but I wonder if an extended fast is beneficial for me. I do loads of cardio (running, boxing, muay thai) much more than weight training. I train 1-3 times a day. Right now I'm doing a very light form of intermittent fasting. I eat 3 meals basically and my fast lasts about 14 hours. My meals are timed so that I have energy to complete my next workout, but if I would do an extended fast, I would be too weak to perform these workouts well. Last time I tried training where I hadn't eaten anything yet for the day, my workout suffered dramatically. The only thing feasible is a light jog or light calisthenics.

Is there a way to work around this, or should I just forget the idea of an extended fast?

I have low blood pressure and have passed out more than once because a blood rush when I stand up. I am 6'6 and 230lb, I do cardio twice a week. Anecdotal evidence suggest that I am more likely to pass out when I fast.

How can I work around this? How can avoid blood rushes when I fast?

if you are dead set on losing some fat, i'd suggest trying to shorten the eating window to 6-8 hours and eating 2 meals instead of 3.

I am.

>lose consciousness
insomniac here , that sounds relaxing
kek

Once your body acclimates to the fast you will be running on ~2000 calories of body fat a day. You can get plenty done on those calories. I am on 65 hours and I am feeling amazing, I've been stretching and doing random exercises with my barbell and pullup bar while I monitor this thread.

Coffee would help you a ton, while you are fasting, to get the energy you need to exercise. Do note that you will likely not GAIN any muscle mass during a fast. You will benefit from minimizing muscle and bone density loss as well as staying in cardiovascular shape. I hope this helps.

Also 13% is pretty low to do an extended fast. But I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Just try to minimize muscle loss as much as you can by following the advice above and researching more on your own. Good luck!

lmao

I do not know anything about this, my man. My kneejerk reaction is to say don't do it. However, if there is down-time in the thread I will dig into your situation.

I got ya. I've fasted before and haven't had issues. Its just when I go hardcore I run into problems. I didnt think about saltwater though, it might help.

Apparently your BP actually drops during a fast, go figure. Salt can help increase your blood pressure by helping you retain water. So I would say, if you fast, drink a lot of salt water. You should 100% talk to a doctor before you start one though. Your situation seems quite volatile.

Do I take my suppies while fasting?
multi, vit D, zinc, etc.

I have potassium and salt covered.

Seems like a good approach. Slowly decreasing the eating window and eating a meal less is what I'll do.
Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind if I ever decide to do an extended fast.

salt for sodium
epsom salts for magnesium

i read that potassium supplementation can be dangerous (and is unnecessary when fasting)

Nearing 24 hours and actually feeling pretty good. I know 24 hours is not much, but last time I did this I felt like killing myself

Maybe it's the salt?

electrolytes definitely make it easier. how long are you fasting for?

gonna try for 3 days, then break the fast in the morning, which will be like 72-80 hours total

good luck.