My Experience with Fasting
Today I wanted to write a blog post on my recent experience with fasting which is a topic I have been interested in recently and continue to research. For me it started back in November right after Thanksgiving when I was feeling a little sluggish from all of the Holiday food. Fasting was a topic that started to pop up on several of the podcasts I follow and it seemed like there were many benefits to it so I decided to give it a go myself. As with most things I decided to just dive right in rather than ease in and my first weekend the goal was to do a 72 hour fast which i made it to a little past 48. I’ll share more about my experience in the following paragraphs as since then I have done a 24hr once a week for the last few months.
My first experience with the 48ish hour fast was quite interesting, i decided to go water only even skipping my morning coffee which may have been a mistake. The first 24ish hours weren’t bad but around that time in the afternoon is when I started to get a headache which i think was more from the caffeine withdrawal than anything. I typically put a splash of my milk in my coffee which is why I chose to omit it because i didn’t want to risk breaking the fast. Around the 30ish hour mark the hunger pains really start to set in but it is very wavy, once you power through the pain it begins to subside. When I got closer to the 48hr mark the hunger pains actually diminished but boredom and wanting to get out of the house were one of the big factors for ending my fast.
Since doing my first long fast I have moved to doing a 24hr fast once a week, Thursday Lunch to Friday Lunch which really is quite easy once you get into the groove. I just make sure to eat a decent breakfast early, have a mid morning snack, and eat a filling lunch to begin my 24 hours. I do still drink coffee on Friday mornings but chose to do it black as to not break my fast. One of the main reasons for looking into fasting was to lose a little weight but ultimately to just give my gut and system a break. A big takeaway I have gotten from it is the mental clarity that you get and it has help to cut down cravings as well. Fasting makes you realize how much we just mindlessly eat and how much is marketed to us on a daily basis. I’m still experimenting personally with what protocol works best for myself but a couple tips are when fasting avoid tv and your phone, you will understand just how much we are marketed to then as pictures of food are constant. Another tip is don’t eat sushi for your last meal before your fast haha so if you’re curious about it give it a go! I’ll keep experimenting and researching myself, look for another follow up blog in the future!
