I’ve been doing 16:8 with a 48 hour fast once per week for the last couple months. I’m losing weight and feeling good. No idea if this is too much but it doesn’t seem very difficult to me. I’m taking proper electrolytes on the 48 hour fasts.
It sounds quite reasonable to me (and probably will to most people here). Mind you, if you live in an Anglophone country, most of the people with whom you interact won’t agree, especially in the US where not eating 3 squares + 2 snacks is “starvation”.
My situation is somewhat unique. Mid/late 60’s & have malignant ocular tumors. I had broken out of a decade-long metabolic decline in 2019 thanks to fasting and correcting a number of poor dietary habits. The cancer thing is a recent discovery, and in the interest of slowing tumor growth I have finally gotten myself on an ADF(ish) routine, fasting M-W-F (36-42 hours each) and eating Sat-Sun-Tu-Th w/ time-restricted windows (low carb, not quite OMAD – too many calories to stuff in in 2hr). I exercise all days but Sat.
Can’t speak for tumors (I’m back for imaging late this mo), but other benefits have been remarkable, from less general joint pain to a complete remission of what I THOUGHT was permanent rosacea. Even the old man plague of being phlegm-y is gone. Except for some sleep challenges that I haven’t cured yet, there is ZERO ill effect. I’m cruising slowly toward a BMI of \~21(ish), and will modify somewhat at that point.
We can get religious about fasting even if we’re entirely areligious in other regards, so the high praise for fasting can seem to be a bit unreasonable. But honestly the most rational aspect of me says that spending far less of our modern lives eating and being overfed may be the best thing we can do for ourselves. Regardless of how you see the Universe, you are a remarkably well-designed organism, and that design is very amenable to caloric abstinence.
I’m also fasting for healing purposes. I’ve reached my goal weight which is at the top of the normal range for my height, so I am far from underweight. I write that to emphasize that you have to have the physical resources to do extended fasting. As long as you have the body fat and are able to keep your minerals stable (I have to keep an eye on my iron) and are relatively healthy, it should be fine, but a heavier person can endure longer fast than a slender person.
I fast five days a month and eat 18:6 and eat in a similar manner. I do a day of liquid only and pureed soup to transition into fasting and do the same in reverse to refeed. My fast is spaced according to my menstrual cycle.
March 13 will be the unofficial third anniversary of the beginning of the pandemic (says me, that’s when everybody went home to work remotely in 2020). So two months ago, I resolved to lose the 28 pounds I gained since then, and regain my fitness that I had right before the pandemic.
I have been HFLC and keto for over 20 years, and am an “intermediate level faster“ from before, too. But I started to hit it hard again during the past two months. I went for a nearly 3 weeks of rollingg 72s, with a 4-day and a 5-day fast, too. As you can imagine, the results and the “NSVs” have been amazing. I feel great!
After I drop these last 8 pounds, my forever routine will be: a 48 hour fast once per month, 72 hour fast each quarter, and a 4 or 5-day fast about once a year.
I just read a scientific paper, published in October, that followed a cohort doing 10-day complete fast. The conclusion was the outcomes were all good, with no negative impacts or potential health issues.
[Effects of 10-Day Complete Fasting on Physiological Homeostasis, Nutrition and Health Markers in Male Adults]
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9503095/#!po=42.4419)
For over 5 weeks I’ve been doing 120hr fasts, then a omad the following day.
I think it just comes down to your nutrition and vitamin intake…. Much like the electrolyte argument.
I’m down 70lbs since September, 40 since Christmas. Finally at my highschool weight.
Ha! Do you have fat to lose?? My weekly fasting protocol is, I stop eating on Sunday night and eat again on Saturday morning. I have plenty of weight to lose and I worked up to this. Works really well for me.