Your plan was to fast 5 days straight and walk 30k steps a day? Am I reading that correctly?
Your body was clearly looking for nourishment and needed calories and a piece of sugar-free gum wasn’t going to cut it.
None of this seems like healthy behavior.
So, r/fasting might be a better subreddit for advice on fasts that go past 72 hours.
Other than making sure you’re getting enough electrolytes I’d say listening to your body is key. No shame in having a recovery meal halfway thru and doing another fast afterwards. At least not in the realm of r/intermittentfasting when talking about such a long fast.
Why do people do this to themselves? Using fasting as a diet technique to force loss in a short period of time? That is not a sustainable way to eat and will result in far worse issues long term. Take it from a guy that did that for 20 years before fixing his real issues that what you are doing will hurt you long run. I mean it already is based on what you wrote. What is nutty is that you are more worried about the weight you didn’t lose rather than you felt like you were dying. That is an extremely unhealthy way to think. What you are doing isn’t intermittent fasting but a way to drastically cut calories in a way that is “allowed” because you call it fasting. But all it is a mask for shitty behaviors that will hurt you in the long run.
I have been watching some different videos and reading more information and most “experts” say that a 48hour fast once a while should be plenty.This is the optimal length for getting all the benefits and none of the negative side effects (loss of muscles). Going much beyond this will only exhaust your body like what you mentiond happened…
Perhaps below video is useful?
As to why you might succeed sometimes and not others, it’s most likely down to what you’ve eaten and hydration in the days leading up to such a long fast.
If you keep track of that, it might be worthwhile to take a look back and see what was going on in the run-up to each fast.