I’ve done some 48’s and one 72 hour fast since I started fasting in May 2019. I did them for autophagy - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990190/ - here’s a pretty solid article on what autophagy is and what the word actually means. Lots of info about it, but not recommended to go past 72 hours without doctor surveillance.
I have done a few 36 hour fasts to coincide with getting chemo (being in a fasted state makes cancer cells more receptive to the drugs) and for religious reasons. It mentally is such a challenge for me. It’s hard for me to do 16:8, so I set my Zero app to 13 hour fasts and then get ridiculously happy when I hit 16+ hours. I have to feel like I’m gaming the system.
Excellent Calvinball reference!
Autophagy is the usual justification, though typically I suspect that it’s desire for speedier weight loss or less frequently legitimate need to compensate for an inhumanely low TDEE (think of a short female with a large appetite, unable to even afford a single satisfying meal per day without gaining).
Personally I never resorted to anything more exotic than OMAD (max ~30 hours, when shifting from an early meal on the day prior to a late meal on the current day), as it just wouldn’t have been sustainable from a social standpoint. The single coincidental 48-hour fast under my belt thus far was admittedly a breeze though.
Health-wise I would like to believe that – under qualified medical supervision and guidance, appropriate supplementation, and always assuming that the individual has plenty to lose and refeeds properly when it’s time to (which unfortunately doesn’t always seem to be the case with food posts shared on fasting subs) – fasting windows of up to a few days should be relatively risk-free.
You can read papers from Harvard medical and mayo clinic. It rids the body of old immune cells and promotes growth of new cells. It’s not necessarily for weight loss as promoting a way to improve the health of your body. They also don’t need to be done alot in the year. It’s just one part of a journey to leading a healthier life and caring for your body
It’s actually proven that fasting for extended periods, 24-72 hours is very beneficial for your body and health. For me, once I get through the first 24 hours, I’m in ketosis and no longer experience hunger, so to fast another 24-48 hours is no big deal.
Once every 3 weeks I go 48 hours with nothing but black coffee, hot tea and water. I feel great during and after. I’ve never tried a 72 hour or longer fast, but I’m sure I could easily do 72 hours.
😂😂😂 calvinball
Nah, there stuff prly just belongs on the fasting subreddit.
It’s a tough line. Here ppl freak out when you mention 48 or 72 hours. Over there they’re like … whatever, I’m on day 21.
The benefits for longer fasts are huge. Ketosis, autophagy, increased insulin sensitivity, stem cell regeneration, resetting gut microbiome etc etc. 16 hours isn’t actually fasting. The medical community wouldn’t even term that intermittent fasting. It’s just time restricted feeding which is great and also has lots of benefits. As far as week long fasts- def would wanna be medically supervised, but the vast majority of ppl would see a huge benefit from 24-72 hour fasts. I believe autophagy doesn’t really begin until 24+ hours and peaks at 72 hours.
Personally, I find 36+ hours to be easier than 16hours, 18 hours, OMAD etc. because I get past the hunger fluctuations. Rather than getting that ghrelin surge every single day at 15 hours or whenever it happens to peak for you, you get it once, get over it then it’s much smoother sailing.
I did it for healing purposes/autophagy. I don’t fast that long anymore, but I used to usually do 1 ~36-40hr fast a week. Longest I did was a 72 but that was to fix high potassium without having to be in the ER for the weekend. Fasting has helped me heal my damaged kidneys. The health benefits for a healthy person are still there - I just would probably not go crazy with it
I done a 48 hour fast this week because I was ill and didn’t want to eat
When I reach my target goal I’ll be doing a 48 hour fast to maintain and get the benefits of autophagy with loose skin. (Hope I don’t have any)
Your body naturally enters the state of ketosis around hour 18, ish. The longer you stay in ketosis, the more your body relies on it’s fat reserves for energy. The longer you rely on fat, the more you lose fat. That’s the very short and dry version.
I’ve done 72-hr fasts to kickstart my keto diet in the past, but know that I no longer do keto and my fasting is strictly set to once per month. I will NEVER go over 72 hours on a fast unless my doctor recommended it. Even then I would question them lol point is, I can’t be certain but I’m willing to bet a lot of people here do it after getting advice from Reddit rather than doctors. People can talk all they want because we’re all experts, right? But honestly I would straight up ask a doctor if fasting of any kind is right for you.
I’ve seen the benefits of fasting! But I’ve also seen benefits of not fasting. Pretty much any and all diets work, but it’s about finding one that you see yourself sticking to for life. Most people think dieting and fasting doesn’t work because they only stick to it for a month or two, don’t see instant results, then complain.
If 16:8 is working, why change it?
I’m also a newbie (actually a newbie lurker) and I’ve been curious about these extended fasts. Are they mean to be zero calories or minimal calories? I think I get the method of time restricted eating after another post mentioned The Fasting Method podcast. But the lengthy fasts, I’m not too sure of.
The longer you do 16:8 the easier it will be to move to 18:6 and 20:4 and then OMAD and so on. I occasionally would do a 40 hour+ fast but I had to be busy during those times, when I get bored it catches up to me. If you have lots of fat to burn, why not extend the period of time your body is burning fat!?
I’ve done a few multi-day fasts. I usually do a 24 hours dry fast once a month.
When I was doing extended fasts, I made it up to five days. Days 1-3 get progressively more difficult. But if you can make it past day 3, days 4 and beyond get easier. Your body slows down the product of your hunger hormone (grelin?) significantly. You’re still hungry, but you don’t really deal with the hunger pangs anymore. You just feel kind of empty.
Just make sure you enter every fast very well hydrated. I would usually mix in about 1 cup of homemade bone broth every day as well.
My opinion is that people doing multi-day fasts have a lot of weight to lose and/or a moderate amount of weight and are seeking to speed up the process. I also think it’s a potentially self-defeating and unsustainable way to lose weight. But what do I know? I’m at my goal weight and have never been obese. I maintain my weight through diet, exercise, and since last fall, intermittent fasting 16:8 and 14:10. I am 39/F but was a chubby teenager. I lost 30 pounds at 17 by running and eating less, and have never regained all that weight. I have, however, regained 10-15 pounds during different seasons of my life. When that happens I lose the weight by tightening up my diet, drinking less alcohol, and moving more.
I think the reason we don’t scream DISORDERED EATING when people on here say they’re not eating for several days is because many of these people are obese. Technically it’s not dangerous for an obese person to live off their fat reserves for a few days, even repeatedly. Ketosis is a real benefit of multi-day fasts but if you aren’t fat you don’t need to enter into ketosis on a regular basis.
Then, there are the folks who preach autophagy. They can explain it better than me but apparently fasting for several days heals us. They’ll claim it “eats” loose skin, too. I disagree but okay. I bet it sucks having loose skin.
What I struggle with is the line between fasting for multiple days and having an eating disorder. Fasting for three days once a month does not seem especially extreme to me. I think it’s the mindset and the person’s current weight that might make this extreme. Am I wrong? I weight 125 pounds. If I said I was fasting for 72 hours every month for the “added health benefits” in addition to doing 16:8, would that be okay? What about weekly? I’m skinny, ya’ll. I don’t think this would be okay for me because this would make me too thin (If I lose 5 pounds, I’m too thin). However, if I was 30 pounds overweight maybe 72 hour fasts every week or month would be okay because I’d actually have fat reserves to sustain me. Intent matters but so does the outcome.
This begs the question, how are these multi-day fasts working for people if they’re still overweight but they do them frequently? Which returns me to point 1. People do them because they’re obese or they are in a hurry. They’ll say they do them for autophagy. We don’t know if those folks are heavy or thin. If they’re heavy we can say okay, nothing to see here, but what about if they are thin?
I think anything more than OMAD is not really intermittent fasting, it’s just fasting, and I’d rather people talked about it on r/fasting because I think this encourages disordered eating. However, I respect the people who practice multi-day fasts who speak about this with clarity and intention and they don’t sound like they are anorexic and just using fasting as a cover. I think they are doing it ritually and that’s okay. But a ritual can become a habit and a habit can become a compulsion.
I do a 72 hour fast every month. There are many benefits but for me it’s the mental health benefits really. I feel pretty amazing for the week after and generally better after that. It gives you a different perspective.
I did a 7 day water fast in the beginning after conditioning myself with OMAD and Keto for a couple of weeks prior. I wanted to do a sort of a dextox and get some of that autophagy benefits. I did take supplements and electrolytes, and monitored my ketone, and glucose levels to make sure it didn’t get to dangerous levels. Granted my body fat was like 36% at the time so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t starve lol. Anyway my glucose throughout the fast was pretty stable, ketones were of course high but by day 4 stabilized. Overall I felt pretty good after the first couple of days and really didn’t feel any hunger during the end. I lost around 10lbs during that period, of course a lot of water weight. It gave me a good jump start. After the fast I continued OMAD and Keto, 20k steps, weight training 6days a week, and am continually losing weight towards my goal. 41 y/o male, 5’4”, SW210, CW170, GW150.