I Did a Thing… 72 Hour Fast & Results

Fasting is not a new thing in general and it’s not a new thing for me personally either. I’ve fasted for surgery, for blood work, and I’ve done intermittent fasting on and off for the past year. I’ve never been a breakfast person so it wasn’t a difficult switch for me to do once I got into ketosis. This time was a little different though as I went for three full days. The longest I had ever gone in the past was 24 hours or so.
 
I hadn’t intended to fast for 72 hours when I woke up on Friday morning but nothing seemed good to me, and I certainly wasn’t interested in my packed lunch. In the past I would have likely just thought about what could fit my macros and then gone out and purchased something but as I am trying to save money I decided to just wait until I got home to eat. After all, I wasn’t hungry and I had food in my lunchbox if that changed. Once I got home I got busy with odds and ends… cleaning the house, teaching classes, writing up student feedback and etc. and completely forgot to eat. When I realized I’d gone well over 36 hours the next afternoon I figured I may as well push it and see if I could do a 72 hour fast. I had heard of really good results when it came to autophagy and general wellness for a 72 hour fast and I still wasn’t particularly hungry so figured now was the time to try it.
 
Most of the time during this fast I wasn’t hungry. There were the occasional urges to eat but they were from boredom or that it was the right time with two exceptions so were easy to ignore and go about my day. The first exception was when I was teaching a class all about food. Talking about food and being hungry for 25 minutes made me think hard about going and making something to eat in my kitchen but, as it was the first of 5 classes that night, I was back to being not hungry by the time I was finished teaching for the night and just went to bed without dinner. The second exception was right at the tail end of the fast. I had been cooking hamburgers for meal prep so the house had smelled like burgers for hours and, I’ll admit, I started watching that timer count down to 72 hours during that last hour or so.
 
The experience was actually really good overall. I felt very relaxed all weekend, got in a simple workout routine, cleaned my house and slept really well. I will definitely try to incorporate at least one of these per quarter if not more often as I hope to see some results with tightening skin (from the autophagy) as I continue to lose weight. I would not suggest going from a carb heavy diet directly into a fast though, it would likely be miserable, at least from my experiences with intermittent fasting and OMAD I can imagine that I would not have made it to the end.
 
Results of the fast? I started Thursday at 231.4 and ended Sunday at 226.4. That’s a five pound loss, which is amazing. Not all of that stayed gone after eating my first meal, as expected. The next day I weighed in two pounds heavier and the day after one pound down from that weight. So I would say that it leveled out at four pounds lost for the fast after taking into account that first day’s fluctuation. From the autophagy side of things I didn’t notice much of a difference but hope to as I have more loose skin to get rid of. Fingers crossed!
 
Until next time,