Alternate Day Fasting Journal: Day 44
- Subliminals: Paragon Complete (2x), Dragon Stage 4 (2x), Blueprint (1x), Alchemist Stage 4 (3x)
- Blood Pressure: 107/71 at a 69HR
- Water: 3.2L/112oz
It’s shaping up to be another uneventful day. Barely a gust of wind, still high temperatures and it is quiet everywhere. I’m considering taking a long walk in the afternoon to feel peaceful and forget that this is a fasting day.
Also, I am particularly interested in finding out if my HRV and resting HR drop this coming night after a day of not eating. Last night’s HRV average was 14ms, which is not exactly a good thing. All it took was 1 beer.
I had a few bursts of productivity, but nothing special. I rarely do well in hot biomes. On the plus side, I’m drinking a lot more water. Must be my body telling me to imbibe something with substance, only to become annoyed at yet another glass of water.
Still doing my pullups whenever I walk in and out of my home office. If I’m not metabolically flexible enough that my body can easily switch to ketosis, I’ll probably notice a drop in power and enthusiasm tomorrow.
I also ordered a 30K/66lbs weighted vest in order to get the most out of low-rep bodyweight exercises. That way, if I do add things like pushups and dips, it’ll take a while before it becomes easy. By now I’ve come to realize low-reps is usually better when going for muscle density and strength.
I took a few hours nap after work. Didn’t feel like doing much. I’m now finishing up my day and should finally be able to go to bed before midnight again. Tomorrow I can eat. 
If we’re talking about extended fasts I don’t think I have. Once I get used to eating again it’s hard to let it go. I blame the leptin wanting to fatten me up again.
The human body should have an emergency store of all the essentials (proteins, lipids/fats but especially micro-nutrients) to survive on for about 30 days. That’s why on a water-fast without supplementation 30 days is the healthy limit, with 60 being the hard limit. Provided there is body fat to burn of course. The world record of 300+ days was done with daily supplementation if I’m not mistaken.
So the important factor is that the body has replenished those stores. Which should be prioritized as soon as the fast breaks.
Without more extensive testing I can’t be certain of course, so I go on how I feel and how my body is behaving. The initial energy rushes and crashes from refeeding are gone. Regular bathroom visits are back. No physical symptoms of anything. Muscle strength is increasing with exercise.
I’ve also made sure that even on days where I did eat some bad stuff I always ate a good meal containing the essential fats and proteins (even if that caused excess calories). And I’ve been taking electrolytes, vitamin and mineral supplements and probiotic supplements (in smaller amounts compared to their daily recommended levels since too much of a good thing is still too much).
Generally refeeding should be done in about half the time of the fast. If done well enough, the assumption is that the body is then fully replenished and capable of handling another fast.
So, keeping all the above in mind, I feel confident that I can go into another fast already, but will finish up this month anyway, experimenting with different forms of IF. Besides, I have 20 eggs and 5 eating days left before they hit their expiration date. Looking forward to my 4 eggs tomorrow already.
Another thing that happens upon breaking the fast is replenishing the white blood cells. Without fasting, they live forever (in theory) but do get less efficient with age. As a result, during a fast the body “retires” those old cells mafia-style, leading to a drop in white blood cells. Strangely enough this does not seem to coincide with a decrease in immune system efficiency.
As long as there are enough white blood cells left for normal operation, no new cells are created. The body prefers not to have to create new cells while fasting. At least not until you start leaking.
But as soon as the first food enters the body, all these regeneration processes are triggered and using stem cells to regenerate white blood cells is at the top of that list. And so we end up with clean, efficient, young white blood cells.
For some science-babble there’s this (the non-sciency version is here). They were primarily focused on how prolonged fasting (2-5 days) could help the body resist the damage caused by chemo-therapy while enhancing its cancer-killing effect. But the above tidbit is somewhere in there.
It’s interesting how most medical professionals which support fasting promote a prolonged fast of 72 hours, intermittent fasting with a short eating window, but not extended fasting. I can think of 2 reasons.
First, an extended fast is stressful on the body and not something you’d recommend to somebody over the Internet without knowing them.
Second, provided you’re not so carb-loaded that you’re practically Type 2, all fasting benefits are active after three days. So monthly 72 hour fasts combined with (keto) OMAD may very well be the best way to go long term, as it will gradually and incrementally heal and detoxify the body.
