I have been doing water fasts for the past two years. 5-day water fast is my sweet spot. I tried everything from three days, four, six, seven and even 10 days. Water fasting is one my favorite tools for accelerated detox, both physical and mental. It is also a great way to lose weight, reset your metabolism, build up your will power, break your food addictions, in other words, the list is endless. I have been doing carnivore diet for over a year now, and I find that water fasting is totally complimentary to carnivore diet. Better yet, water fast on carnivore diet is a lot easier.
Here’s why I do it:
I LOVE KETOSIS
I love being in deep ketosis because of my history of autoimmunity. Being in ketosis for a prolonged period of time changes metabolic pathways, shuts down the proinflammatory and opens up anti-inflammatory ones. That’s the main reason why I love ketosis.
A researcher that has amazing work on ketones is Domini D’Agostino (https://ketonutrition.org)
He says that our bodies enter a special phase of healing when ketones are higher than glucose in our blood for some period of time. You would have to eat almost all fat to get to these levels, whereas with fasting it’s a day or two, and you are there.
Ketones too burn a lot cleaner for energy than glucose, leaving less metabolic waste. They reduce hunger hormones (ghrelin), have anti-inflammatory effect (NLRP3), and many more benefits.
ACCELERATED DETOX
Carnivore diet accelerates healing, fasting accelerates detoxing. Your body will go through a massive process of unloading of wastes and toxins stored up in your body for years. You will notice it in your sweat, urine, sinuses, eyes, another word every organ will detox something. The changes are so profound, you can’t ignore it.
The weirdest thing I have been experiencing with every fast, are the old memories or hurtful situations buried somewhere in my subconscious, that come back at night as dreams. In some cases, I get a resolution to them or an insight I didn’t have before. To be honest, I still don’t know what to make of this phenomenon, but it feels like a mental detox. It is believed that fasting burns karma and prayers get answered. So maybe this is what I am experiencing.
And then, there is this gratitude and appreciation for life that comes when you finally break your fast. You become humbler and more appreciative of everything that you have in life.
It is truly an accelerated physical, mental and spiritual detox.
AUTOPHAGY
Ladies lean in. Your skin will be brighter and younger looking. As a species we evolved to cycle through periods of feast and famine. As soon as you start fasting, your body gets a signal that there aren’t enough calories to make new cells, so your body will start repairing existing cells and break down old dysfunctional cells for energy, this is called autophagy. This is the reason why fasting has antiaging effects.
Check out my YouTube version here:
YOU CAN STILL EXERCISE
You can still exercise during a water fast. You will not lose any muscle mass, we have all kind of mechanisms in our bodies to prevent muscle loss, namely human growth hormone, that facilitates muscle growth and in fact protects us from muscle loss. It makes sense evolutionarily; we need the muscles to be intact so that we can go out and hunt animals that will give us calories we need. Some people who do weight training during fasting report actually muscle growth.
Here’s the studies covering this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20300080/
During my most recent fast I ran two miles on the third day and did yoga for the rest of the days of my fast. It wasn’t the most stellar workouts, but they were workouts, nonetheless.
YOUR WILL POWER GOES THROUGH THE ROOF
I have a toddler, for whom I need to make food and some snacks. Day 1 and Day 4 are usually the hardest, the temptation to have a bite of his dinner is bigger than the universe, but when you overcome it, you will feel like a champ, literally your will power will go through the roof. And what is great about will power, is that is a transferrable skill, you will be able to use it in other aspects of your life.
CONCLUSION
If you haven’t tried water fasting yet, give it a go, you won’t regret it.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have started with 48 hours fast and build my tolerance to what I do today. I did my first fast for four days, it was tough, I survived it though.
Water fasting is an excellent strategy for overall health, and longevity. Water fasting is yet another tool in the working mom toolbox.
Big City Mom