OK, Day 7 is complete! Wow, I am in the home stretch now! Days 8, 9 and 10 left and I feel that it is practically a coast from here.
For the most part, Day 7 was a breeze. As I told you yesterday there was a problem right at the beginning of Day 7, which was an extreme weakness, but it was taken care of and the rest of the day was very easy.
Weakness Problem
I started the fast at 6 PM on Wednesday, March 15, last week. So, Day 6 ended at 6 PM yesterday. At about 6:30 or so, I became very, very weak! I was not hungry, but I knew that I had to eat something. I really did not want to break my fast, but my thinking on this was always that I would listen to my body and do what my body was telling me to do. I felt that my body was telling me in a very loud voice that it needed some nutrition.
I decided to eat a very small bowl of Tomato Soup. There is a little Deli up the street from us that has a very good tomato soup, so I ordered a bowl and Feyma want and picked it up for me. When I ate the soup, within 5 minutes, I really felt good. At that point, I was really not sure if I would continue with the remaining days of the fast. My attitude was that I would follow what my body was telling me, so I would wait until morning and see how I felt. I will say, I did feel a little hungry. I think that my body getting even a small amount of food made it start telling me it needed food, but it was very mild, so I was able to make it through the hunger. I finished out Day 7 with no real issues! I was strong, felt good, alert and such, so no worries.
When breaking the fast, I was a little worried that even the tomato soup might be too much for my stomach to handle, but it felt fine. No stomach pain or anything, so that was nice.
Blood Glucose
Before I ate the soup last night, my blood sugar was 74, which is on the low side, but still OK. Two hours after eating my blood sugar was 104, which is near normal for me in a fasting state, and a good 20 points under my normal “after eating” state. Through the day my blood sugar kept falling and by bedtime, it was 84, which I consider quite good.
Today, I did not eat any food at all. Sometimes when I am feeling weak, I will drink a coffee cup full of chicken broth to get salt into my system, but on Day 7 I did not need that at all. No soup or anything, only regular drinks.
Active
I was very active on Day 7. Feyma had a doctor appointment in the morning, then I had an OCT test, which is an ultrasound of the eye, at noon. We were out and around town throughout the day, and I was strong all day long. It felt good.
No Shame
At first, when I decided I would eat something, I felt a little ashamed to break the fast, but after thinking it over I realized that I was only doing what my body was telling me, so that made me feel OK. A small amount of tomato soup is not going to “break the bank” so I am fine with it. Also, the fact that I was able to go right back to fasting made me feel good about the whole thing.
Weight Loss
273.0. Lost 1 pound today.
Total weight loss since the beginning of the fast: 8.6 pounds.
3 Days to go!
I feel pretty strongly that the final 3 days are going to be a breeze. At the time of publication, I am already more than halfway through Day 8, so I feel good about it. Only time will tell, though!
Glad to hear you gave in and did the reasonable thing rather than trying to tough it out and do some damage to your body, best of luck for the next few days.
Hi Bruce – I am not sure I would agree that I “gave in”. I listened to my body, felt that my body needed a little something and did it. But, I am continuing with the fast though! 🙂
I did not mean “gave in” as a derogatory comment, only that you altered course based on what your body was telling you. Glad you did not ignore it and cause yourself some harm.
No problem Bruce, thank you very much.
I was having computer issues yesterday, so I couldn’t reply (actually, I was in the middle of a reply when my computer randomly rebooted for no reason).
I believe the minor problems you were having on Day 6 were a combination of two things. First, your body had finally shifted over to burning fat and was no longer looking for carbohydrates for fuel.
The second thing has to do with peculiarities of the human body I refer to as reverse logic.One of those peculiarities has to do with dieting. You would think that if you eat a lot, you’d gain weight and if you eat very little, or nothing, you’d automatically lose weight. The body works in reverse. If you are eating very lightly, or fasting, the body thinks it’s the lean season and starts storing everything to get you through them. When you eat plenty, the body thinks the lean times are over and starts burning everything in sight. It supposedly has to do with us having been a hunter species in the past.
So your body was ready to burn fat, but felt it might’ve been the lean season, and didn’t burn what it needed to maintain your normal energy levels.
I’m guessing from the comments that you did eat something which is exactly what the body needed to get out of “lean mode” and start burning the fat it needed for fuel.
So, ‘giving in’ is the wrong analogy, and a very negative one at that. Instead, what you did was ‘priming the pump’. Now it’s running smoothly.
You might even discover that, by day 10, your body will be so used to the fast and continue to live off of the stores with only a minimum input of food. As you’ve said, the body will always tell you what it needs. It’s our job to listen :p
You’re beginning to understand exactly how your body works, which is very important. Most of the ones who are terrified that you’re going to harm yourself on this diet simply don’t understand their own bodies, plus, they tend to believe the massive amounts of misinformation the medical “practice” regularly disseminates in order to keep their waiting rooms full of enough sick people to make themselves rich… :p
I have actually been in ketosis for months. The burning of fat. I’ve been eating a low-carb diet for about a year now, and I’ve been doing 23 hours a day of fasting for more than a month. It’s only in the last 10 days that I’ve been doing 24 hour day fasting. So my body has been burning fat for some time already.
So, then it just needed that little kick start. It probably instinctively mistook the fast as lean times and got confused and wasn’t burning enough fat to sustain your energy levels. Good job reading the signs correctly. Too many people would have erroneously believed the fast was causing serious problems and given up.
It’s funny how many variations there can be between different people. Even though my body was burning fat constantly and losing size constantly, none of those keto-strips would verify that I was even mildly in ketosis. Yet, the GM where I worked, went on the same diet months later than me, and, even though he WASN’T losing any size, his Keto-strips showed he was in full-blown ketosis all the time.
Of the two situations, I’d rather be losing the size and weight and the heck with what the strips were saying. He was exactly the opposite; he liked seeing the color of the strips. :p
Those keto strips are notoriously unreliable.
Apparently :p The other two possibilities are that some shoddy manufacturers quickly jumped on the Atkins bandwagon and made inferior products just to make a quick killing; and, possibly those in the medical profession who were losing a lot of potential money because of people getting healthier as a result of the diet had a hand in the spread of shoddy products strips to trick people into thinking the diet wasn’t working for them. Either way, I look for visible results, OTHER than a color change on a strip of paper. That’s fine for determining an acid from an alkali, or determining the strength of a sterilizing solution; but not for telling me what’s happening inside my body. Heck, even the similar type self tests for pregnancy were equally unreliable.
So, I’m gonna try this. My goal is 4 days. I have completed day one. No big problems, except problems sleeping. I’m an engineer, so I’m a numbers guy. I have a scale, and one of those hand-held devices that gives body fat & BMI. I will let you know how it turns out
Good luck Michael, I’m sure you can do it! Yeah, and let me know how it goes.
Sure, you inspired me to try something different and step out of my comfort zone
I’m wondering what will happen after 4 days. Will my weight bounce back, or hit another plateau…we will see
That depends on a lot of things. First of all, how much extra fat your body has stored. Second, if it just burns the fat, or converts some of it into lean muscle mass. Muscle is much more dense than fat, so you can drop a lot of SIZE, but have very little actual weight loss.
When I was on the low carb, high protein diet, I dropped about 4 shirt sizes; I went from a very tight XXL to a very lose M. However, I only lost 25 lbs (a little over 11 kg) according to the scale.
I had replaced a lot of fat with muscle, and I could tell the difference every day by the increased energy and stamina. I think this is what they call YMMV – “Your mileage may vary” :p
What you SHOULD notice on this diet is that your size loss will be proportional; as if someone was showing slides or movies of you, and moved the screen closer making the image smaller. So, you’ll notice your clothes getting looser before you’ll notice any changes by looking in the mirror.
I am definitely noticing that, Lazarus.
That was the part that confused people. I looked the same; basically proportioned the same, but it was a proportional shrinking. Suddenly I reached a point where it began changing the shaping, and it seemed like it was “all of a sudden” when it had been happening all along. It’s like watching a child grow every day or coming back once a month and being amazed at the “sudden” changes.
Michael: whether or not you suddenly put all the weight/size back on depends on how you handle the maintenance phase. A lot of people simply go back to their terrible eating habits and put everything back on; some even get bigger than they originally were. You need to find a balance that works for you.
Watching all this! …. I’ve been on aa 900 calorie per day diet for a month, and having encouraging results. Started at 300 goal 235 … I’m at 275 now. I haven’t started exercising daily yet, but will soon.
That’s great Don. Congratulations, I am happy for you.