Yes, I have found fasting to be very difficult.
Now, I know that many are finding it strange to read that because I have posted many times that fasting is actually very easy.
Well, yes, the act of not eating has been very easy for me. However, there are things about fasting that I have also found very difficult. Thing is, the difficult stuff is not at all related to not eating!
In the coming days, I am going to be posting about the things about fasting that have been difficult.
For this post, though, let me just reiterate that the actual act of fasting is not difficult.
Why is it easy to not eat?
There are actually two reasons that it has not been difficult to not eat:
- Ketosis
- My body has a lot of food available
Ketosis
For those who are not familiar with ketosis, that is what is called when your body shifts from using carbohydrates for energy and starts using fat instead. As a general rule, eating the common diets that we eat today, our bodies usually get energy from carbohydrates. Carbohydrates usually burn pretty quickly and when they are gone, we get hungry.
You know the old jokes about Chinese Food? They say that you eat a lot of food, but an hour later you are hungry again? Well, that is because Chinese food, mostly, is high in carbs! So, you eat a load of carbs, then when those carbs are all burned up you are hungry again! This also means that when you eat those carbs your blood sugar shoots way up, sky high, and then crashes down quickly. when your blood sugar crashes, that is when you get hungry.
However, if you are in ketosis, your blood sugar remains very stable. It goes up only slightly when you eat, and a couple hours after eating, it goes down only a small amount. Because of these small shifts in blood sugar levels, you just don’t get hungry.
You get your body into ketosis by eating a very low carb diet. You mostly eat a lot of fat and a moderate level of protein.
My body has food available
Because I have been in ketosis for a long time (I have been eating a ketogenic diet for many months), my body is used to using fat for its fuel. I rarely eat even 5 grams of carbs in a day, and usually less than that. Because of this, my body can only get energy by eating fat. When I am eating, about 70% of my calories come from fat.
So, when I start fasting and stop eating, my body is already used to consuming fat for energy. I am obese (less so than a couple months ago), so my body has stored up a lot of fat for my body to use if there is no food available to energize my body. So, being used to consuming fat, my body naturally starts consuming my excess body fat very easily. Since I have a lot of body fat stored up, there is plenty of food to satisfy the needs of my body.
So, plenty of nutrients available in my body means that I don’t get hungry.
If I was not in ketosis, my body would not instantly start consuming my body fat, but since I have been in ketosis for some time, it is a smooth and easy transition for my body and it happens quickly, thus I don’t get hungry.
If I was not in ketosis already, it would probably take a few days for my body to shift into ketosis, and fasting would be very difficult until the ketosis kicked in.
This is why I can fast easily and with little or no hunger. You can do it too if you train your body to burn fat before you start fasting.
So, tomorrow, I will start by explaining what is hard about fasting.
