Dont starve – or do (4 days fasting)

Definition of motivation and other itions

I have heard, read, or learned from several sources that fasting can be a good thing.
Look, I’ve always been tempted to try it.
Not so much that I’m a freak over health or something (though I’ve been like that lately),
but I was wondering how would i feel. Won’t I have little energy for sports?
Or will I have an excess of strength because the body will not have to digest?

To make it even clearer… I decided not to eat for 3 days and only to drink unsweetened drinks.
Ie. mainly water and tea (your local common tea, nothing fancy: D).
The reason for not drinking anything sweet (such as fruit juice, which is quite popular nowadays) was to test the functioning of one’s own body.

How the body works in relation to drawing energy

The body can take energy from the liver, from the muscles (glycogen in the muscles), from fats and then from the breakdown of the muscles themselves.
It’s exactly in that order. In addition, glycogen in the muscles can only be used for the muscles in which it is stored. So if you have glycogen stored in your thighs and you train your thighs in the gym, then you will use this glycogen – but not for biceps training. The liver and the glycogen stored in it serve to supply the whole body with energy.
Depletion of glycogen in the liver should take 1-3 days.
Then the body runs on energy from fats. Yeah, from a tire around the belly and so.
That was exactly my goal… i mean … to get to a state where the body takes energy from fats. For ketosis.
That’s why I didn’t drink anything sweet during fasting. On average, a person’s fat stores last for 30 days.
Different sources give different values… In any case, this can be calculated and monitored. As soon as the body runs out of fat, it starts to break down muscles. Well .. and the heart is also muscles, so this condition is not desirable :).
That the body gets into ketosis can be measured in several ways. There are smart scales that can recognize the percentage of body fat and you can monitor its loss during fasting.
Other option is “keto papers”. These keto papers determine base on your urine whether you are in ketosis or not.
But keto papers are only optional (i did NOT use them)…three days of fasting are safe for a healthy person, so you don’t have to measure anything.
But the advantage is that with these tools you can tell if you are in ketosis during such a short fast, or if you are still taking energy from the liver. During the fast, I wrote brief notes, see below :).

Day 1 (April 8, 2019)

10:00 tea (green)
12:00 weird noises in the stomach: D, hunger begins. Increased sweating, but it may be because I worked for 12 hours on the construction site while little bit sick and the next day played football.
13:00: light tingling of the head, either the body realized that I really wouldn’t eat, or the same old story with a light sickness.
14:00 tea (fruit)
16:00 tea (fruit)

Day 2 (April 9, 2019)

07:00 glass of water. In the morning quite ok. The mood is good, but you can feel something going on in your body .. like weak body a bit.
08:00 tea (some regular :))
Stairs to work are challenging, but it can be because I’m a little sick. You can feel such a slowdown in the body .. reaction, I do not feel much strength, but the mood is fine
11:30 tea… a lot of light tingling in the hands, thighs, calves. Mood quite good .. Man, I would like to eat so much :D, but I can stand it :), in the refrigerator buns chocolate uuu 😀 😀 (they have to wait :D..)
15:00 Toilet – well, when a person drinks only liquids, so it is possible to assume how sitting in the toilet would look like 🙂
17:00 Decaf coffee. I feel like my knees are like when having flu. Mood is fine.
18:00 sleep, fatigue, mild elbow pain like a when having flu
20:00 light stretching so 20 min.
21:00 body ok, psyche ok, mood good. I’m compiling “cookbook”, which I don’t know during the hunger strike if it’s a good time: D. I’m starting to gain respect for food 😀 😀 and I’m starting to look forward to Wednesday 😀 :D.

Day 3 (April 10, 2019)

08:00 glass of water
09:00 pretty pain to go up the stairs at work to the 4th floor .. weak body
12:00 water
14:00 tea
18:00 water
… It can be seen that I was really looking forward to the food and the notes are shorter on the last day: D.

Day 4 (April 11, 2019) – end of fasting

Here I add notes retrospectively, but I remember it vividly, so donnie worry, authenticity ensured. In the morning I had a classic like every day…
Breakfast:
Glass of water, tablespoons of sauerkraut (= probiotics), b12, glass of rice milk (+ calcium), 2 Brazil nuts (= selenium), Vincentka (=mineral drink with iodine), a few leaves of cabbage salad
Snack:
soy yogurt (= calcium) + spoon of ground flaxseed (= omega3)
Lunch:
So I pulled it decently byl it was goulash: D.
Snack and dinner:
I must admin i dont remember it well, but probably some legumes and cereals. I’ve eaten larger portions here.
The point is that on the fourth day I didn’t need to eat the whole fridge. It’s true that the goulash for lunch isn’t exactly #eatingclean (even if it contains cabbage), but if you do this once a month it doesn’t matter. An important aspect is that dont get to obsessed of what you are eating. It is necessary to have worked out basic things, to automate them and to revise it all once a while.

Summary

I always wanted to try and so i did, so Im satisfied. Its kinda crucial, that you on your own have to want this. Then you approach it differently. I was in a good mood during the fast, even though my body was quite ruined, I had fun out of it.
I can see that if someone else told me to fast for 3 days, i would be pissed and it would for me be harder to do.
Physically, one does not feel best. I certainly wouldn’t run the fastest hundred in my life. I was glad that I practiced yoga on sore hips from Zuzka Klingrová and went to bed: D. I would probably compare it to some flu sickness .. such occasional tingling in muscles, joints, head… But nothing terrible.
But its not such hard to overcome lesser pain.
Mentally, as I mentioned, i felt perfectly fine. I was really in a good mood during the whole fast.
As i said .. it’s about motivation. Because one has to prepare for the fact that as soon as colleagues notice (or tell them) the next day at work that you don’t have lunch, that you are fasting, everyone suddenly starts bringing lunch to the office and eating out loud. Sonsabitches :D. But this kept me even more motivated :D…
By the fourth day in the morning, I could eat as I pleased. Surprisingly, the body somehow gets used to the purgatory on the third / fourth day and no longer growls in his stomach and begins to equalize physically. I was looking forward to the food, but I started to eat small portions. I did not feel the need to start overeating as some future fast preparation.

Epilogue

Just a final word on January 29, 2022, when I give this in public.
This article is actually just a copy paste note from my fast, which I held 3 years back :).
I haven’t edited the notes now, I’m leaving my words as they were written :D…
I still have to poke all nutrition experts who talk about the benefits of fasting but have never tried it in life: D, I find it very funny :).
And let’s not end with this poke. So, I definitelly recommend to try 3 days or so of fasting.. you will see how it will
your body respond to it. Maybe 3 days will be a lot for you. It’s good to be in a good physical and mental condition when starting fasting and to have some inner motivation.

Good luck, strong will! 🙂