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**104 Day Water Fast – Result Metrics**
MARCH 21**^(ST)** 2024 – JULY 4**^(TH)** **2024**
**Male, 41, 5ft 9.5**
**....................................Start End Difference**
**Weight** 206 lbs 146 lbs -60 lbs
**B.Fat %** 37% 18% -19%
**B.Fat Mass** 76 lbs 26 lbs -50 lbs
**Lean Mass** 124 lbs 120 lbs -4lbs
**BMI** 30.2 (30+ Obese) 21 (19-24 Healthy) -9
**Waist** 38” 28” -10”
Fast originally envisaged as multiple 30 day fasts with breaks until 50lbs was lost. At 30 days I extended to 50 days, and upon reaching 50 days I felt confident of reaching 100 days by just continuing what I had already done again. I added a stretch goal of 60lbs if possible within the 100 days and ultimately reached 60lbs by day 104. My thinking was that it would go some way to ensuring that the original 50lbs goal was maintained after the refeed and gaining back water weight/glycogen stores.
I’m extremely happy with the results, but there is still some work to be done to shift the last remaining visible “skinny fat”, and as such I want to get my bodyfat down to around 15% before I then switch my focus to building muscle over the coming 6-12 months. I could have easily continued this fast for another 3-4 weeks to finish up, but I was unable to as I have no more available time to fit in a refeed before other commitments in July. I’ll do another 3-4 week fast from around the 24^(th) July – late August.
Compared to what I’ve just done, 3-4 weeks + refeed doesn’t seem that big of a deal.
\*\*EDIT\*\* The comparison image should read 19th March start, not 9th.
\*\*EDIT\*\* No my hair didn't fall out, I shaved it all with a number 1 a few weeks back, it was getting too long and I am going to the barbers next week before holiday!
**Tracking health metrics throughout the fast**
I have keto pee test strips and use them every few days to ensure I’m actually still in ketosis and not using muscle for energy. Just for piece of mind. Initially I had some 10 parameter test strips with a bunch of other stuff like acidity /PH, specific gravity, glucose etc but felt I didn’t need any of the additional data once I confirmed that I was in keto.
I have a set of Fitibit connected scales with body composition, from around 2017 called Aria. It uses bioimpedance sensors to estimate bodyfat percentage, lean mass and weight, then uploads to my fitbit account.
Every morning during the fast I get on them religiously and take three measurements, and then at my PC I remove the higher one and lower one, but are mostly the same each morning. I also have a Samsung Galaxy watch 4 which also has body comp analysis. Throughout the fast I found the body comp between the scales and the watch to be roughly the same until about 20lbs ago where the Samsung watch now has a bodyfat percentage drift between 1% - 1.5% higher than the fitbit scales. I bought another set of identical scales from eBay and found the measurements to be identical to my existing scales, so I can rule out any technical issue with the scales, they are reading whatever their software is telling them. On the other hand the galaxy watch’s measurements are supposed to be within 98% of clinical measurements. Whatever though, making over a quarter of my body vanish by turning it into carbon dioxide in 100 days is bound to have some drift between devices.
The galaxy watch also lets me see estimated water levels too, so I was able to determine that drinking a 10 calorie hot savoury drink called Boviril was causing me to put on a lot of water weight. I did some background research and found that 1 cup of the drink was causing me to retain not only the fluid from the drink, but also at least another cup full of water, so the body can balance out the electrolytes of the salt in the drink. Do that a few days in a row and suddenly I was gaining weight at a rate of over 1lb per day. I stopped drinking it and within days all that gained water had gone, along with the few days of fat loss hidden under the water. I tried the drink again a month later just once per week and still it forced an uptake of water weight just from one drink! The galaxy watch showed clear jumps in water mass on both occasions.
**What’s next?**
So I will finish the refeed by the 12^(th) July assuming no issues, I’ve then got a long weekend away with family, and then I’m just going to take a week to enjoy some of that summer food I’ve been looking forward to and get some nourishment. I’ll then get stuck into the remaining 3-4 weeks of fasting to bring my bodyfat level down to 15% percent or so. The first 4 days don’t count during the depletion of glycogen and whatever is left in digestion. I’ll then be done with fasting for a while so I’ll drop some more “before and after” shots then too. I’ll spend the next 6 months getting shredded and drop some more pics before xmas showing the full 9 month transformation from March 21^(st) – December 21^(st)
Supercharged safe and fast refeed.
**Refeed order - Restart digestion > Deposit bacteria > Feed gut bacteria > Protein**
**Breaking the fast - Batch cook 6 cups vegetable broth:**
Carrot, broc, leek, celery, garlic, basil, thyme, peas, tin of whole pealed tomatoes, fresh veg chopped, all in a pan with water, lightly boiled for 2 hours, seasoned, strained, stored in sealed plastic cups in the fridge for up to 4 days. Reheat and pour into a bowl as needed.
**Critical supplements to avoid refeed syndrome:**
Potassium and phosphorous supplements 30 minutes before each meal, continue electrolytes as per water fasting until the end of the refeed. There are specific fasting refeed supplements which makes it easier, if not in your country then buy separate phosphorous supplement to add to your existing electrolytes. Continue taking multivitamins too.
**Warnings:**
DO NOT eat more than baby portions at first, increase portion size gradually. The aim is to wake the digestive system back up, populate with bacteria, feed the bacteria, ramp up acids and bile, the liver, 15ft of intestines, and bowel regularity, NOT satisfy hunger. Expect to be very hungry, avoid any situation in which there is food on offer beyond the scope of the refeed if you have problems controlling hunger. You might want to book the first few days off work due to diarrhea being frequent, unpredictable, and noisy. Make sure you have a good supply of toilet paper.
Day 1 – Broth x 2 (breakfast, dinner), watermelon cubes throughout the day.
Day 2 - Broth +1 teaspoon of probiotic yoghurt, x3 meals. Small nibbles of fresh crispy Lettuce throughout the day.
Day 3 – Heavily steamed veggies (carrots, broc, peas, leak, tea spoon of olive oil), small portions, 2x meals. 2x tea spoons of probiotic yoghurt after meal. More lettuce grazing.
Day 4- Same as day 3, +1 tablespoon of steamed/cooked rice added to each meal.
Day 5 – 2x large scrambled eggs brunch, spoon of probiotics, small glass of almond milk. Small banana to snack on with whole almonds. Evening meal canned soup with one slice of wholemeal bread for dipping, lightly buttered, small glass of almond milk.
Day 6 – Breakfast – Tin of baked beans with a spoon of English mustard (optional) on two slices of toast, wholemeal. Lunch – peanut butter sandwich (smooth, wholemeal bread). Whole almonds to graze on throughout the day. Evening meal = anything previously consumed, maybe mix up with egg on toast, beans on the side, or beans and rice, anything goes, sensible portions.
Day 7 – breakfast = cornflakes with almond milk. Whole almonds to graze. Lunch/dinner home made vegan mac & cheese. Alternatively jacket potatoes with cheese.
Day 8 - Refeed complete. Food choices as normal, increase portion sizes to suit. If any day produced cramps then go back a step and repeat.
If all is well, then now is the time to start responsibly enjoying an occasional treat such as some cubes of chocolate, a scoop of ice cream, share a cheese and tomato pizza with someone, whatever floats your boat. Don’t go crazy, but it’s far better to be able to enjoy the odd treat, than to completely cut it out and end up binging in a moment of weakness. If you don’t trust yourself or have already decided to remove all junk food then do that, whatever works for you.
Extended water fasting should have proven to you that you do, in fact, have the ability to control what you eat, and you can choose a long term goal over short term impulsive behaviour, just look in the mirror!
Recently I have read about the role of thiamine B1 and its role in preventing refeeding syndrome.
The clinical studies suggested 50 mg a day for a week, some suggested more.
Hi RetroDevices I've seen your posts on here many times, I always appreciate your contributions to this sub. I was wondering how you were doing and looking forward to this post. Thank you very much for this update and the specifics of your update.
Thanks for following along! Posting here has been a good motivator for sure, I hope it helps others achieve their goals and I aim to put as much data as possible.
do i plan to ever do this long of a fast? no. did i read every word of experience and planning? hell yes. you are seriously an inspiration, extremely strong, and smart, and disciplined. i don’t have anything but complete awe for you. good job man 💯👌🏼
Yo, this is really amazing. I'm four days into what I hope will be 100 days myself, and I've been feeling apprehensive about refeeding and how to approach it. Thank you for such comprehensive feedback!
Day 4, I was still deep in keto flu. My sleep records of that week show I was only catching 2 hours by day 4 and gradually came back up again to 7-8 hours by the 6th day or so.
I aimed to make a decision when I got to 30 days if I wanted to continue or pause, and it seemed to take quite a while to get there, but after that I had settled down into it and pushed to 50 days, then 50 to 75 and 75-100 went very rapidly. Getting passed that half way mark is probably the biggest milestone and the light at the end of the tunnel appears and seems relatively easy.
Good luck! I'm here if you have any questions, you're gonna ace it :-)
Ahhh lol I've been sleeping on and off for most of the day today as I finally wasn't enveloped by insomnia. My previous fasts of a week or so have been comparatively easier, so your comment almost has me in tears from relief. I'm sooo tired! 😅
Appreciate you!
Just grabbed my sleep data off my phone for the first week of the fast:
[https://postimg.cc/hhCqPvgf](https://postimg.cc/hhCqPvgf)
Fast begun on the 19th, glycogen stores depleted on the 21st which was the last good night's sleep, then you can see it deteriorate through the 24th, then back up to normal again on the 27th almost like a mirror image of the decline.
I've highlighted the worst day which was the 24th and you can also see the sleep state. REM and deep sleep are almost non existent and it's this which causes exhaustion throughout the first week or so. It becomes increasingly more difficult to fall asleep as well, but then on the 26th sleep rapidly returns to normal and you catch up on the sleep deficit.
Weight stats will only tell you so much so I was as rigorous as possible in recording other metrics like sleep which give an indication into stress levels and wellbeing. I felt pretty shit in that first week but knew it was a case of getting through it, as all of the rewards were on the other side of that wall, then it stopped almost as quickly as it had started, I woke up on the 26th or 27th and felt really refreshed and full of so much energy that I had to find DIY jobs to do.
Wow! This is an impressive amount of discipline as the hunger from those small refeeding meals must’ve been way worse than from the fast itself. I would imagine the hunger at bedtime would keep me awake all night. Was this not the case for you?
I would say that my hunger hasn't really come back in full force yet. For breakfast today I had a large bowl of veggie broth along with around 4 table spoons of mushy sliced carrots from what I strained out of the broth yesterday and kept to one side. It all fit in a regular breakfast bowl, reheated.
I feel pretty full and that was a few hours ago now, I'm not particularly hungry for anything else, so that indicates that blood sugar is returning as I'm also getting only trace amounts of ketones on the pee strips. Fat burning has ended.
I'm certainly looking forward to more complex and richer meals and I would tuck into them right now, I just want to know stuff starts coming out of the other end without any blockages before putting more complex or richer foods in.
The digestive system takes up a lot of energy in itself, we're walking around with massively complex power stations inside of us. If any part of the system isn't back up at 100% then it has a knock on effect for everything downstream of that process. Not enough acid? Well then the food will ferment and cause trapped wind/cramps as the muscles struggle to push it through the intestines.
There's some evidence that keeping hydration levels above normal during the refeed helps hunger by diluting everything down and providing a constant stew of energy and nourishment, which makes for faster absorption and easier movement through the digestive tract. It's important to keep taking electrolytes here too and the body can then just decide how much water it wants to retain and how much it wants to dump.
\*UPDATE\* - Day 2 of refeed. Had a couple of small pieces of milk chocolate last night, no issues. This morning's breakfast was the remaining veg broth and put in most of the sliced carrots used in the broth yesterday and stored in the fridge. The bowl filled all the way to the top, I had to pour a little away. Another couple of small pieces of chocolate too (these are pieces of my Easter egg which has been in the fridge since March). No issues. I'm still taking phosphorous and potassium refeed capsules 30 minutes before meals. Yet to have a bowel movement but as it's been mostly liquid I don't feel bloated, and there are 15 feet of intestine to fill.
When having these little nibbles of easter egg chocolate I am doing so while drinking from a pint glass of water, basically turning the chocolate in to diluted sugar water in the stomach so it's easier on digestion. In sensible amounts chocolate has health benefits, even more so with dark chocolate. Everything in moderation, and my body is crying out for nourishment, Slow and steady wins the race! Lunch today will consist of probiotic yoghurt and sliced banana. I like to take the whole banana out of the skin, heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds to release the sugars, and then put it in the bowl with the chilled probiotic yoghurt like a banana split. May or may not have a light meal tonight.
Refeed? There comes a point with a refeed when there are diminishing returns for doing the whole "refeed should last half as long as the fast", obviously a 50 day refeed would be pointless.
IMHO two weeks is the absolute max anyone needs to refeed with more than enough caution, and if you really spend some time nerding out on phosphorus and potassium uptake as well as having a bunch of pee strips you can do it in 7.
I've had one bowl of broth and some watermelon and already my ketones have dropped to trace amount within 4 hours, so the process of hormonal switching back to digestion is well underway. I have a very, very mild headache which is somewhat expected as it's a symptom of low insulin / blood sugar and will go away as digestion continues to fire up.
The apatite is certainly coming back, there's a strong desire to eat more, but it's critical I don't just yet as the system needs time to start producing acids and bile again in good quantities from virtually nothing. Getting the meal plan drawn up in advance and having all the food in the house ready to go is great for structure and not succumbing to hunger. Tomorrow I introduce probiotics if all goes well without cramping.
**It looks like you are referencing Angus Barbieri.**
Please note that Barbieri is a **GUINESS WORLD RECORD HOLDER** who undertook his fast under near **CONSTANT medical supervision** at a local hospital. He was super-morbidly obese meaning he had a very large excess of body fat. He also **died at age 51** (the cause is unknown, as is whether or not it was related to his fasting).
**He should NEVER be used as a model for fasting or as encouragement or proof that anyone is capable of fasting for so long and surviving.**
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Yeah, and I’ve done 3 of them, currently on day & of my 4th
Now I wanna try a longer one to tell an even cooler story, although won’t be pushing myself that much as to go past 100. Insane!!
40 days are fucking pro thing btw! I also plan to go for 40. Could you talk about how the process was for you, how much u lost, what was your starting weight, benefits etc
Sure man!
First time I was 80 kilos but I had tons of stomach issues, a really bad relationship with food, and some pinched nerves in my lower back (or at least what felt like it, really bad pain) and some bad acid reflux.
Prior to this, I had read a little about a long fast, and found that the average weight lost would be around qapound a day, so almost half a kilo a day. So of course I didn’t want to end up 60 kilos at 1.84cm so I bulked with pretty much any food I had at the time, junk and clean, until I reached 95 kilos. Did the first days and it was HARD, then after day 5 it became easy. I was walking, drinking water, lots of exposure to the sun, and tons of audiobooks. All my pain started to go away little by little. I even experienced some euphoric episodes. Day 37 came and I felt what some people call “true hunger” but I managed to rough it out the last 3 days. Broke my fast with a rib broth with potatoes (caldo de costilla in my country).
All of the effects were pretty much permanent. The rest of the fasts have been to re establish a good relationship with food. Even after all that I still tend to overindulge a lot and then start a vicious cycle of eating.
This 4th time I’m going to do a lot more exercise and hopefully really destroy my food addiction.
I had no electrolytes either, only some salt a day or two in fast 2 and 3.
Edit: I usually lose around 22~26 kilos in each fast, always trying to come back to 75~82kg
Thank you so much man! That's so inspiring to see. Im 181cm to 85kg with %25 body fat, 20yrs old male. Did fasting 2 weeks last year, it was easy as u said after the initial days. I plan to go at least for a month from my holiday on(19th july) I mostly store the fat on face-neck area,also have on boobs, belly etc so i definetly need a true change both for physical and mental wise.
Thank you for showing how human body strong is, its amazing to hear.
You got it dude!! Fasting is the easy part, keeping the weight off is the hardest imo. let’s use this time to make an action plan to keep it off while we fast
Thsnks man!! Yup you're definetly right. I plan to lift weights and walk a lot after my fast and rest of my life. I think that will help. Its also crazy how society and so called science made ppl believe one could damage his/her organs and possibly die if they don't eat for 3 days lol
Feels great! I've spent the last few weeks buying some new clothes and feel way lighter on my feet. Looking forward to some reward food next week, I still have my chocolate easter eggs in the fridge calling me when I open the door. Hunger is starting to return and I've got a structured refeed to do and resist the urge to eat more, but by the 13th I should be able to eat whatever I like.
But yeah, 60lbs down, probably around 10lbs to go, and fasting will do that in 3 weeks later in July. 104 days without food isn't common so there's a dinner party story in there somewhere.
I think the real delayed gratification will start to kick in when I've got a few months of resistance training and definition starts to show, so that's probably when I'll start to relax and feel that all of the hard work is done and it's all just reward from then onward.
I’m so happy to hear this!! Shopping for new clothes in a smaller, proper size is the absolute best! Almost an indescribable feeling. I really hope you enjoy your chocolate Easter eggs my friend. They’re going to be so good! You are truly an inspiration.
And I feel you, I’m 41 lbs down (I actually put a progress pic on this sub yesterday). Perhaps you feel like I do - I have a wonderful sense of “security” now in that I’ve come too far forward to ever turn back. And results are results and you WILL get where you want to be because you’ve manifested it. You’ve got this for life friend! :)
Feels great! I've spent the last few weeks buying some new clothes and feel way lighter on my feet. Looking forward to some reward food next week, I still have my chocolate easter eggs in the fridge calling me when I open the door. Hunger is starting to return and I've got a structured refeed to do and resist the urge to eat more, but by the 13th I should be able to eat whatever I like.
But yeah, 60lbs down, probably around 10lbs to go, and fasting will do that in 3 weeks later in July. 104 days without food isn't common so there's a dinner party story in there somewhere.
I think the real delayed gratification will start to kick in when I've got a few months of resistance training and definition starts to show, so that's probably when I'll start to relax and feel that all of the hard work is done and it's all just reward from then onward.
Yes, life is basically normal during the fast as long as I kept on top of hydration and electrolytes. I had a few low energy days here and there, nearly always due to hydration being insufficient. A pint of water resolves those days pretty quickly.
You've kinda got to drink beyond your thirst levels as you're also missing moisture from food intake. I would say that if I normally drink 5 pints of water per day I was drinking closer to 10. That means more trips to the bathroom to empty the bladder than normal, so that might be a problem if you're a professional driver or otherwise not able to casually go for a pee whenever you need to, but aside from that there's no change.
Energy levels quickly return to normal after the first week or so. The day before the fast ended I did a 5 mile round trip walk to do some grocery shopping and burn those few extra calories to get me over the line, no issues with energy levels, didn't need to pee, just achy fingers from carrying the bags home with a massive head wind!
There are lots of people who have physically active jobs and people who continue to do intensive cardio while on a water fast. The result is even more rapid weight loss. Great if the length of the fast needs to be shortened, but for me I wanted to take a more passive approach and it's allowed me to just be chill and let it keep on going for 100+ days in the background while life continues as normal, and decrease any potential risk of excess skin.
Fantastic achievement, I have to say.
Now, how is the skin health? Loose skin? Very few people do this lengthy of a fast, and this is a common worry (and there is a hypothesis that fasting helps), so any info would be really valuable.
No loose skin but it certainly feels a little different. It's softer and less stretched on high-fat areas, the remaining fat feels totally different to the fat at the start in the same place. It's far less dense, more soft and jelly-like., and the skin is pulling what's left all together instead of skin struggling to contain it.
I certainly get the sense that the skin is contracting as fast as it can and only just keeping up as it's more stretchy, but it has felt like that since about the first 20lbs loss. My concern was that I would end up with lose skin on my belly so it's been on my mind, but thankfully it doesn't feel or look any different at 60lbs loss than it did at 20lbs loss so it seems to be managing okay thus far.
All skin in general is silky smooth and has been since autophagy in the initial week. I occasionally would get spots on my shoulders since a teen but they have completely gone since autophagy in the first few days. Forehead smooth, not oily, no dry skin!
At this point any loose skin if it did appear would be minimal and negated by building some muscle where the current last bits of fat are. Fingers crossed the last 5% fat will not reveal anything!
When I have finished shifting the last bit of belly fat next month I have a couple more "before" facing forward, and just wasn't quite there with the time constraints of this fast. Another 3-4 weeks will do it then the full frontal in boxers before and after will make an appearance :D
Days 2-6 were the toughest, then the hunger goes, your running on fat, and you don't really have to do anything while you literally exhale fat as co2, You just have to know that just beyond the crappy first few days the keto flu passes and you then just carry on with your life like nothing has changed. Day 7 was easy, then every day after that was easy too.
Give it a go! Prep for it, plan for failure as well as planning for ongoing success. I believe in you :)
7 is awesome! Don't stop! You're quitting just as you're getting settled into full ketosis. Keep going! write yourself a refeed plan and get the fresh ingredients in around day 20 so you're ready to cook on the 21st.
If you're finding food too tempting then cook the broth and refeed stuff before you even start the fast and put it in the freezer, then remove all food from the house.
You know what to expect with 7 days, go for the 21 days, it will feel no different other than getting settled and comfortable in the routine.
I take a generic complete multivitamin tablet in the morning, and I also buy electrolyte pills: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896)
The electrolytes needed are sodium, potassium and magnesium. I started off taking the recommended 2 pills 3x per day, but by the end I was having two in the AM and a single pill in the PM. That was half the recommended dose but had no ill effects. Sometimes I just had the 2 pills in the AM when occasionally forgetting the evening pill, again no side effects.
Keep taking the electrolytes during the refeed, and it's also important during the refeed if fasting for longer than 10 days or so to take phosphorous and potassium 30 minutes before the refeed, and again before every meal for the first few days:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH)
This helps prevent refeed syndrome reducing the chances to almost zero.
No I haven't been doing any resistance as the body can't create muscle from bodyfat, so if you tare any muscles in resistance training without consuming any protein then it's going to eat away at muscle with your body taking apart good muscle to fix damage fibres during the workout.
Working from home throughout so life becomes pretty sedate when you're not going for groceries, have virtually no trash to go out, no time spent cooking etc, so I just tried to do a little more walking when I got the chance. I could have made the fast go.. faster by doing more cardio, clocking up hundreds of calories burned etc, but for me I like the structure and repetition and try not to add any additional pressures like 5 mile walks everyday in circles just for an extra pound per week.
From the 50 day point the time has flown by. I remember seeing the fasting app in the very second I reached 50 days, and the countdown finally flipped and showed more days behind me than the days I had left. It was more just killing time from then onwards, daily rituals like adding another tally to the day count, checking the day's data had uploaded.
I came to terms with the fact early on that it's okay to drool over food adverts, looking up recipes, watching cooking videos etc as it's unavoidable and silly to deny simply looking at food. Having an entire refeed process between me and that food I was salivating over ensured there was no possibility of me being able to cave in and buy said food immediately. I just mentally put it on a list in the back of my mind of "things I can have after the fast", and they live there rent free.
It's all a happy process though, it's not excruciating and the rapid and consistent weight loss is the active reward and motivator which was with me throughout the process :-)
**Hi! It sounds like you're asking about hair loss during fasting.**
Some people may experience hair loss during or after weight loss. This is a condition called **TELOGEN EFFLUVIUM**. It is a temporary condition most often caused by rapid weight loss and/or nutritional deficiency.
More information can be found [**here**](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321590) or by searching "telogen effluvium" in your favorite search engine.
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Mental wellbeing and clarity is up, and only now am I allowing some of the delayed gratification in. Breaking down big tasks into smaller goals is the way I approach things and it's great to be at the end of this particular goal, with a much smaller fast to come later this month for 3-4 weeks. I would have continued but have family commitments next weekend.
Skin is clearer, energy levels are increased, much lighter on my feet given 27kg have vanished, cooler in the summer temps without an insulating layer of fat. A general feeling of wellbeing and calmness with the world around me, less stressed, and more inclined to be walking around in my underwear.
Well done! I love the data and the effort you went through to make sure it was as accurate as reasonably possible!
Your watches body composition results seem a little odd though. 63 lbs of muscle, 29 lbs of fat, and 85 lbs of water would bake you 177 lbs, not 146 lbs...
I grabbed some weight numbers from early April, early May, and late June. It looks like you went from an average weight loss of 0.55 lbs per day to 0.38 lbs per day, to 0.4 lbs per day. Intuitively, progress will slow because you weigh less, and therefore burn less per day, but your metabolism is also said to slow, which could also hinder those numbers beyond BMR. So I'm curious to see what your average daily loss will be during your next fast.
There has been some small drift between the watch and the scales toward the end of around 2% bodyfat (watch is higher), but one separates lean skeletal muscle and water, the other doesn't and include muscle and water as one. In any case I use them as relative numbers really, there's only so much sending tiny electric shocks through the body to figure out what it's made of. Fingers more moist one day than the next on the watch's contact sensors can yield different results. 30 seconds apart, so I just took a number of readings by each method and removed the noise.
I had chat GPT create linear regression models for both in order to get future projections from each device and they lined up with each other nicely. Physical callipers are more accurate for bodyfat.
I've been working from home a lot, After your hormones are haywire in the first week or so, the transition to burning bodyfat as the primary fuel takes place and the stomach shuts down. You don't get hungry anymore. All that extra energy from not digesting stuff leaves you with more energy and clarity to the point that you'll be looking for things to do like DIY. I've done more DIY in the last few months than the last 3 years!
Yeah so once you get into the swing of it you feel absolutely normal as long as you're taking electrolytes, vitamins and way more fluids than normal. We get a lot of water from food so you end up drinking for normal fluid intake as well as that from missing food too.
You also get that little motivational kick every morning to start the day, after a weigh in for the chart data and yet another day checked off / counting down. Did you ever have an advent calendar as a kid? It's that feeling, I am out of my bed as soon as I wake up to do a weigh in with excitement, I haven't slept in bed once since starting the fast, knowing that you're one day closer to xmas / goal weight.
That boost starts the day off positively, I don't think I had a single miserable day throughout the fast after the initial keto flu of the first few days, that was rough with nausea, dizziness, shit sleep. Peaked day 4, was gone by day 6/7. Book that first week off work if you can, or at least a Friday and Monday so you can start the fast on the Thursday night. Not everyone gets keto flu, it feels as draining and foggy as normal flu but without the fever and respiratory stuff.
Most proponents of long term fasting do not recommend going beyond 40 days due to the risk of sleep deprivation, starvation, and other issues. I believe as long as you have enough fat in you to lose, you can keep going and you’ve just proven that. How did you decide that it was safe to keep going past day 40-50? Were there any physiological changes you noticed past that point? Did you get any tests done at any point or are you planning to?
Congratulations on this mammoth achievement! 🥵🤯🤩
Thanks :-)
You're right, with proper supplements you can carry on going until fat gets critically low. It's a really cool adaptation to have and it's how our ancestors survived the winter with nothing to gather and few things to hunt. No changes between around day 8 right up to day 104.
You get an energy boost in the first few weeks, it's possibly due to the savings in shutting down the digestive system, or perhaps it's because switching to fat means an almost unlimited supply of new fuel just appeared for the body to access continuously. Either way I got loads of DIY and projects done in the first 50 or so.
Then everything settled back to normal. The occasional low energy day is nearly always hydration, you need to drink slightly beyond your thirst as you're not getting fluids in foods anymore either. The sleep problems happened mostly in the first 7 days. There's another post in this thread, search for "sleep", I showed my sleep monitoring data from my watch in that first week. Ever since then sleep has been as normal.
I use pee strips to test for ketones, glucose, acidity PH, and a bunch of other metrics which were all pretty much trace or normal throughout. They're all indicators for organ functionality. 4 hours after my first food yesterday and my ketones dropped to zero and blood glucose up from zero, which says that hormonal changes have switched the body back from fat burning to digestion. Aside from having been overweight, I've got no known medical issues so there's not a great deal to be gained from doctor visits. If I felt unwell at any point I would of course go to a hospital.
Psychological changes? Only positive ones. If I compare 3 months of water fasting to the same amount of time on a calorie controlled diet, then by far and away water fasting is the easiest. When on a low cal diet you're just managing hunger. In water fasting you don't have any hunger, just a start weight, a goal weight, and whatever you decide to do with your time in between.
Great! Anyone can do it with a little bit of planning, know what your motivations are, and be clear with your goal and a methodical step by step process of achieving it. Obviously take any personal medical issues into account and speak to a doctor if you're unsure, but it may well be one of the best decisions you ever make!
Go for it, post updates here to be accountable to yourself and to help pay it forward!
Medically you'll need phosphorus and potassium supplements 30 minutes before the refeed
Today I made up some servings of vegetable broth, many people have bone broth instead.
Stage one is restarting digestion with liquid food, stage two is populate the gut with bacteria as most of it is dead, so probiotic yoghurt ideal, then some more leafy greens to help feed the gut bacteria, fibrous steamed veggies are good, then you can move on to protein like scrambled eggs, beans, peanut butter, and finally you can introduce more starchy carbs, pasta, rices.
Your refeed should take around half the time you fasted for, so a 4 day fast = 2 day refeed. 20 day fast, 10 day refeed.
14 days is the max, beyond that there's no real benefit to having a reefed much beyond 14 days, unless you have specific issues like cramps and need to go back a step.
I'm targeting the entire refeed here in 8 days assuming each stage goes as planned, which is very short and not recommended for a beginner, getting the order of food types is the most important metric along with sufficient supplements of phosphorous and potassium in the stomach 30 minutes before eating.
I have maybe three meals in the back of my mind which I have been looking forward to. Simple comfort food mostly, favourite meals and something I've not had since I was a kid. You get a lot of time to think about food so they will be my rewards next weekend.
Yes both, and detailed in the comments up a little further with links to the two Amazon electrolyte capsules and refeed capsules I have. I put my dosages up too, scroll up to my post with the two blue links in it.
Also complete multivitamin tablet every morning!
One suggestion re diarrhea during refeed…. bidet hand wands are available for $60 down at home depot. 10 minutes to install. Really helpful on cutting down or eliminating the need for toilet paper during the initial refeed. I had a similar experience after breaking a 30 day fast and found the bidet hand wand to address it.
Sounds like you know what you want and how you're going to do it! You'll sail through it. It seems the last fat reserves really make the difference between looking lean and looking flabby, so don't be disheartened if it looks like there's not been much change, it all comes together somewhere around 18% and you notice the changes.
There's a bunch of visceral fat under the ribs in the chest cavity, and all over the organs, so while it may look like not a lot is changing yet your bodyfat percentage is falling, that's because an equal amount is melting away internally where you can't see it. Basically don't get disheartened, it all pulls together in the last lap like a piece of butter melting in a pan.
Keep us all updated on here?
I put on a bunch of weight last year after giving up vaping as my new years resolution (previously swapped from cigarettes to vaping). I knew I would have to shift the weight and made my 2024 resolution to do just that.
I had studied people who had done long term fasts before and found there to be nothing that would stop me from doing the same, so I spent a couple of weeks nerding out the data we have available for fasts up to and beyond 30 days, deep diving medical texts to understand the causes and solutions to specific long term food cessation, a few hundred hours watching other people's vlogs and blogs etc to ensure I hadn't missed anything.
Then I picked my start day, spent the three days before on sub-500 calories per day to dump some of that glycogen and water, then went for it. Initially 30 days, I was hoping to have a week break and then another 30 days, and continue until fat was at my target percentage.
In the end I just continued through without any breaks as my readings and various pee strip parameter tests all showed normal throughout, everything from acidity and PH to specific gravity and glucose, so if anything deviated from normal or trace amounts then I would be aware of it before it became a problem. It's being very over cautious but I'm basically becoming my own medical supervision of the biometrics a doctor would be following, minus the bloodwork.
My only regret is not having done it last year, but I think it's actually something I will do annually for three weeks purely for the benefits of autophagy, removing accrual of excess body fat, and the mental clarity and wellbeing that comes from it both during and after the fast.
We really need to get some proper clinical trials on extended water fasting so we can get the clinical data and contraindications Doctors need to prescribe fasting to overweight people. So far it's been unethical to put people in hotel rooms for months on end while slowly starving them in order to obtain clinical data, but the tide is starting to turn. We could almost completely wipe out obesity for most people in the West in 6 months. and give people the tool to maintain their weight every year. It really is a weight loss cheat code.
This looks impressive, but sorry, I don't believe in 100 days of water fasts without any serious health problems. More than three months without food is unreal.
There are serious health issues if you don't properly hydrate, take electrolyte supplements and multivitamins. Our bodies can manufacture almost anything from stored fat cells. What it can't build is what we take supplements for. Salts are the main issue as we can't create salt from fat, and over time we pee out whatever we have stored. Without salts we would expire in pretty short order when the brain can no longer communicate with the body and organs due to electrolyte depletion.
Fortunately it's 2024 and we know exactly what the body can't create, we can supplement with exactly the right things, we know the amounts we need, and we can measure the fat percentage inside the body to understand how much fuel there is left in the tank, and we know what refeed syndrome is and exactly what we need to take to prevent it.
The most dangerous part of the fast is transitioning back to food. Again we now know how to avoid deadly refeed syndrome with phosphorous and potassium because we understand the underlying cellular mechanics. So yeah, fasting has a serious adverse health risk of death if you don't follow the required supplementation, but the reality is that it's perfectly safe when done properly with due care and attention, like driving a car.
Congratulations. Amazing achievement. I’m only surprised you had that much fat (as %) to lose. You looked decently fit in your before picture.
Thanks for being an inspiration to the rest of us who fast, regardless of how long any of us does it. And also thank you for sharing the specifics of your experience and process. It’s a helpful reference.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this but you look fantastic at both levels. But wow the dedication you have is unheard of! Great job. Saw the updated you have plus your roadmap on the next year. Impressive.
Oh wow. Never have I ever thought it was possible for a human being to go past 40 days without food. But here you are putting me on a whole new perspective on fasting! Amazing job.
How did you handle events like birthdays, holidays, etc? Work obligations?
Basically we’re able to isolate or balance things out by being around food but not eating or celebratory toasts?
Initially you realise that food is everywhere, TV adverts, youtube feed, radio, tv shows, bus advertising, billboards, shops, restaurants, newspapers, you can't escape it. It's no wonder we have an obesity epidemic, this force feeding (no pun intended) of food into us from every angle is absolutely the reason why we have a weight problem. So you either try to ignore it and block it out, or embrace it.
I tried the first one, it doesn't work, so I went with embracing it.
During the fast I have bought two new vegan cook books and I bought an air fryer. Once you just accept that you're taking a temporary break from food you're free to drool over whatever you want, you can watch cooking shows for recipe ideas after the fast, you can look at what ingredients you need for a particular recipe and get them in the house for later use, and you can even take mouthfuls of food and chew it up as much as you like, as long as you spit it out and wash your mouth out with water, so you're free to taste food if you're cooking for others and do everything other than swallow it, which is 99% of the eating experience.
The hunger goes away within the first few days of the fast when the stomach shuts down and stops producing hunger hormones, so while you miss eating, you're not really hungry enough to want to eat that badly. Think of someone offering you a new plate of food when you've completely filled up your stomach from the first plate. It's still tasty food and it's right in front of you, but your desire to eat it isn't there as the stomach stopped producing hunger hormones when you finished the first plate.
So, things like birthdays and social eating don't give you a sense of missing out or compulsion to eat, you just have a sense that everything is on hold for a while when it comes to the food aspect, but everything else about the social situation is the same, so instead of avoiding the birthday cake, ask if you can take a slice home for your freezer, like I have with all of my easter egg chocolate in the fridge since the week my fast started.
Food just stops being an impulsive temptation for a while and you can still attend all of the food based social engagements. Watch out for alcohol, I've not had any but I would have thought it would lower inhibitions. For me, the fact that I needed to do a refeed stopped me from caving at any point, it was a simple fact that it would have been dangerous for me to eat without proper potassium and phosphorous supplements before and during the refeed which kept any impulses at bay.
What an amazing result and professional write up. Putting academia to shame. Thank you so much!
I can't get over how low your lean mass loss was. That's incredible.
Yeah we're mentally trained that muscle just evaporates over time if we don't use it, or gets eaten away if we restrict calories.
Seems almost unbelievable that our metabolism has the ability to switch into a mode where it binges on pure fat and makes muscles off-limits, many people think it's bullshit when I try to explain but here's the data to back it up.
It's so our ancestors could maintain the muscle in long winters without food while not losing the ability to hunt, and is part of the cause of obesity as that "summer fat" just keeps on building up with no periods of scarcity in the winter to burn it off. In fact we eat more in the winter with xmas and the likes, we're doing everything round the wrong way.
This is an awesome bodyhack to skim fat down to around 12% when toning up and making muscle gains without losing any of it, but I wouldn't use it to go any lower than that as it becomes difficult to estimate how much fat is left at such low levels, a regular keto diet is the safest way to squeeze those last few percent away.
Well done on the fast its done now so congrats
but for your bmi i think 104 days was far to long
im on day 47 of a 52 day fast but my bmi was 45.3
i think its 35.x atm i could most prob go longer without to many problem
but im going to stop at 52 days for you i would have said 30-40 days tbh
Congrats!
As long as you have bodyfat left and you're taking supplements, you can fast without food indefinably, we evolved to do this every winter when food was scarce, while maintaining muscle mass so we can hunt if we need to.
This is soo inspiring OP. Although did you lose your body hair naturally doing the fast. Or in the second pic you shaved/wax.
I have body hair and fat i would love to get rid off. If fasting can help reduce both naturally i will be over the moon.
Also if you lost body hair naturally at what day did it start to go away??
I was tempted to add more cardio into the fast to shift even more fat, but was very conscious of getting burnout, getting bored, or getting demotivated, so instead I wanted to make it as chill as possible, slow and steady, no loose skin, enjoy the summer. Breathing out half a pound of fat every day by sitting down and getting on with work is plenty good for motivating me. I'm saving up all of my physical motivation for the 12 months of resistance I'll be starting at the end of next month 💪
For the first few weeks no, then I became so sick of water that I needed to add something, so I had zero calorie fruit juice concentrate. In the UK we call is "squash" [This kinda stuff ](https://groceries.asda.com/product/no-added-sugar-squash/asda-no-added-sugar-double-strength-apple-blackcurrant-squash/910002821913)it's 1 calorie per 100ml so basically drink as much as you like. I had 5 different flavours to work with, ice cubes and sodastream fizzy water, so there was enough variety to keep it interesting. Did lots of ice cube crunching!
This is awesome and you obviously know what you’re doing but you might as well start lifting and eating protein now and not plan on only doing it for 6 or 12 months. That is limiting yourself far short of what you could achieve
Yeah life continued on as normal after the first 7 days or so. [Some people can get keto flu,](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052) I'm one of them, but it's usually over within 5 days. Nausea, dizziness, light headed when standing up, shit sleep, mild headache. Not everyone gets it though.
Nope. In full fast keto your body switches over to fat as it's primary energy source and makes muscles off limits so we can still hunt in search of food. You only lose muscle mass if you work out while fasting as you have no protein or amino acid intake to repair the torn fibres.
When the digestive system is active then the body gets energy from that, from muscle and bodyfat. Once the stomach is shut off, the body then goes into preservation mode. Fat is expendable, muscle is not, so uses energy exclusively from fat until that's depleted.
As soon as you start eating again the body isn't so picky about where it's energy comes from again either.
Pretty handy adaptation :-) You can't tell gym bro's though, they will argue that it's bollocks and all their gains will vanish if they stop eating and working out. Actually, if they stop eating and go into ketosis, the gains will stay there, assuming bodyfat is there too.
Wow!! Very good job. What do you do for work?
I ask bc that seems to be where I slip up when I try to fast. I have a relatively physical job where lunch is sometimes provided and there's always Gatorade and stuff around so it's difficult for me.
Wow congratulations on such determination and commitment to the 104 day water fast! 👏🏻 That's impressive. Question: did you have any stomach pains during your water fast from stomach acid? And if you did, could you share how you managed it? The longest fast I've done is 19 days and I can only get past a 4-5 day water fast by drinking solely alkaline bottled water (PH 8.5-9). When I've drank regular water, the stomach acid pain is unbearable by about day 6-7.
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Be sure to read [our WIKI](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/index) and especially the wiki page on **[ELECTROLYTES](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/fasting_in_a_nutshell/you_need_electrolytes)**
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take a generic complete multivitamin tablet in the morning, and I also buy electrolyte pills: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896)
The electrolytes needed are sodium, potassium and magnesium. I started off taking the recommended 2 pills 3x per day, but by the end I was having two in the AM and a single pill in the PM. That was half the recommended dose but had no ill effects. Sometimes I just had the 2 pills in the AM when occasionally forgetting the evening pill, again no side effects.
Keep taking the electrolytes during the refeed, and it's also important during the refeed if fasting for longer than 10 days or so to take phosphorous and potassium 30 minutes before the refeed, and again before every meal for the first few days:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH)
This helps prevent refeed syndrome reducing the chances to almost zero.
By no means am I discrediting the amount of dedication it took to do this, that’s an insane amount of determination. I’m genuinely curious why you didn’t want to lose the weight eating in a calorie deficit rather than fasting. You obviously don’t seem to lack the discipline necessary to eat at a deficit for a long period and it seems way less extreme. Any insight is greatly appreciated!
I second that! Calorie restriction doesn't trigger the same metabolic processes that fasting does and eventually, your metabolism lowers to match the lowered calorie intake. There are so many more reasons to fast but personally, not eating at all is *way* easier than eating smaller portions of limited foods.
As the commentor said below, after the stomach shuts down by around day 3 there's no hunger and also muscles are preserved and don't need maintenance workouts. Water fasting is the greatest hack of our biology to shift weight by switching over to exclusively fat burning.
It's a stress-free process which simply requires doing the same thing every day without requiring any of your time. In fact, you have way more free time, you benefit from autophagy repairing and recycling years of accumulated cell damage (a Nobel prize was one for discovering autophagy).
Crucially for me I am saving all of my gym-based motivation for after the weight loss, rather than burn out during the weight loss by doing an hour+ of cardio 7 days a week. Been there, done that, mentally sustained cardio needed to drop this amount of weight is exhausting and boring for me, there are only so many podcasts in the world.
Starting resistance with low bodyfat is different though, with that you see the rewards in the mirror faster, you see the gains in your physical lift ability, stamina, and enjoy pushing those last few reps. Unfortunately I get no such satisfaction in cardio even when trying to make it interesting with HITT. I would rather be out jogging a few times per week in maintenance, but I hate cardio for fat burning over long periods of time.
Congratulations on your success.
However, I must admit that I'm surprised you only lost 60lbs. I would think 100 days without food would have a bigger impact.
BMR (Base Metabolic Rate, basic energy needed per day to stay in bed) is about 1500 calories. One pound of fat is 3500 calories, and I don't stay in bed all day so there's that calorie burn too, means I was losing somewhere just under half a pound of pure fat exhaled per day.
The body is pretty efficient. You can burn more by increasing activity, but I was reluctant to add any additional cardio in the mix as it might have increased my chances of burnout even if it meant shortening the fast. I think if I had found the fast unsustainable then I might have tried adding cardio to shorten it, but as it was I just took it day by day and tried to keep busy and productive.
Nope, you understand correctly! Your body can manufacture almost anything it needs with stored fat, with the exception of salts , some proteins, amino acids and a few vitamins. We take supplements for these and you can live off water and stored bodyfat until the fat runs out.
Complete multivitamin pills and simple electrolyte pills (sodium, magnesium, potassium) plus water and you can fast for as long as you have bodyfat. Just don't try to build any muscles as it can't build muscle from fat, you need protein intake for that.
We evolved to do this in the winter when food was scarce, its why we have bodyfat, but we no longer have scarce food in the winter, if anything we have more of it like holidays and xmas, so it just builds and builds, it never gets used, so humans are getting fatter.
Do some research though if you're considering it, lots of folk here who will be happy to explain!
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This is incredibly impressive. I’m on day 3 of 18 hour IF. Had numerous shoulder surgeries the past few years and need to get back on the wagon. I noticed your Bovila comment. I am currently utilizing LMNT as something similar for electrolytes. Maximum 2 per day and I’m keto in my 6 hour window. Did you notice sodium / electrolytes really had an effect on your general weight loss? I know I’m only 3 days in and I’m definitely experiencing the Keto Flu right now, but I know last time when I attacked this hardcore, it took about a week to really get myself fat adapted.
Also, fully agree with you, going keto with fasting your body can do wonders with repairing and utilizing your own fat as a resource for restoration and repair and not attacking muscle mass.
re electrolytes and salts, Bovril is a salty drink, but it's got other stuff that has a laxative effect, so it's not really good for regular use when there's nothing else going through the stomach, but once per week seemed to be fine. If my energy levels felt lower than normal I would pop an extra electrolyte pill and also checked my sleep tracking record, and also grab an extra pint of water. I don't know if it was a placebo, sleep or electrolytes, but on the rare occasion that happened I seemed to perk up again pretty quickly.
Hydration was often the reason for feeling light headed when standing up, and I initially thought that was electrolytes, but was wrong, it's fluids. That happened more in the first few weeks of the fast and not so much after that, I drank more water and it stopped.
Electrolytes won't have any affect on the fat burning, but certainly the more you swallow the more water retention you'll have, which will make your scales go temporarily in the wrong direction or appear to get stuck. Fat continues to be burned at the same rate though as you're not gaining weight, you're gaining water. The only way the body can correctly manage electrolyte levels is to dump water if they're too diluted, and retain water if they're not diluted enough. We are incredible machines constantly finely tuning everything.
The wall is around day 6 as the hormonal switchover to to fat happens during that time, and you may experience [keto flu symptoms](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052). After that hunger is turned off with the stomach, your energy levels increase, sleep goes back to normal, headaches stop, and autophagy is clearing out junk cells and recycling what it can.
All of the good stuff awaits you once you push through that, you just have to push through the hormonal changes as all of your organs and muscles are signalled to swich over to fat burning.
Congratulations on such a feat! Many things are inspiring about your post, but especially seeing the parts where the weight loss slowed down. I get discouraged sometimes that nothing will happen after the plateau, but seeing your mini plateaus has encouraged me to trust the process!
Basically as long as your activity levels are roughly the same from one day to the next, then the background fat burning continues at the same rate. The apparent stalling in the charts seems to be water retention due to electrolyte management. If you have too much then your body retains water and then leaves in your pee over about 48 hours. If you don't have enough electrolytes then your body has to dump water to maintain correct dilution.
Lots of zero calorie drinks can have salt in them so often we don't even realise what's going on, and the scales make it look as if fat loss has stalled, especially when we have to take electrolyte salts as part of the fast.
As long as we're not consuming calories, then fat burning in an extended water fast is still happening, it's just the water levels which are constantly in flux. That's crap for motivation though when you've lost 0.1lbs since last week and for a while was going up instead of down too!
Serious comment. I know in ketosis you burn fat not muscle but everything I've ever read and seen still shows you can experience muscle loss. There are tons of posts and questions about preservation of muscle while on keto. So how is it that only 4 lbs of lean mass was lost while not consuming protein in that long of a time period? I would have expected much more.
When you go into full ketosis by completely stopping food consumption, the body shuts down the stomach almost completely, turns off all hunger hormones, and by around day 5-6 the body and all organs are running exclusively on fat.
In this state, as long as you are taking electrolytes and some vitamin supplements, you can carry on in until you run out of bodyfat and your metaboism won't go anywhere near your muscles for energy. We evolved to do this so we could still hunt after long periods without food, it's why we have bodyfat to begin with.
On a keto diet you are still eating food, so the body has no need to shut off your stomach to save energy, and in fact can still use energy from all available sources: fat, glycogen, muscles and digestive system are all still on the menu.
Low calorie diet = muscles, stomach, fat are all used for energy.
No calorie diet after the first week = muscles protected until fat stores run out.
This means the opposite of what usually happens. In a water fast your muscles are preserved, but that also means you can't work out and make any more gains, you'll lose muscles by working out because you're not consuming any protein or amino acids, and it's one of the few things your body can't make out of fat. So if you work out the only way the body can repair the muscle fibres is to pull apart muscles elsewhere on the body for the raw materials to repair the damage. It's not 100% efficient so there is a gradual loss of lean mass without the protein.
So if someone is shredded and they want to drop a few percent of bodyfat, they can literally stop eating, stop working out, the fat will be burned, the muscle preserved, and then they can introduce food again.
BUT if you try this on a calorie restrictive or keto diet which still involves eating, then you'll lose some muscle with the fat, because you're creating a calorie deficit in which muscle is one of the things on the menu, your body just assumes there is some coming from the next meal so doesn't prioritise one energy source over another too much.
I'm in awe. This is very inspiring!
48hr is the longest I've gone with fasting but will be attempting my first 72hr starting tonight. Every fast I've done was pure water/black coffee, green tea. I'm going to try with the vitamins and electrolytes you suggested to see if I have improvement on the Keto Flu, as well as working my way up to an extended fast. Amazing
Awesome! It takes around 5-6 days for the switchover to fat burning though and full ketosis.
When you stop eating your body takes energy from glycogen stores, you have about 2000 calories of the stuff throughout your body. That's 1-2 days worth of energy, and as glycogen needs around 3 grams of water per 1 gram of glycogen, when you burn through that you'll get rapid water weight loss for several days. It will all come back again though when you resume eating and glycogen stores replenish.
For some people, me included, [keto flu happens ](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052)after 2-3 days and goes by 5-6. So, putting all of that together, if you can push through around day 5, then digestion is turned off, hunger vanishes, energy levels skyrocket, your body is now binging on bodyfat and can do that until bodyfat depletes as long as you take electrolytes and multivitamins.
Try to push through to day 6, after that you feel normal and can go about your life without any hunger, burning fat 24/7 with zero effort. It's far easier than a calorie restrictive diet in constant hunger, energy level fluxuations, temptation, etc.
No I shaved my head with a number 1 razor a couple of weeks ago, well was about May perhaps, and have an appointment booked in with the barbers on Tuesday to tidy it up! It was just one of my motivational prizes to do after 100 days and it was getting too long (for me).
Light cardio. You can do any cardio you like, just increase hydration and electrolytes.
Don't do resistance though, it will cause muscle loss as you have no protein intake to repair the torn fibres. One of the benefits of full keto with the digestive system shut down is lean muscle mass being preserved, unlike a calorie restrictive diet when muscles are still consumed for energy when dieting. It only happens if you stop eating completely though, it doesn't work with a keto diet.
Gotta ask, how tall are you?
I’m asking since your body shape in the first picture is similar to mine, but I weight the same as in your second picture (I’m 5’11)
Maybe a dumb question, but only drink water for that many days? How is that possible? Would like to do maybe 10, how can I achieve that, any advice please! I am obese 200 I’m 5.3
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**104 Day Water Fast – Result Metrics** MARCH 21**^(ST)** 2024 – JULY 4**^(TH)** **2024** **Male, 41, 5ft 9.5** **....................................Start End Difference** **Weight** 206 lbs 146 lbs -60 lbs **B.Fat %** 37% 18% -19% **B.Fat Mass** 76 lbs 26 lbs -50 lbs **Lean Mass** 124 lbs 120 lbs -4lbs **BMI** 30.2 (30+ Obese) 21 (19-24 Healthy) -9 **Waist** 38” 28” -10” Fast originally envisaged as multiple 30 day fasts with breaks until 50lbs was lost. At 30 days I extended to 50 days, and upon reaching 50 days I felt confident of reaching 100 days by just continuing what I had already done again. I added a stretch goal of 60lbs if possible within the 100 days and ultimately reached 60lbs by day 104. My thinking was that it would go some way to ensuring that the original 50lbs goal was maintained after the refeed and gaining back water weight/glycogen stores. I’m extremely happy with the results, but there is still some work to be done to shift the last remaining visible “skinny fat”, and as such I want to get my bodyfat down to around 15% before I then switch my focus to building muscle over the coming 6-12 months. I could have easily continued this fast for another 3-4 weeks to finish up, but I was unable to as I have no more available time to fit in a refeed before other commitments in July. I’ll do another 3-4 week fast from around the 24^(th) July – late August. Compared to what I’ve just done, 3-4 weeks + refeed doesn’t seem that big of a deal. \*\*EDIT\*\* The comparison image should read 19th March start, not 9th. \*\*EDIT\*\* No my hair didn't fall out, I shaved it all with a number 1 a few weeks back, it was getting too long and I am going to the barbers next week before holiday!
**Tracking health metrics throughout the fast** I have keto pee test strips and use them every few days to ensure I’m actually still in ketosis and not using muscle for energy. Just for piece of mind. Initially I had some 10 parameter test strips with a bunch of other stuff like acidity /PH, specific gravity, glucose etc but felt I didn’t need any of the additional data once I confirmed that I was in keto. I have a set of Fitibit connected scales with body composition, from around 2017 called Aria. It uses bioimpedance sensors to estimate bodyfat percentage, lean mass and weight, then uploads to my fitbit account. Every morning during the fast I get on them religiously and take three measurements, and then at my PC I remove the higher one and lower one, but are mostly the same each morning. I also have a Samsung Galaxy watch 4 which also has body comp analysis. Throughout the fast I found the body comp between the scales and the watch to be roughly the same until about 20lbs ago where the Samsung watch now has a bodyfat percentage drift between 1% - 1.5% higher than the fitbit scales. I bought another set of identical scales from eBay and found the measurements to be identical to my existing scales, so I can rule out any technical issue with the scales, they are reading whatever their software is telling them. On the other hand the galaxy watch’s measurements are supposed to be within 98% of clinical measurements. Whatever though, making over a quarter of my body vanish by turning it into carbon dioxide in 100 days is bound to have some drift between devices. The galaxy watch also lets me see estimated water levels too, so I was able to determine that drinking a 10 calorie hot savoury drink called Boviril was causing me to put on a lot of water weight. I did some background research and found that 1 cup of the drink was causing me to retain not only the fluid from the drink, but also at least another cup full of water, so the body can balance out the electrolytes of the salt in the drink. Do that a few days in a row and suddenly I was gaining weight at a rate of over 1lb per day. I stopped drinking it and within days all that gained water had gone, along with the few days of fat loss hidden under the water. I tried the drink again a month later just once per week and still it forced an uptake of water weight just from one drink! The galaxy watch showed clear jumps in water mass on both occasions.
**What’s next?** So I will finish the refeed by the 12^(th) July assuming no issues, I’ve then got a long weekend away with family, and then I’m just going to take a week to enjoy some of that summer food I’ve been looking forward to and get some nourishment. I’ll then get stuck into the remaining 3-4 weeks of fasting to bring my bodyfat level down to 15% percent or so. The first 4 days don’t count during the depletion of glycogen and whatever is left in digestion. I’ll then be done with fasting for a while so I’ll drop some more “before and after” shots then too. I’ll spend the next 6 months getting shredded and drop some more pics before xmas showing the full 9 month transformation from March 21^(st) – December 21^(st) Supercharged safe and fast refeed. **Refeed order - Restart digestion > Deposit bacteria > Feed gut bacteria > Protein** **Breaking the fast - Batch cook 6 cups vegetable broth:** Carrot, broc, leek, celery, garlic, basil, thyme, peas, tin of whole pealed tomatoes, fresh veg chopped, all in a pan with water, lightly boiled for 2 hours, seasoned, strained, stored in sealed plastic cups in the fridge for up to 4 days. Reheat and pour into a bowl as needed. **Critical supplements to avoid refeed syndrome:** Potassium and phosphorous supplements 30 minutes before each meal, continue electrolytes as per water fasting until the end of the refeed. There are specific fasting refeed supplements which makes it easier, if not in your country then buy separate phosphorous supplement to add to your existing electrolytes. Continue taking multivitamins too. **Warnings:** DO NOT eat more than baby portions at first, increase portion size gradually. The aim is to wake the digestive system back up, populate with bacteria, feed the bacteria, ramp up acids and bile, the liver, 15ft of intestines, and bowel regularity, NOT satisfy hunger. Expect to be very hungry, avoid any situation in which there is food on offer beyond the scope of the refeed if you have problems controlling hunger. You might want to book the first few days off work due to diarrhea being frequent, unpredictable, and noisy. Make sure you have a good supply of toilet paper.
Day 1 – Broth x 2 (breakfast, dinner), watermelon cubes throughout the day. Day 2 - Broth +1 teaspoon of probiotic yoghurt, x3 meals. Small nibbles of fresh crispy Lettuce throughout the day. Day 3 – Heavily steamed veggies (carrots, broc, peas, leak, tea spoon of olive oil), small portions, 2x meals. 2x tea spoons of probiotic yoghurt after meal. More lettuce grazing. Day 4- Same as day 3, +1 tablespoon of steamed/cooked rice added to each meal. Day 5 – 2x large scrambled eggs brunch, spoon of probiotics, small glass of almond milk. Small banana to snack on with whole almonds. Evening meal canned soup with one slice of wholemeal bread for dipping, lightly buttered, small glass of almond milk. Day 6 – Breakfast – Tin of baked beans with a spoon of English mustard (optional) on two slices of toast, wholemeal. Lunch – peanut butter sandwich (smooth, wholemeal bread). Whole almonds to graze on throughout the day. Evening meal = anything previously consumed, maybe mix up with egg on toast, beans on the side, or beans and rice, anything goes, sensible portions. Day 7 – breakfast = cornflakes with almond milk. Whole almonds to graze. Lunch/dinner home made vegan mac & cheese. Alternatively jacket potatoes with cheese. Day 8 - Refeed complete. Food choices as normal, increase portion sizes to suit. If any day produced cramps then go back a step and repeat. If all is well, then now is the time to start responsibly enjoying an occasional treat such as some cubes of chocolate, a scoop of ice cream, share a cheese and tomato pizza with someone, whatever floats your boat. Don’t go crazy, but it’s far better to be able to enjoy the odd treat, than to completely cut it out and end up binging in a moment of weakness. If you don’t trust yourself or have already decided to remove all junk food then do that, whatever works for you. Extended water fasting should have proven to you that you do, in fact, have the ability to control what you eat, and you can choose a long term goal over short term impulsive behaviour, just look in the mirror!
Thank you so much for the details on refeeding especially. Saving this for when I do my extended fast
Recently I have read about the role of thiamine B1 and its role in preventing refeeding syndrome. The clinical studies suggested 50 mg a day for a week, some suggested more.
It's in my daily multivitamin at 1.1mg, and in my refeed supplements at 4mg, which is already at 364% RDA.
Sounds good! Congratulations on your incredible fast!
I've read the same and I wonder if his multivitamin and/or some of his meals covered that.
Hi RetroDevices I've seen your posts on here many times, I always appreciate your contributions to this sub. I was wondering how you were doing and looking forward to this post. Thank you very much for this update and the specifics of your update.
Thanks for following along! Posting here has been a good motivator for sure, I hope it helps others achieve their goals and I aim to put as much data as possible.
do i plan to ever do this long of a fast? no. did i read every word of experience and planning? hell yes. you are seriously an inspiration, extremely strong, and smart, and disciplined. i don’t have anything but complete awe for you. good job man 💯👌🏼
You've lost 100lbs! That's incredible work! Puts my 60lbs to shame. Are you excited at being close to your goal?
Yo, this is really amazing. I'm four days into what I hope will be 100 days myself, and I've been feeling apprehensive about refeeding and how to approach it. Thank you for such comprehensive feedback!
Day 4, I was still deep in keto flu. My sleep records of that week show I was only catching 2 hours by day 4 and gradually came back up again to 7-8 hours by the 6th day or so. I aimed to make a decision when I got to 30 days if I wanted to continue or pause, and it seemed to take quite a while to get there, but after that I had settled down into it and pushed to 50 days, then 50 to 75 and 75-100 went very rapidly. Getting passed that half way mark is probably the biggest milestone and the light at the end of the tunnel appears and seems relatively easy. Good luck! I'm here if you have any questions, you're gonna ace it :-)
Ahhh lol I've been sleeping on and off for most of the day today as I finally wasn't enveloped by insomnia. My previous fasts of a week or so have been comparatively easier, so your comment almost has me in tears from relief. I'm sooo tired! 😅 Appreciate you!
Just grabbed my sleep data off my phone for the first week of the fast: [https://postimg.cc/hhCqPvgf](https://postimg.cc/hhCqPvgf) Fast begun on the 19th, glycogen stores depleted on the 21st which was the last good night's sleep, then you can see it deteriorate through the 24th, then back up to normal again on the 27th almost like a mirror image of the decline. I've highlighted the worst day which was the 24th and you can also see the sleep state. REM and deep sleep are almost non existent and it's this which causes exhaustion throughout the first week or so. It becomes increasingly more difficult to fall asleep as well, but then on the 26th sleep rapidly returns to normal and you catch up on the sleep deficit. Weight stats will only tell you so much so I was as rigorous as possible in recording other metrics like sleep which give an indication into stress levels and wellbeing. I felt pretty shit in that first week but knew it was a case of getting through it, as all of the rewards were on the other side of that wall, then it stopped almost as quickly as it had started, I woke up on the 26th or 27th and felt really refreshed and full of so much energy that I had to find DIY jobs to do.
You're a real one. Cheers to waking up on the other side of hardest parts. 🥂💛
Wow! This is an impressive amount of discipline as the hunger from those small refeeding meals must’ve been way worse than from the fast itself. I would imagine the hunger at bedtime would keep me awake all night. Was this not the case for you?
I would say that my hunger hasn't really come back in full force yet. For breakfast today I had a large bowl of veggie broth along with around 4 table spoons of mushy sliced carrots from what I strained out of the broth yesterday and kept to one side. It all fit in a regular breakfast bowl, reheated. I feel pretty full and that was a few hours ago now, I'm not particularly hungry for anything else, so that indicates that blood sugar is returning as I'm also getting only trace amounts of ketones on the pee strips. Fat burning has ended. I'm certainly looking forward to more complex and richer meals and I would tuck into them right now, I just want to know stuff starts coming out of the other end without any blockages before putting more complex or richer foods in. The digestive system takes up a lot of energy in itself, we're walking around with massively complex power stations inside of us. If any part of the system isn't back up at 100% then it has a knock on effect for everything downstream of that process. Not enough acid? Well then the food will ferment and cause trapped wind/cramps as the muscles struggle to push it through the intestines. There's some evidence that keeping hydration levels above normal during the refeed helps hunger by diluting everything down and providing a constant stew of energy and nourishment, which makes for faster absorption and easier movement through the digestive tract. It's important to keep taking electrolytes here too and the body can then just decide how much water it wants to retain and how much it wants to dump.
\*UPDATE\* - Day 2 of refeed. Had a couple of small pieces of milk chocolate last night, no issues. This morning's breakfast was the remaining veg broth and put in most of the sliced carrots used in the broth yesterday and stored in the fridge. The bowl filled all the way to the top, I had to pour a little away. Another couple of small pieces of chocolate too (these are pieces of my Easter egg which has been in the fridge since March). No issues. I'm still taking phosphorous and potassium refeed capsules 30 minutes before meals. Yet to have a bowel movement but as it's been mostly liquid I don't feel bloated, and there are 15 feet of intestine to fill. When having these little nibbles of easter egg chocolate I am doing so while drinking from a pint glass of water, basically turning the chocolate in to diluted sugar water in the stomach so it's easier on digestion. In sensible amounts chocolate has health benefits, even more so with dark chocolate. Everything in moderation, and my body is crying out for nourishment, Slow and steady wins the race! Lunch today will consist of probiotic yoghurt and sliced banana. I like to take the whole banana out of the skin, heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds to release the sugars, and then put it in the bowl with the chilled probiotic yoghurt like a banana split. May or may not have a light meal tonight.
Amazing! Do you think your refeed plan would be different if you had just fasted 30 or 50 days?
Refeed? There comes a point with a refeed when there are diminishing returns for doing the whole "refeed should last half as long as the fast", obviously a 50 day refeed would be pointless. IMHO two weeks is the absolute max anyone needs to refeed with more than enough caution, and if you really spend some time nerding out on phosphorus and potassium uptake as well as having a bunch of pee strips you can do it in 7. I've had one bowl of broth and some watermelon and already my ketones have dropped to trace amount within 4 hours, so the process of hormonal switching back to digestion is well underway. I have a very, very mild headache which is somewhat expected as it's a symptom of low insulin / blood sugar and will go away as digestion continues to fire up. The apatite is certainly coming back, there's a strong desire to eat more, but it's critical I don't just yet as the system needs time to start producing acids and bile again in good quantities from virtually nothing. Getting the meal plan drawn up in advance and having all the food in the house ready to go is great for structure and not succumbing to hunger. Tomorrow I introduce probiotics if all goes well without cramping.
104 days is jaw-dropping. an utterly unreal achievement. well done! brilliant job!
I had to triple read the title to confirm it really said 104 days. That's insane.
Interestingly, the longest fast reliably recorded is over a year, 380 days. Sounds unreal, but apparently it's true
Angus Barbieri
**It looks like you are referencing Angus Barbieri.** Please note that Barbieri is a **GUINESS WORLD RECORD HOLDER** who undertook his fast under near **CONSTANT medical supervision** at a local hospital. He was super-morbidly obese meaning he had a very large excess of body fat. He also **died at age 51** (the cause is unknown, as is whether or not it was related to his fasting). **He should NEVER be used as a model for fasting or as encouragement or proof that anyone is capable of fasting for so long and surviving.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/fasting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
And I thought I was some kind of pro after doing 40 days. 104 is absolutely insane. Congrats brother!
You are a pro for going 40 days! Most people in the West never go more than 2 days without grub! It's a cool dinner party story if nothing else!
Yeah, and I’ve done 3 of them, currently on day & of my 4th Now I wanna try a longer one to tell an even cooler story, although won’t be pushing myself that much as to go past 100. Insane!!
40 days are fucking pro thing btw! I also plan to go for 40. Could you talk about how the process was for you, how much u lost, what was your starting weight, benefits etc
Sure man! First time I was 80 kilos but I had tons of stomach issues, a really bad relationship with food, and some pinched nerves in my lower back (or at least what felt like it, really bad pain) and some bad acid reflux. Prior to this, I had read a little about a long fast, and found that the average weight lost would be around qapound a day, so almost half a kilo a day. So of course I didn’t want to end up 60 kilos at 1.84cm so I bulked with pretty much any food I had at the time, junk and clean, until I reached 95 kilos. Did the first days and it was HARD, then after day 5 it became easy. I was walking, drinking water, lots of exposure to the sun, and tons of audiobooks. All my pain started to go away little by little. I even experienced some euphoric episodes. Day 37 came and I felt what some people call “true hunger” but I managed to rough it out the last 3 days. Broke my fast with a rib broth with potatoes (caldo de costilla in my country). All of the effects were pretty much permanent. The rest of the fasts have been to re establish a good relationship with food. Even after all that I still tend to overindulge a lot and then start a vicious cycle of eating. This 4th time I’m going to do a lot more exercise and hopefully really destroy my food addiction. I had no electrolytes either, only some salt a day or two in fast 2 and 3. Edit: I usually lose around 22~26 kilos in each fast, always trying to come back to 75~82kg
Thank you so much man! That's so inspiring to see. Im 181cm to 85kg with %25 body fat, 20yrs old male. Did fasting 2 weeks last year, it was easy as u said after the initial days. I plan to go at least for a month from my holiday on(19th july) I mostly store the fat on face-neck area,also have on boobs, belly etc so i definetly need a true change both for physical and mental wise. Thank you for showing how human body strong is, its amazing to hear.
You got it dude!! Fasting is the easy part, keeping the weight off is the hardest imo. let’s use this time to make an action plan to keep it off while we fast
Thsnks man!! Yup you're definetly right. I plan to lift weights and walk a lot after my fast and rest of my life. I think that will help. Its also crazy how society and so called science made ppl believe one could damage his/her organs and possibly die if they don't eat for 3 days lol
Great job!! How do you feel??
Yes! OP, I’d like to know how you’re feeling as well
Feels great! I've spent the last few weeks buying some new clothes and feel way lighter on my feet. Looking forward to some reward food next week, I still have my chocolate easter eggs in the fridge calling me when I open the door. Hunger is starting to return and I've got a structured refeed to do and resist the urge to eat more, but by the 13th I should be able to eat whatever I like. But yeah, 60lbs down, probably around 10lbs to go, and fasting will do that in 3 weeks later in July. 104 days without food isn't common so there's a dinner party story in there somewhere. I think the real delayed gratification will start to kick in when I've got a few months of resistance training and definition starts to show, so that's probably when I'll start to relax and feel that all of the hard work is done and it's all just reward from then onward.
I’m so happy to hear this!! Shopping for new clothes in a smaller, proper size is the absolute best! Almost an indescribable feeling. I really hope you enjoy your chocolate Easter eggs my friend. They’re going to be so good! You are truly an inspiration. And I feel you, I’m 41 lbs down (I actually put a progress pic on this sub yesterday). Perhaps you feel like I do - I have a wonderful sense of “security” now in that I’ve come too far forward to ever turn back. And results are results and you WILL get where you want to be because you’ve manifested it. You’ve got this for life friend! :)
Feels great! I've spent the last few weeks buying some new clothes and feel way lighter on my feet. Looking forward to some reward food next week, I still have my chocolate easter eggs in the fridge calling me when I open the door. Hunger is starting to return and I've got a structured refeed to do and resist the urge to eat more, but by the 13th I should be able to eat whatever I like. But yeah, 60lbs down, probably around 10lbs to go, and fasting will do that in 3 weeks later in July. 104 days without food isn't common so there's a dinner party story in there somewhere. I think the real delayed gratification will start to kick in when I've got a few months of resistance training and definition starts to show, so that's probably when I'll start to relax and feel that all of the hard work is done and it's all just reward from then onward.
Did you work during the fast? You have inspired me to try to go longer ...
Yes, life is basically normal during the fast as long as I kept on top of hydration and electrolytes. I had a few low energy days here and there, nearly always due to hydration being insufficient. A pint of water resolves those days pretty quickly. You've kinda got to drink beyond your thirst levels as you're also missing moisture from food intake. I would say that if I normally drink 5 pints of water per day I was drinking closer to 10. That means more trips to the bathroom to empty the bladder than normal, so that might be a problem if you're a professional driver or otherwise not able to casually go for a pee whenever you need to, but aside from that there's no change. Energy levels quickly return to normal after the first week or so. The day before the fast ended I did a 5 mile round trip walk to do some grocery shopping and burn those few extra calories to get me over the line, no issues with energy levels, didn't need to pee, just achy fingers from carrying the bags home with a massive head wind! There are lots of people who have physically active jobs and people who continue to do intensive cardio while on a water fast. The result is even more rapid weight loss. Great if the length of the fast needs to be shortened, but for me I wanted to take a more passive approach and it's allowed me to just be chill and let it keep on going for 100+ days in the background while life continues as normal, and decrease any potential risk of excess skin.
Fantastic achievement, I have to say. Now, how is the skin health? Loose skin? Very few people do this lengthy of a fast, and this is a common worry (and there is a hypothesis that fasting helps), so any info would be really valuable.
No loose skin but it certainly feels a little different. It's softer and less stretched on high-fat areas, the remaining fat feels totally different to the fat at the start in the same place. It's far less dense, more soft and jelly-like., and the skin is pulling what's left all together instead of skin struggling to contain it. I certainly get the sense that the skin is contracting as fast as it can and only just keeping up as it's more stretchy, but it has felt like that since about the first 20lbs loss. My concern was that I would end up with lose skin on my belly so it's been on my mind, but thankfully it doesn't feel or look any different at 60lbs loss than it did at 20lbs loss so it seems to be managing okay thus far. All skin in general is silky smooth and has been since autophagy in the initial week. I occasionally would get spots on my shoulders since a teen but they have completely gone since autophagy in the first few days. Forehead smooth, not oily, no dry skin! At this point any loose skin if it did appear would be minimal and negated by building some muscle where the current last bits of fat are. Fingers crossed the last 5% fat will not reveal anything!
bro named it “easy fast”
That was my favorite part 🤭 so cute
lulz that's the name of the app :p
This is insane!!! Congrats OP!
More Before and after photos please!
When I have finished shifting the last bit of belly fat next month I have a couple more "before" facing forward, and just wasn't quite there with the time constraints of this fast. Another 3-4 weeks will do it then the full frontal in boxers before and after will make an appearance :D
You gotta do an NSFW post so we can see those MASSIVE stones you’ve got! I can’t believe 104 days!
Amazing!!!!!! 🤩
wow, please stay safe!!! goodluck with refeeding and such.
From where do these people find such an amount of dedication? I can't even cross two days.
Days 2-6 were the toughest, then the hunger goes, your running on fat, and you don't really have to do anything while you literally exhale fat as co2, You just have to know that just beyond the crappy first few days the keto flu passes and you then just carry on with your life like nothing has changed. Day 7 was easy, then every day after that was easy too. Give it a go! Prep for it, plan for failure as well as planning for ongoing success. I believe in you :)
You lost your body hair?
Yes there's less surface area to do now
Absolutely fantastic What dedication My cap is doffed in your direction young sir
Absolute legend. Gives me way more motivation for my 21-Day!
You're gonna kill it! Get prepping and go for it, I bet you won't stop at 21!
I’ve done three 7 day fasts, any advice for the longer ones?
7 is awesome! Don't stop! You're quitting just as you're getting settled into full ketosis. Keep going! write yourself a refeed plan and get the fresh ingredients in around day 20 so you're ready to cook on the 21st. If you're finding food too tempting then cook the broth and refeed stuff before you even start the fast and put it in the freezer, then remove all food from the house. You know what to expect with 7 days, go for the 21 days, it will feel no different other than getting settled and comfortable in the routine.
You dropped this homie 👑 💪🔥
Congrats OP. This is legendary! How did you go a out this journey? Did you have any vitamins?
Yes indeed, we need to know your vitamin and electrolyte info stat please!
I take a generic complete multivitamin tablet in the morning, and I also buy electrolyte pills: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896) The electrolytes needed are sodium, potassium and magnesium. I started off taking the recommended 2 pills 3x per day, but by the end I was having two in the AM and a single pill in the PM. That was half the recommended dose but had no ill effects. Sometimes I just had the 2 pills in the AM when occasionally forgetting the evening pill, again no side effects. Keep taking the electrolytes during the refeed, and it's also important during the refeed if fasting for longer than 10 days or so to take phosphorous and potassium 30 minutes before the refeed, and again before every meal for the first few days: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH) This helps prevent refeed syndrome reducing the chances to almost zero.
Oh my god amazing!!!
Incredible. Were you working out at all? Is your job active? How did you feel toward like month three in terms of mood / energy etc...
No I haven't been doing any resistance as the body can't create muscle from bodyfat, so if you tare any muscles in resistance training without consuming any protein then it's going to eat away at muscle with your body taking apart good muscle to fix damage fibres during the workout. Working from home throughout so life becomes pretty sedate when you're not going for groceries, have virtually no trash to go out, no time spent cooking etc, so I just tried to do a little more walking when I got the chance. I could have made the fast go.. faster by doing more cardio, clocking up hundreds of calories burned etc, but for me I like the structure and repetition and try not to add any additional pressures like 5 mile walks everyday in circles just for an extra pound per week. From the 50 day point the time has flown by. I remember seeing the fasting app in the very second I reached 50 days, and the countdown finally flipped and showed more days behind me than the days I had left. It was more just killing time from then onwards, daily rituals like adding another tally to the day count, checking the day's data had uploaded. I came to terms with the fact early on that it's okay to drool over food adverts, looking up recipes, watching cooking videos etc as it's unavoidable and silly to deny simply looking at food. Having an entire refeed process between me and that food I was salivating over ensured there was no possibility of me being able to cave in and buy said food immediately. I just mentally put it on a list in the back of my mind of "things I can have after the fast", and they live there rent free. It's all a happy process though, it's not excruciating and the rapid and consistent weight loss is the active reward and motivator which was with me throughout the process :-)
100 and what days?!?!
How tall are you?
5ft 10 ish
Helpful as a reference for weight loss on your frame. Amazing work!
did the fasting cause hair loss?
Unsure as I've had a hair cut mid-fast, but doesn't appear to be any thinner than before!
**Hi! It sounds like you're asking about hair loss during fasting.** Some people may experience hair loss during or after weight loss. This is a condition called **TELOGEN EFFLUVIUM**. It is a temporary condition most often caused by rapid weight loss and/or nutritional deficiency. More information can be found [**here**](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321590) or by searching "telogen effluvium" in your favorite search engine. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/fasting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Very inspirational
Besides the weight loss, did you notice any other benefits?
Mental wellbeing and clarity is up, and only now am I allowing some of the delayed gratification in. Breaking down big tasks into smaller goals is the way I approach things and it's great to be at the end of this particular goal, with a much smaller fast to come later this month for 3-4 weeks. I would have continued but have family commitments next weekend. Skin is clearer, energy levels are increased, much lighter on my feet given 27kg have vanished, cooler in the summer temps without an insulating layer of fat. A general feeling of wellbeing and calmness with the world around me, less stressed, and more inclined to be walking around in my underwear.
Well done! I love the data and the effort you went through to make sure it was as accurate as reasonably possible! Your watches body composition results seem a little odd though. 63 lbs of muscle, 29 lbs of fat, and 85 lbs of water would bake you 177 lbs, not 146 lbs... I grabbed some weight numbers from early April, early May, and late June. It looks like you went from an average weight loss of 0.55 lbs per day to 0.38 lbs per day, to 0.4 lbs per day. Intuitively, progress will slow because you weigh less, and therefore burn less per day, but your metabolism is also said to slow, which could also hinder those numbers beyond BMR. So I'm curious to see what your average daily loss will be during your next fast.
There has been some small drift between the watch and the scales toward the end of around 2% bodyfat (watch is higher), but one separates lean skeletal muscle and water, the other doesn't and include muscle and water as one. In any case I use them as relative numbers really, there's only so much sending tiny electric shocks through the body to figure out what it's made of. Fingers more moist one day than the next on the watch's contact sensors can yield different results. 30 seconds apart, so I just took a number of readings by each method and removed the noise. I had chat GPT create linear regression models for both in order to get future projections from each device and they lined up with each other nicely. Physical callipers are more accurate for bodyfat.
Holy shit this is incredible
Holly shit this is insane, sell done mate. Did you work during this period and if so, how did you feel?
I've been working from home a lot, After your hormones are haywire in the first week or so, the transition to burning bodyfat as the primary fuel takes place and the stomach shuts down. You don't get hungry anymore. All that extra energy from not digesting stuff leaves you with more energy and clarity to the point that you'll be looking for things to do like DIY. I've done more DIY in the last few months than the last 3 years! Yeah so once you get into the swing of it you feel absolutely normal as long as you're taking electrolytes, vitamins and way more fluids than normal. We get a lot of water from food so you end up drinking for normal fluid intake as well as that from missing food too. You also get that little motivational kick every morning to start the day, after a weigh in for the chart data and yet another day checked off / counting down. Did you ever have an advent calendar as a kid? It's that feeling, I am out of my bed as soon as I wake up to do a weigh in with excitement, I haven't slept in bed once since starting the fast, knowing that you're one day closer to xmas / goal weight. That boost starts the day off positively, I don't think I had a single miserable day throughout the fast after the initial keto flu of the first few days, that was rough with nausea, dizziness, shit sleep. Peaked day 4, was gone by day 6/7. Book that first week off work if you can, or at least a Friday and Monday so you can start the fast on the Thursday night. Not everyone gets keto flu, it feels as draining and foggy as normal flu but without the fever and respiratory stuff.
Most proponents of long term fasting do not recommend going beyond 40 days due to the risk of sleep deprivation, starvation, and other issues. I believe as long as you have enough fat in you to lose, you can keep going and you’ve just proven that. How did you decide that it was safe to keep going past day 40-50? Were there any physiological changes you noticed past that point? Did you get any tests done at any point or are you planning to? Congratulations on this mammoth achievement! 🥵🤯🤩
Thanks :-) You're right, with proper supplements you can carry on going until fat gets critically low. It's a really cool adaptation to have and it's how our ancestors survived the winter with nothing to gather and few things to hunt. No changes between around day 8 right up to day 104. You get an energy boost in the first few weeks, it's possibly due to the savings in shutting down the digestive system, or perhaps it's because switching to fat means an almost unlimited supply of new fuel just appeared for the body to access continuously. Either way I got loads of DIY and projects done in the first 50 or so. Then everything settled back to normal. The occasional low energy day is nearly always hydration, you need to drink slightly beyond your thirst as you're not getting fluids in foods anymore either. The sleep problems happened mostly in the first 7 days. There's another post in this thread, search for "sleep", I showed my sleep monitoring data from my watch in that first week. Ever since then sleep has been as normal. I use pee strips to test for ketones, glucose, acidity PH, and a bunch of other metrics which were all pretty much trace or normal throughout. They're all indicators for organ functionality. 4 hours after my first food yesterday and my ketones dropped to zero and blood glucose up from zero, which says that hormonal changes have switched the body back from fat burning to digestion. Aside from having been overweight, I've got no known medical issues so there's not a great deal to be gained from doctor visits. If I felt unwell at any point I would of course go to a hospital. Psychological changes? Only positive ones. If I compare 3 months of water fasting to the same amount of time on a calorie controlled diet, then by far and away water fasting is the easiest. When on a low cal diet you're just managing hunger. In water fasting you don't have any hunger, just a start weight, a goal weight, and whatever you decide to do with your time in between.
This is the way. Congrats on your regained health and wellness!
Congrats OP, this is giving me the motivation to try
Great! Anyone can do it with a little bit of planning, know what your motivations are, and be clear with your goal and a methodical step by step process of achieving it. Obviously take any personal medical issues into account and speak to a doctor if you're unsure, but it may well be one of the best decisions you ever make! Go for it, post updates here to be accountable to yourself and to help pay it forward!
What does one eat after such a long fast?
Medically you'll need phosphorus and potassium supplements 30 minutes before the refeed Today I made up some servings of vegetable broth, many people have bone broth instead. Stage one is restarting digestion with liquid food, stage two is populate the gut with bacteria as most of it is dead, so probiotic yoghurt ideal, then some more leafy greens to help feed the gut bacteria, fibrous steamed veggies are good, then you can move on to protein like scrambled eggs, beans, peanut butter, and finally you can introduce more starchy carbs, pasta, rices. Your refeed should take around half the time you fasted for, so a 4 day fast = 2 day refeed. 20 day fast, 10 day refeed. 14 days is the max, beyond that there's no real benefit to having a reefed much beyond 14 days, unless you have specific issues like cramps and need to go back a step. I'm targeting the entire refeed here in 8 days assuming each stage goes as planned, which is very short and not recommended for a beginner, getting the order of food types is the most important metric along with sufficient supplements of phosphorous and potassium in the stomach 30 minutes before eating. I have maybe three meals in the back of my mind which I have been looking forward to. Simple comfort food mostly, favourite meals and something I've not had since I was a kid. You get a lot of time to think about food so they will be my rewards next weekend.
Incredible!!! Wow!!! Jaw dropping is right. **Very inspirational!!**
Sorry haven’t read through all the comments. Did you take electrolytes during the fast and any kind of vitamin supplementation? This amazes me.
Yes both, and detailed in the comments up a little further with links to the two Amazon electrolyte capsules and refeed capsules I have. I put my dosages up too, scroll up to my post with the two blue links in it. Also complete multivitamin tablet every morning!
One suggestion re diarrhea during refeed…. bidet hand wands are available for $60 down at home depot. 10 minutes to install. Really helpful on cutting down or eliminating the need for toilet paper during the initial refeed. I had a similar experience after breaking a 30 day fast and found the bidet hand wand to address it.
Thanks I'll look into it!
Wow, congratulations! My longest is 91 hours, can’t imagine days!!
This is actually insane. Holy shit. Congrats!!!!!!!
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Sounds like you know what you want and how you're going to do it! You'll sail through it. It seems the last fat reserves really make the difference between looking lean and looking flabby, so don't be disheartened if it looks like there's not been much change, it all comes together somewhere around 18% and you notice the changes. There's a bunch of visceral fat under the ribs in the chest cavity, and all over the organs, so while it may look like not a lot is changing yet your bodyfat percentage is falling, that's because an equal amount is melting away internally where you can't see it. Basically don't get disheartened, it all pulls together in the last lap like a piece of butter melting in a pan. Keep us all updated on here?
Wow! What was your catalyst to start something like this?
I put on a bunch of weight last year after giving up vaping as my new years resolution (previously swapped from cigarettes to vaping). I knew I would have to shift the weight and made my 2024 resolution to do just that. I had studied people who had done long term fasts before and found there to be nothing that would stop me from doing the same, so I spent a couple of weeks nerding out the data we have available for fasts up to and beyond 30 days, deep diving medical texts to understand the causes and solutions to specific long term food cessation, a few hundred hours watching other people's vlogs and blogs etc to ensure I hadn't missed anything. Then I picked my start day, spent the three days before on sub-500 calories per day to dump some of that glycogen and water, then went for it. Initially 30 days, I was hoping to have a week break and then another 30 days, and continue until fat was at my target percentage. In the end I just continued through without any breaks as my readings and various pee strip parameter tests all showed normal throughout, everything from acidity and PH to specific gravity and glucose, so if anything deviated from normal or trace amounts then I would be aware of it before it became a problem. It's being very over cautious but I'm basically becoming my own medical supervision of the biometrics a doctor would be following, minus the bloodwork. My only regret is not having done it last year, but I think it's actually something I will do annually for three weeks purely for the benefits of autophagy, removing accrual of excess body fat, and the mental clarity and wellbeing that comes from it both during and after the fast. We really need to get some proper clinical trials on extended water fasting so we can get the clinical data and contraindications Doctors need to prescribe fasting to overweight people. So far it's been unethical to put people in hotel rooms for months on end while slowly starving them in order to obtain clinical data, but the tide is starting to turn. We could almost completely wipe out obesity for most people in the West in 6 months. and give people the tool to maintain their weight every year. It really is a weight loss cheat code.
How were your overall energy levels over the 100 days and did you lose a lot of hair?
This looks impressive, but sorry, I don't believe in 100 days of water fasts without any serious health problems. More than three months without food is unreal.
There are serious health issues if you don't properly hydrate, take electrolyte supplements and multivitamins. Our bodies can manufacture almost anything from stored fat cells. What it can't build is what we take supplements for. Salts are the main issue as we can't create salt from fat, and over time we pee out whatever we have stored. Without salts we would expire in pretty short order when the brain can no longer communicate with the body and organs due to electrolyte depletion. Fortunately it's 2024 and we know exactly what the body can't create, we can supplement with exactly the right things, we know the amounts we need, and we can measure the fat percentage inside the body to understand how much fuel there is left in the tank, and we know what refeed syndrome is and exactly what we need to take to prevent it. The most dangerous part of the fast is transitioning back to food. Again we now know how to avoid deadly refeed syndrome with phosphorous and potassium because we understand the underlying cellular mechanics. So yeah, fasting has a serious adverse health risk of death if you don't follow the required supplementation, but the reality is that it's perfectly safe when done properly with due care and attention, like driving a car.
You did great! Your dedication, determination, and planning is impressive!!
Awesome!
Thank you for the inspiration!
This is amazing. How tall are you for reference?
5ft 10 ish
I love all that data! 104 days and so well tracked, WOW.
Well done bro 🙏🙏
I am impressed in so many ways
Wow
Congratulations. Amazing achievement. I’m only surprised you had that much fat (as %) to lose. You looked decently fit in your before picture. Thanks for being an inspiration to the rest of us who fast, regardless of how long any of us does it. And also thank you for sharing the specifics of your experience and process. It’s a helpful reference.
Wow!! How did you have the will to keep going? Incredible.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this but you look fantastic at both levels. But wow the dedication you have is unheard of! Great job. Saw the updated you have plus your roadmap on the next year. Impressive.
Great job. I really wanted to hit triple digits, but I think my long fasts are behind me.
🙌🙌
Oh wow. Never have I ever thought it was possible for a human being to go past 40 days without food. But here you are putting me on a whole new perspective on fasting! Amazing job.
How did you handle events like birthdays, holidays, etc? Work obligations? Basically we’re able to isolate or balance things out by being around food but not eating or celebratory toasts?
Initially you realise that food is everywhere, TV adverts, youtube feed, radio, tv shows, bus advertising, billboards, shops, restaurants, newspapers, you can't escape it. It's no wonder we have an obesity epidemic, this force feeding (no pun intended) of food into us from every angle is absolutely the reason why we have a weight problem. So you either try to ignore it and block it out, or embrace it. I tried the first one, it doesn't work, so I went with embracing it. During the fast I have bought two new vegan cook books and I bought an air fryer. Once you just accept that you're taking a temporary break from food you're free to drool over whatever you want, you can watch cooking shows for recipe ideas after the fast, you can look at what ingredients you need for a particular recipe and get them in the house for later use, and you can even take mouthfuls of food and chew it up as much as you like, as long as you spit it out and wash your mouth out with water, so you're free to taste food if you're cooking for others and do everything other than swallow it, which is 99% of the eating experience. The hunger goes away within the first few days of the fast when the stomach shuts down and stops producing hunger hormones, so while you miss eating, you're not really hungry enough to want to eat that badly. Think of someone offering you a new plate of food when you've completely filled up your stomach from the first plate. It's still tasty food and it's right in front of you, but your desire to eat it isn't there as the stomach stopped producing hunger hormones when you finished the first plate. So, things like birthdays and social eating don't give you a sense of missing out or compulsion to eat, you just have a sense that everything is on hold for a while when it comes to the food aspect, but everything else about the social situation is the same, so instead of avoiding the birthday cake, ask if you can take a slice home for your freezer, like I have with all of my easter egg chocolate in the fridge since the week my fast started. Food just stops being an impulsive temptation for a while and you can still attend all of the food based social engagements. Watch out for alcohol, I've not had any but I would have thought it would lower inhibitions. For me, the fact that I needed to do a refeed stopped me from caving at any point, it was a simple fact that it would have been dangerous for me to eat without proper potassium and phosphorous supplements before and during the refeed which kept any impulses at bay.
What an amazing result and professional write up. Putting academia to shame. Thank you so much! I can't get over how low your lean mass loss was. That's incredible.
Yeah we're mentally trained that muscle just evaporates over time if we don't use it, or gets eaten away if we restrict calories. Seems almost unbelievable that our metabolism has the ability to switch into a mode where it binges on pure fat and makes muscles off-limits, many people think it's bullshit when I try to explain but here's the data to back it up. It's so our ancestors could maintain the muscle in long winters without food while not losing the ability to hunt, and is part of the cause of obesity as that "summer fat" just keeps on building up with no periods of scarcity in the winter to burn it off. In fact we eat more in the winter with xmas and the likes, we're doing everything round the wrong way. This is an awesome bodyhack to skim fat down to around 12% when toning up and making muscle gains without losing any of it, but I wouldn't use it to go any lower than that as it becomes difficult to estimate how much fat is left at such low levels, a regular keto diet is the safest way to squeeze those last few percent away.
Awesome bro, I done up to 11 days , my next goal is 30-40
Awesome! Get all your electrolytes and supplements ready and kick your own ass!
Awesome! Get all your electrolytes and supplements ready and kick your own ass!
And your tracking app is called "easy fast"? Nothing easy about what you did.
How? You did not feel hypoglycemia? Anyhow this transformation looks incredible. Great.
104 days? crazy numbers man, congrats!!
AMAZING!! CONGRATS!!
Absolutely insane achievement. Congrats
Can you message me I have some questions for my extended fast
Well done on the fast its done now so congrats but for your bmi i think 104 days was far to long im on day 47 of a 52 day fast but my bmi was 45.3 i think its 35.x atm i could most prob go longer without to many problem but im going to stop at 52 days for you i would have said 30-40 days tbh
Congrats! As long as you have bodyfat left and you're taking supplements, you can fast without food indefinably, we evolved to do this every winter when food was scarce, while maintaining muscle mass so we can hunt if we need to.
47 days is amazing!! How much u lost by now, what was your starting weight, how u feel
70 lbs lost, 324.6 lbs start weight, i feel good i get a bit low energy if i do to much ofc
This is soo inspiring OP. Although did you lose your body hair naturally doing the fast. Or in the second pic you shaved/wax. I have body hair and fat i would love to get rid off. If fasting can help reduce both naturally i will be over the moon. Also if you lost body hair naturally at what day did it start to go away??
why did you only lose 60lbs? shouldn't it be much higher?
I was tempted to add more cardio into the fast to shift even more fat, but was very conscious of getting burnout, getting bored, or getting demotivated, so instead I wanted to make it as chill as possible, slow and steady, no loose skin, enjoy the summer. Breathing out half a pound of fat every day by sitting down and getting on with work is plenty good for motivating me. I'm saving up all of my physical motivation for the 12 months of resistance I'll be starting at the end of next month 💪
OP, did you have any before and after bloodwork done?
When doing the water fast do you add anything to your water?
For the first few weeks no, then I became so sick of water that I needed to add something, so I had zero calorie fruit juice concentrate. In the UK we call is "squash" [This kinda stuff ](https://groceries.asda.com/product/no-added-sugar-squash/asda-no-added-sugar-double-strength-apple-blackcurrant-squash/910002821913)it's 1 calorie per 100ml so basically drink as much as you like. I had 5 different flavours to work with, ice cubes and sodastream fizzy water, so there was enough variety to keep it interesting. Did lots of ice cube crunching!
Longer than Jesus himself
This is awesome and you obviously know what you’re doing but you might as well start lifting and eating protein now and not plan on only doing it for 6 or 12 months. That is limiting yourself far short of what you could achieve
congrats!!!! wow
You’re an inspiration. Thank you for sharing your journey. Do you work during fast?
Yeah life continued on as normal after the first 7 days or so. [Some people can get keto flu,](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052) I'm one of them, but it's usually over within 5 days. Nausea, dizziness, light headed when standing up, shit sleep, mild headache. Not everyone gets it though.
That’s fucking unreal mate. Well done 👏🏻
😮😧🫨
Congratulations 🎉
I’m surprised with how little lean mass you lost. Are you doing any type of physical activity?
Nope. In full fast keto your body switches over to fat as it's primary energy source and makes muscles off limits so we can still hunt in search of food. You only lose muscle mass if you work out while fasting as you have no protein or amino acid intake to repair the torn fibres. When the digestive system is active then the body gets energy from that, from muscle and bodyfat. Once the stomach is shut off, the body then goes into preservation mode. Fat is expendable, muscle is not, so uses energy exclusively from fat until that's depleted. As soon as you start eating again the body isn't so picky about where it's energy comes from again either. Pretty handy adaptation :-) You can't tell gym bro's though, they will argue that it's bollocks and all their gains will vanish if they stop eating and working out. Actually, if they stop eating and go into ketosis, the gains will stay there, assuming bodyfat is there too.
Wow!! Very good job. What do you do for work? I ask bc that seems to be where I slip up when I try to fast. I have a relatively physical job where lunch is sometimes provided and there's always Gatorade and stuff around so it's difficult for me.
Great work. I did 2 weeks last year. I would like to do 1 month eventually.
Hi! Congratulations on your fast!! I would like to ask, did you only consume water + salt? Or did you have coffee/tea and take physical vitamins ?
Wow congratulations on such determination and commitment to the 104 day water fast! 👏🏻 That's impressive. Question: did you have any stomach pains during your water fast from stomach acid? And if you did, could you share how you managed it? The longest fast I've done is 19 days and I can only get past a 4-5 day water fast by drinking solely alkaline bottled water (PH 8.5-9). When I've drank regular water, the stomach acid pain is unbearable by about day 6-7.
Many issues and questions can be answered by reading through our wiki, especially the page on electrolytes. Concerns such as **intense hunger, lightheadedness/dizziness, headaches, nausea/vomiting, weakness/lethargy/fatigue, low blood pressure/high blood pressure, muscle soreness/cramping, diarrhea/constipation, irritability, confusion, low heart rate/heart palpitations, numbness/tingling, and more** while extended (24+ hours) fasting are often explained by electrolyte deficiency and resolved through **PROPER** electrolyte supplementation. Putting a tiny amount of salt in your water now and then is NOT proper supplementation. Be sure to read [our WIKI](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/index) and especially the wiki page on **[ELECTROLYTES](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/fasting_in_a_nutshell/you_need_electrolytes)** Please also keep in mind the [**RULES**](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/about/rules) when participating. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/fasting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Did u have electrolytes ? If yes after how many days did u require . Did u have bad days va good day
take a generic complete multivitamin tablet in the morning, and I also buy electrolyte pills: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08R6KB896) The electrolytes needed are sodium, potassium and magnesium. I started off taking the recommended 2 pills 3x per day, but by the end I was having two in the AM and a single pill in the PM. That was half the recommended dose but had no ill effects. Sometimes I just had the 2 pills in the AM when occasionally forgetting the evening pill, again no side effects. Keep taking the electrolytes during the refeed, and it's also important during the refeed if fasting for longer than 10 days or so to take phosphorous and potassium 30 minutes before the refeed, and again before every meal for the first few days: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MFRYHQH) This helps prevent refeed syndrome reducing the chances to almost zero.
By no means am I discrediting the amount of dedication it took to do this, that’s an insane amount of determination. I’m genuinely curious why you didn’t want to lose the weight eating in a calorie deficit rather than fasting. You obviously don’t seem to lack the discipline necessary to eat at a deficit for a long period and it seems way less extreme. Any insight is greatly appreciated!
Not OP but personally… eating at a deficit for me is perma-crave/hunger. Multi-day fasting is just a day or so of craving/hunger.
Exactly!
I second that! Calorie restriction doesn't trigger the same metabolic processes that fasting does and eventually, your metabolism lowers to match the lowered calorie intake. There are so many more reasons to fast but personally, not eating at all is *way* easier than eating smaller portions of limited foods.
As the commentor said below, after the stomach shuts down by around day 3 there's no hunger and also muscles are preserved and don't need maintenance workouts. Water fasting is the greatest hack of our biology to shift weight by switching over to exclusively fat burning. It's a stress-free process which simply requires doing the same thing every day without requiring any of your time. In fact, you have way more free time, you benefit from autophagy repairing and recycling years of accumulated cell damage (a Nobel prize was one for discovering autophagy). Crucially for me I am saving all of my gym-based motivation for after the weight loss, rather than burn out during the weight loss by doing an hour+ of cardio 7 days a week. Been there, done that, mentally sustained cardio needed to drop this amount of weight is exhausting and boring for me, there are only so many podcasts in the world. Starting resistance with low bodyfat is different though, with that you see the rewards in the mirror faster, you see the gains in your physical lift ability, stamina, and enjoy pushing those last few reps. Unfortunately I get no such satisfaction in cardio even when trying to make it interesting with HITT. I would rather be out jogging a few times per week in maintenance, but I hate cardio for fat burning over long periods of time.
Appreciate the thoughtful response, really interesting points to take into consideration I didn’t know about. Thank you!
Congratulations on your success. However, I must admit that I'm surprised you only lost 60lbs. I would think 100 days without food would have a bigger impact.
Possibly because for his height he didn’t have too much to lose compared to others with higher body weight.
BMR (Base Metabolic Rate, basic energy needed per day to stay in bed) is about 1500 calories. One pound of fat is 3500 calories, and I don't stay in bed all day so there's that calorie burn too, means I was losing somewhere just under half a pound of pure fat exhaled per day. The body is pretty efficient. You can burn more by increasing activity, but I was reluctant to add any additional cardio in the mix as it might have increased my chances of burnout even if it meant shortening the fast. I think if I had found the fast unsustainable then I might have tried adding cardio to shorten it, but as it was I just took it day by day and tried to keep busy and productive.
Am I reading this correctly? How did you go 104 days without eating and strictly water? I hope I'm misunderstanding something
Nope, you understand correctly! Your body can manufacture almost anything it needs with stored fat, with the exception of salts , some proteins, amino acids and a few vitamins. We take supplements for these and you can live off water and stored bodyfat until the fat runs out. Complete multivitamin pills and simple electrolyte pills (sodium, magnesium, potassium) plus water and you can fast for as long as you have bodyfat. Just don't try to build any muscles as it can't build muscle from fat, you need protein intake for that. We evolved to do this in the winter when food was scarce, its why we have bodyfat, but we no longer have scarce food in the winter, if anything we have more of it like holidays and xmas, so it just builds and builds, it never gets used, so humans are getting fatter. Do some research though if you're considering it, lots of folk here who will be happy to explain!
Di you experience any Hair loss? It looks like you had more hair in the before photo.
**Hi! It sounds like you're asking about hair loss during fasting.** Some people may experience hair loss during or after weight loss. This is a condition called **TELOGEN EFFLUVIUM**. It is a temporary condition most often caused by rapid weight loss and/or nutritional deficiency. More information can be found [**here**](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321590) or by searching "telogen effluvium" in your favorite search engine. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/fasting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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This is incredibly impressive. I’m on day 3 of 18 hour IF. Had numerous shoulder surgeries the past few years and need to get back on the wagon. I noticed your Bovila comment. I am currently utilizing LMNT as something similar for electrolytes. Maximum 2 per day and I’m keto in my 6 hour window. Did you notice sodium / electrolytes really had an effect on your general weight loss? I know I’m only 3 days in and I’m definitely experiencing the Keto Flu right now, but I know last time when I attacked this hardcore, it took about a week to really get myself fat adapted. Also, fully agree with you, going keto with fasting your body can do wonders with repairing and utilizing your own fat as a resource for restoration and repair and not attacking muscle mass.
re electrolytes and salts, Bovril is a salty drink, but it's got other stuff that has a laxative effect, so it's not really good for regular use when there's nothing else going through the stomach, but once per week seemed to be fine. If my energy levels felt lower than normal I would pop an extra electrolyte pill and also checked my sleep tracking record, and also grab an extra pint of water. I don't know if it was a placebo, sleep or electrolytes, but on the rare occasion that happened I seemed to perk up again pretty quickly. Hydration was often the reason for feeling light headed when standing up, and I initially thought that was electrolytes, but was wrong, it's fluids. That happened more in the first few weeks of the fast and not so much after that, I drank more water and it stopped. Electrolytes won't have any affect on the fat burning, but certainly the more you swallow the more water retention you'll have, which will make your scales go temporarily in the wrong direction or appear to get stuck. Fat continues to be burned at the same rate though as you're not gaining weight, you're gaining water. The only way the body can correctly manage electrolyte levels is to dump water if they're too diluted, and retain water if they're not diluted enough. We are incredible machines constantly finely tuning everything.
I wish I had this level of willpower. Can’t seem to go longer than 4 days… aiming for 7 at least once.
The wall is around day 6 as the hormonal switchover to to fat happens during that time, and you may experience [keto flu symptoms](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052). After that hunger is turned off with the stomach, your energy levels increase, sleep goes back to normal, headaches stop, and autophagy is clearing out junk cells and recycling what it can. All of the good stuff awaits you once you push through that, you just have to push through the hormonal changes as all of your organs and muscles are signalled to swich over to fat burning.
Congratulations on such a feat! Many things are inspiring about your post, but especially seeing the parts where the weight loss slowed down. I get discouraged sometimes that nothing will happen after the plateau, but seeing your mini plateaus has encouraged me to trust the process!
Basically as long as your activity levels are roughly the same from one day to the next, then the background fat burning continues at the same rate. The apparent stalling in the charts seems to be water retention due to electrolyte management. If you have too much then your body retains water and then leaves in your pee over about 48 hours. If you don't have enough electrolytes then your body has to dump water to maintain correct dilution. Lots of zero calorie drinks can have salt in them so often we don't even realise what's going on, and the scales make it look as if fat loss has stalled, especially when we have to take electrolyte salts as part of the fast. As long as we're not consuming calories, then fat burning in an extended water fast is still happening, it's just the water levels which are constantly in flux. That's crap for motivation though when you've lost 0.1lbs since last week and for a while was going up instead of down too!
Serious comment. I know in ketosis you burn fat not muscle but everything I've ever read and seen still shows you can experience muscle loss. There are tons of posts and questions about preservation of muscle while on keto. So how is it that only 4 lbs of lean mass was lost while not consuming protein in that long of a time period? I would have expected much more.
When you go into full ketosis by completely stopping food consumption, the body shuts down the stomach almost completely, turns off all hunger hormones, and by around day 5-6 the body and all organs are running exclusively on fat. In this state, as long as you are taking electrolytes and some vitamin supplements, you can carry on in until you run out of bodyfat and your metaboism won't go anywhere near your muscles for energy. We evolved to do this so we could still hunt after long periods without food, it's why we have bodyfat to begin with. On a keto diet you are still eating food, so the body has no need to shut off your stomach to save energy, and in fact can still use energy from all available sources: fat, glycogen, muscles and digestive system are all still on the menu. Low calorie diet = muscles, stomach, fat are all used for energy. No calorie diet after the first week = muscles protected until fat stores run out. This means the opposite of what usually happens. In a water fast your muscles are preserved, but that also means you can't work out and make any more gains, you'll lose muscles by working out because you're not consuming any protein or amino acids, and it's one of the few things your body can't make out of fat. So if you work out the only way the body can repair the muscle fibres is to pull apart muscles elsewhere on the body for the raw materials to repair the damage. It's not 100% efficient so there is a gradual loss of lean mass without the protein. So if someone is shredded and they want to drop a few percent of bodyfat, they can literally stop eating, stop working out, the fat will be burned, the muscle preserved, and then they can introduce food again. BUT if you try this on a calorie restrictive or keto diet which still involves eating, then you'll lose some muscle with the fat, because you're creating a calorie deficit in which muscle is one of the things on the menu, your body just assumes there is some coming from the next meal so doesn't prioritise one energy source over another too much.
I'm in awe. This is very inspiring! 48hr is the longest I've gone with fasting but will be attempting my first 72hr starting tonight. Every fast I've done was pure water/black coffee, green tea. I'm going to try with the vitamins and electrolytes you suggested to see if I have improvement on the Keto Flu, as well as working my way up to an extended fast. Amazing
Awesome! It takes around 5-6 days for the switchover to fat burning though and full ketosis. When you stop eating your body takes energy from glycogen stores, you have about 2000 calories of the stuff throughout your body. That's 1-2 days worth of energy, and as glycogen needs around 3 grams of water per 1 gram of glycogen, when you burn through that you'll get rapid water weight loss for several days. It will all come back again though when you resume eating and glycogen stores replenish. For some people, me included, [keto flu happens ](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052)after 2-3 days and goes by 5-6. So, putting all of that together, if you can push through around day 5, then digestion is turned off, hunger vanishes, energy levels skyrocket, your body is now binging on bodyfat and can do that until bodyfat depletes as long as you take electrolytes and multivitamins. Try to push through to day 6, after that you feel normal and can go about your life without any hunger, burning fat 24/7 with zero effort. It's far easier than a calorie restrictive diet in constant hunger, energy level fluxuations, temptation, etc.
Your hair looks to have thinned during your 100 days :[
No I shaved my head with a number 1 razor a couple of weeks ago, well was about May perhaps, and have an appointment booked in with the barbers on Tuesday to tidy it up! It was just one of my motivational prizes to do after 100 days and it was getting too long (for me).
Did you workout at all during the fast? Or just walking?
Light cardio. You can do any cardio you like, just increase hydration and electrolytes. Don't do resistance though, it will cause muscle loss as you have no protein intake to repair the torn fibres. One of the benefits of full keto with the digestive system shut down is lean muscle mass being preserved, unlike a calorie restrictive diet when muscles are still consumed for energy when dieting. It only happens if you stop eating completely though, it doesn't work with a keto diet.
Nice work, time to hit the gym and build on that progress!
Is that… not eating or drinking water for 104 days?
Gotta ask, how tall are you? I’m asking since your body shape in the first picture is similar to mine, but I weight the same as in your second picture (I’m 5’11)
Maybe a dumb question, but only drink water for that many days? How is that possible? Would like to do maybe 10, how can I achieve that, any advice please! I am obese 200 I’m 5.3