[lawlorino]

Since this is likely to attract a lot of fasting practicioners to the comments I want to ask - I've occasionally tried out fasting or severe calorie restriction in the past but I always seem to get dizzy, weak and shaky in the first 24 hours and have to give up. This seems like a normal physiological response to be honest, how are people either avoiding or coping with this?

[kyle_morris_]

Crawl > walk > run

Try eating breakfast at 10 am instead of 8(let’s say) for a couple of weeks.

Then see if you can hold off until noon without going to bed later.

If you can eat between the window of noon and 8PM you’re effectively on a 16/8 diet.

After you’re comfortable, try eating no later than 6PM, then try 4PM. Before you know it you’re on a 20/4 schedule.

[dcolkitt]

I've been doing some variant of intermittent fasting for about 8 years now. Of course, I'm not always consistent. There have been days, weeks or even months when I'm not disciplined.

At least in my experience, the sense of hunger is extremely tuned to one's internal clock. The body seems to absolutely know at what time of day it expects to eat. If I go a long time and never eat before 6 PM, I won't feel even a tinge of hunger until the evening. If I go on vacation, and eat lunch for a week, then the next day I'm ravenous by 12 PM.

The hardest thing about fasting is the transition. Once you've got a pattern, your body seems to pretty much just adjust and it becomes just as normal and effortless as eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. I say that because a lot of people try out fasting for a few days, suffer enormously and decide that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Whereas I think if you get over the transition hump, most will find it's not nearly as bad as it seems to be when you first start out.

One technique that I think makes for a smooth transition is a modified version of partial fasting. To start, instead of completely abstaining during the fast window, restrict yourself to vegetables and berries. Don't touch the higher caloric density foods like meats, dairy, and starches inside the fast window. Truth be told, this probably isn't that bad a diet just to stay on forever, because it ups vegetable consumption so much. But if your goal is full fasting, it's a good way to make a full transition. Your body's internal clock starts getting used to much lower calories consumption in the fast window, but you don't have to feel like you're starving.

[wincy]

I’m by no means an expert, but I think there’s some amount of adaptation that occurs. I feel like I had to “train” my body to fast. I had a similar problem and it was really unpleasant the first time I tried a fast, but recently did a three day fast with no discomfort right until the end. The end was weird because I told myself I was going to break my fast, and my stomach kicked into action too early, making me sick. Like I went from very little hunger to RAVENOUS. Had to break my fast at a drive through (best chalupa I’ve ever tasted!)

For me at least I go into fasting by first skipping breakfast for a few days, then skipping breakfast and lunch. Skipping dinner is mostly a mental hurdle because there’s so much psychological signaling that you should eat at dinner time and don’t really know what else to do with yourself. Going to bed without eating in a day feels weird at first.

I also make sure to get lots of electrolytes during all of this, magnesium glycinate and lite salt seem to do the trick. Otherwise I start to get shaky and have bad headaches.

[narwally]

I had a similar experience with my first extended fast. I was just going to do three days, but I felt really good and not at all hungry at that point, so I extended it a day. But when went to break the fast, as soon as I started eating the light salad and broth I had made, I became instantly ravenous and no longer had any self control. So what started as a light salad ended with mozzarella sticks and a whole pack of Oreos. I no longer keep junk food in the house if I'm doing a fast.

The salt and other electrolytes is crucial as you mentioned. If you don't supplement you'll actually get some pretty intense cravings. It was the first time I understood why deer love salt licks. I would have licked on one of those like it was a tootsie pop.

[curiousllama]

huh, I guess this is why I love pickles and kimchi when I'm cutting calories

[wtetzner]

I think it's pretty normal. I don't know for sure, but it's possible that it's more or less the same effect as keto-flu.

Make sure that you get plenty of water and electrolytes.

Also, if 24 hours is too much, you can try intermittent fasting, and do 16 to 20 hour fasts.

[lubonay]

+1 on starting out with 16 hour fasts.

It also seems that some people can't tolerate fasting for whatever reason, so GP might just not be cut out for it.

[0-_-0]

It's tricky, make sure you drink enough water, but not too much (too much water washes out too much salt from your body, dropping your blood pressure too low). A backup plan if this doesn't work is bone broth soup. It's not a lot of calories so keeps you in the fasting state and can pick you up pretty nicely. Salt the soup but not too much. The key seems to be to keep your electrolyte levels in the Goldilocks-zone.

[PoachedSausage]

Everyone has a differing body chemistry. I can only speak for myself. I do have some mild symptoms when starting a fast, but they go away quite quickly. It could be related to the fact that I'm not usually hungry in the mornings (excluding having done heavy exercise) and can quite easily go most the day without eating and from there it is not much of a stretch to go another day and another...

[jcims]

Not recommended but I just kind of white knuckled it through the experience and it settled down pretty quickly after that. In subsequent fasts you have the visceral memory of it getting better and those negative experiences aren’t amplified by the doubt of the whole process.

[jdhn]

There's something called snake juice, which is just a mixture of water and salts. Apparently this helps balance electrolytes which solves the problems you're experiencing.

[blueterminal]

Water with a little bit of salt solved this for me. But I am not a doctor so I don't know how good or bad it is.