[TimSchumann]

There's something to the whole regenerative thing and fasting.

Best I remember feeling in my adult life was after a 60 day fast. Not what I'd do today, or at least not the same way, but I highly recommend every healthy human fast for at least 7 days once every couple years.

The plural of anecdote is not evidence, YMMV, consult your doctor, I don't even play one on the internet, etc.

That being said, I'm currently on day 3 of an extended fast myself.

[habibur]

So what do you take in those days? Like 60 days fasting. Only water? Vitamins? Salt?

[TimSchumann]

I did water only for the first 30 days, which was stupid, and then supplemented electrolytes -- mainly Sodium, Magnesium, Potassium -- from days 31 onward.

That one was super strict, no coffee, no tea, nothing.

EDIT - Also, this is _not_ how I would go about this now 5+ years later with more experience under my belt.

[SemanticStrengh]

Wait what? English is not my native language, are you saying you didn't eat any food for 30 consecutive days??

[wwarek]

60 days as I understood - first 30 days just water and then the next 30 days water with electrolytes

[TimSchumann]

Correct. Which, for the record, I would never repeat and wasn't what I now consider safe.

Electrolyte supplementation on an extended fast is important, and I drank way _way_ too much water in the early weeks of that fast, which is also dangerous.

[SemanticStrengh]

This guy should be dead, his body should have digested himself. How can someone not eat anything by his own will for more than a few days ? (5-7 max) you should pass out. Also in the case that were true, let me be clear: No food intake for multiple days is extremely dangerous for your health, it will upregulate autophagy, apoptosis and will break your mitochondria bioenegetics which will explode your oxidative stress (and therefore DNA breaks) and will induce partial ischemia/hypoxia/hypoglycemia which leads to an accelerated ageing process. Autophagy is nice, in little dose, and is best emulated pharmacologically (e.g. via some polyphenols)

[lm28469]

That's not how it works at all. Not drinking water will damage/kill you real fast, not eating food on the other hand is pretty safe for most people. The longest fast was ~380 days [0]

If you have some fat (75% of westerners are heavily overweight or obese) you can easily fast on water only for weeks, of course you're not going to be able to exercise heavily every day or run a marathon. But if you're an overweight office worker with no other health issues you'll be just fine.

For anything over a week you probably should get medical assistance to keep an eye on vitamins and electrolytes, but you're not going to drop dead/unconscious/destroy your DNA

What's dangerous is starvation, aka fasting until your body starts giving up, but for the average westerner that's going to take a long time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast

[rhinoceraptor]

I've done a few 7 day fasts, two 14 day fasts, and one 28 day fast. Every time it gets a lot easier. I'll be a bit hungry on days one and two, but by day three I only really think about food if I smell something good. As long as I keep up on water and electrolytes, I feel great.

[Terry_Roll]

18days here and would carried on but had to break it for other reasons.

Glutathione possibly needs to be included as this will get low and Choline or Carnitine to remove the brain fog that occurred.

Averaged 18kg weight loss over the 18days, never felt so good in my life, like being a teenage male ramped up on Testosterone again, amazingly easy to fall asleep, excellent quality of sleep, vivid dreams which are recalled in the morning, not nightmares or anything like that. Foods which I dont like because of historical reasons smelt appealing and I wanted to eat them, no cravings for anything.

The only water I could really wanted, was the Scottish Highlands water, just didnt like Evian, S. Pellegrino, and the supermarket brands, and I wonder if highly filtered water ie dead water with no contaminants so its almost pure H2O would have been what I wanted, but they dont sell that in supermarkets AFAIK.

Ramadan is one of the fasts where you dont consume fluids during the day, and not consuming fluids will ramp up parts of your immune system which is why its important to drink fluid in order to not get angry. This could be in part because histamine is used by immune cells to move through tissues, but a personality side effect of high amounts is increased aggression. Anyone who supplements with histidine a precursor for histamine may also notice increased aggression. ie explosive rage, so be careful.

[adrianN]

It depends on how much fat you have. The body is relatively good at living on stored fat for a while. You need to supplement things that aren't stored, like vitamins and electrolytes and you'd better do it under medical supervision. If you fast long enough you also need some amino acids.

[DyslexicAtheist]

It sounds like you never tried?

I watched my dad do 30-60 days every few years growing up. He always said how clear it made him mentally and the benefits to his health also was visible (until today he mountain-bikes across South East Asia during winter and he is in his late 70ies).

Longest I did was 40 days. Started out with 10 days a few years earlier which broke my misconceptions about if I would be able to do it. Especially the 40 days has been a healing journey for me both physically and mentally. It also gave me massive confidence about my body and taught me more about my limits than what decades of running did. I wouldn't do this long again because I lack the reserves today. But 10-20 days every few years is no issue.

[TimSchumann]

Not sure why I’d pass out from just not eating, I had plenty of body fat on me for the entirety of the fast. I wasn’t starving myself.

Estimating by weight loss my metabolism was still burning well over 2500kcal daily at the end of the fast.

[amelius]

I guess he ate some bugs in his sleep.

[TimSchumann]

60 consecutive days