[cmrx64]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45260-9

this is the main thing I could find.

https://prolonlife.com/ sells a prepackaged fasting-mimicking diet. plenty of reviews online about the subjective effects on energy levels and soforth during the fast.

I didn’t like it. day 2.5-3 will put me back into the headspace of food scarcity and even knowing that the next meal was sitting in the box and that this is temporary … it was a mental challenge for me. if you’ve never experienced food scarcity, it can be all-consuming and seriously warp your cognition and emotional baseline.

[SlowTao]

Personally it is a strange thing. Diffcult to do over 24 hours but easy over a few days. Once you get over the head space of "im hungry must eat!" It turns into "im hungry, oh well".

But this is a sample size of 1 and results definetly vary wildly between folks.

[tshanmu]

I can concur - that shift in mindset to "i'm hungry, oh well" is crucial for your body I feel.

[cmrx64]

this is easier to do when you aren’t on the programmed diet that has you tantalizing your equanimity constantly.

[watwut]

> "im hungry, oh well"

The real danger is if you dont swap back and just created yourself an eating disorder.

[nradov]

That's not an eating disorder. Just because you're cold doesn't mean you need to put on a sweater. Learning not to let minor discomforts bother you builds discipline and character.

[watwut]

Anorectic are very dosciplined and proud of their ability to not eat. Hunger not being "well so what" is normal healthy biology. It is not just discomfort. It is biologcal mechanism to prevent very real harm.

Yhe issue with anorexia is that it works as cycle - if ypu have genetic predisposition, starwing affects metabolism, your discomfort about food gets worst and you are in it.

[GoToRO]

Fasting is great because you live off of your muscles. Keep at it and you will loose so much muscle, you will develop an eating disorder. The stomach and intestines are muscles too.

My understanding is that if you are healthy and you fast, it's great. If you are actually ill and fast it's still great but it only hides your illness and you are on a very bad path (eating disorder)

[ty6853]

Even cutting back a couple hundred calories a day can leave you absolutely exhausted, in my experience. Even just increasing exercise by a couple hundred calories a day without eating more is also incredibly exhausting, after a few weeks it becomes thought dominating second-by-second.

Hunger is truly a powerful driver.

[al_borland]

If you're going to fast, especially extended fasting, it would serve a person well to drop carbs and sugar and get into ketosis, at least for a while, so your body can start burning fat more effectively. If you've never done this before, it can be an uncomfortable process, with a lot of headaches, mood swings, etc. Making sure you take in enough electrolytes (sodium, magnesium, and potassium) will help a lot during all this, and during longer fasts.

I cleaned up my diet about a month ago, and have accidentally done some 24 hour fasts when I was busy and it's been fine. By the time I do eat, I'm really not even hungry, though my stomach may be growling a bit. The first time I ever did this, I had horrible headaches and felt miserable for a while, but subsequent times have been easier.

Good sleep maters too. Bad sleep will throw your hormones out of whack. I'm extremely hungry when this happens, and crave all the wrong things. Knowing what's going on helps a little.... just a little.

I find all this much easier than just trying to cut back by 200 calories with what I normally eat. It's all about hormones.

[GoToRO]

This sounds like a diet problem. You eat till your stomach is full. That because your food is not actually feeding you.

Long story short: meat and vegs + fruits. It takes a while.

[cmrx64]

and that’s when you’re doing it willingly :)