Fasting

I grew up fasting for religious/health reasons, because that was what my parents did. Once a week, 24 hours water fast. As a child, I remember being so hungry, and looking forward eagerly to that Saturday dinner – where of course I stuffed myself beyond reason. Then I learned to really stuff myself for the last meal before the fast – this helped with hunger. In retrospect – this was the trigger for many of my weight and food issues in adulthood. Imagine that!

I still do 24 hour fasts from time to time, if I have really overeaten – it just feels better to do this and give the system a rest. I have never lost any weight on these fasts.

I’ve also tried three day water fasts. By day three I felt like a superior life form, and eating again caused awful stomachaches for the next day or so. The couple lbs I would lose doing this returned with the first meal, pretty much. Needless to say I gave those up some time ago.

A friend of mine (my HCG diet buddy) did a four day ‘dry fast’. Nothing ingested, not even water. She became so ill I feared for her safety. This illness apparently was ‘detoxing’. Hogwash. This woman has eaten vegan/vegetarian/organic her entire life and regularly does cleanses. I seriously doubt she would need to detox in that way. Thankfully she learned her lesson and no longer tries to dry fast.

LuckyT, thanks for giving your experiences. Fasting is very effective, and thus it should be used cautiously, to avoid causing damage.

First, children should not fast at all. Second, there should be a preparatory period before the fast, ideally lasting twice as long as the fast. So if you want to fast for three days, you need a preparatory stage of six days, plus at least three days of transition after the fast.

When I broke my juice fast of three days, on the first day after the fast I only ate a couple of dried figs soaked in water and some unsweetened yoghurt. That was day one. Day two I ate a couple of slices of brown bread with some butter and an apple, etc. Thus I kept my weight loss. Under no circumstances should you return your normal eating habits right after a fast. If you do that, you regain the weight lost and you might even get seriously sick.

@centurion. Yes, you’re right – the only way to keep fasting weight loss is to gradually return to normal eating. Which of course is very difficult if you feel starved.

@Thomas. Regarding the intermittent fasting, what do you think of the diet plan where you have 2 24 hour fasts a week and then eat ‘normally’ the rest of the time? Apparently folks have great results with this. Or maybe it is just another case of hype. The fellow who promotes this has some real scientific stuff in his book about how it works.