It started 7pm on Friday the 26th. My last food was Chicken Fajitas, chocolate, and 2 jam doughnuts!
My intention is to only have water and black tea with lemon until Sunday morning. I have booked a table for Sunday lunch at 1pm so if I last until then, it will actually be over 42 hours!
I will write what I experience, notice and feel as I go along and share it here.
The link at the bottom of this blog is a short two-minute cartoon video that I’ve watched a few times, I think it is a simple explanation of what is happening in my body. I really hope it’s accurate. I confess I’ve not really dug into the source of the video, I saw it appear in my Facebook feed and thought, yeah, I want to do this. I want to try it and certainly I’ve heard about all these benefits before, so I’ve got no reason to think it’s not true, I think it’s a very simple way of explaining the different stages your body goes through. First, it uses up your food stores in your stomach, then it looks for the glycogen that is stored in your organs then it produces ketones which is another energy source, and somewhere in there the pituitary gland releases growth hormone to keep everything going a little bit longer. Finally, when all the stores are completely depleted, then we go into autophagy, and that is where the body starts to repair itself.
So, I’ve got to look forward to feeling hungry because I will know that that is the point at which the next part of the process will happen, and hopefully that hungry feeling would only last a couple of hours and then my body will do what it needs to find more energy stores.
7.30 am I woke up and I’m aware that last night I actually dreamt about fasting and feeling hungry, which just shows how much it was on my mind when I went to bed but that’s fine. It was only a dream.
I made myself a cup of tea and instead of putting milk in it, I’ve put in a slice of lemon, and I have made a huge bottle of ice water with a couple of slices of lemon and I’m going to be carrying it around with me all day.
I know that the morning is going to be easy as I don’t usually feel hungry until roughly 11am. I’ve already said to myself that I mustn’t be afraid of the hunger. It is no good hoping that the hunger won’t come. I need the hunger to appear because that is part of the process that my body is about to go through. If I don’t feel hungry, that is telling me that my body still has resources it can use up.
9.45am and I’m feeling my stomach rumbling, which is making me realise that my morning ritual of a cup of tea with milk in, and my little sachet of collagen in water, has been providing me with enough calories and nutrition to hold off the hunger for longer. So, this might be more challenging than I thought.
12.35pm I have been distracting myself with tidying and housework and I am aware that there’s a slightly empty feeling inside, but not my usual hunger for lunch.
I know that most of this is mindset. I usually spend so much time thinking about what we are going to have for lunch, or dinner. What needs using up? What is in the freezer? Food prep is always on my mind. I deliberately chose a day that I would be home alone, so I could simply decide not to think about food at all, all day.
Much of our desire for food starts in our minds. Thinking about what you feel like eating, picturing it, imagining eating it. Hunger and appetite are triggered by the thoughts and images of food. When you take that away, it is much easier to ignore the hunger. Oh, and this is not a good day to watch Bake Off or MasterChef!
2:30pm and the feeling of hunger has gone off. My stomach occasionally rumbles but it’s almost as if my stomach stops telling my brain that I’m hungry because it knows I’m ignoring it. I’ve just made another cup of lemon tea. It’s still a weird thought to think that I may not be having anything until I go out for lunch at 1pm tomorrow afternoon, but I’m still okay.
5.00pm I’m at 22 hours. I’ve just had a bath to distract myself but I’m actually feeling completely fine. I’m sure I’m going to be able to get through the next four or five hours until I go to bed.
7.00pm 24 hours exactly, feeling completely fine, not feeling hungry, not feeling anything really, so hopefully my body is now in the autophagy phase and when I go to bed tonight, my body can spend the entire night repairing cells and doing all manner of good, I might even start doing this once a month!
2.00am I woke to do a wee, all that tea! And then it took me a while to get back to sleep. Which isn’t usually a problem for me. I felt a slightly crampy feeling in my stomach. But I did eventually fall back asleep.
7.00am. I’ve done it! 36 hours. I stood on the scales, and I have lost about 1.5lbs but only half a pound is ‘real’ as my weight had popped up the day before, probably due to the donuts and bread consumed on Friday.
8.30am I broke my fast with my collagen sachet and a mug of tea with milk, deciding that it is probably kinder to my body to break my fast with something light and simple rather than the roast dinner I plan to have at 1pm. By 9.30am I had also had a slice of toast with a boiled egg on it. My body was really asking for it.
It’s hard to measure the benefits of a 36 hour fast without a raft of scientific tests. But it wasn’t that hard to do, and there is so much evidence that it is good for us, that I think it is something I will repeat.
Right now, though, I am still looking forward to that roast!
Click here to watch the 2 min video