Yesterday, I pulled off a 24 hour fast, where the only thing I consumed in the time frame was water. I’ve previously experimented with intermittent fasting in grad school, where there’s a specific time frame to eat, and for the rest of the time you only drink water. As I followed the 16:8 approach, I would abstain from food for 16 hours and then eat for 8. But this is the first time I’ve deliberately pushed past the 16 hour time to go for an entire day’s worth of fasting.
Why Do It?
I had a few motivations for doing it:
- I needed to break some bad habits. With COVID-19 and working near my kitchen rather than at the office, I was much closer to my fridge than I would be otherwise and would mindlessly go there without thinking.
- To stop eating my feelings. With staying at home for the past few months I began eating to deal with both my emotions and with general boredom.
- Weight gain. My pants were starting to get tight, which was my cue that my diet needed to change.
- A sense of control. My self-control felt very low, and fasting seemed like a good way to psychologically prove to myself that I wasn’t beholden to turning to food every time I felt like it.
What Was It Like During the Fast?
I did this fast from 6:30 PM on a Sunday night to 6:30 PM on Monday night. I had overeaten on the weekend and was sick of how I kept falling into these unhealthy patterns with food. My last meal was a bowl full of almonds, and the meal I followed up with was a 600 calorie bowl of chicken pasta. I made sure to specifically portion it so that I didn’t come out of a fast overeating.
As a person who generally has always eaten breakfast, by skipping that my day just felt wrong. My body had pretty strong hunger pangs about 16 hours in for some food, and I started getting cravings for food I don’t even like that much. (Why did I need a craving for milkshakes? I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had one.) I didn’t get any cravings for healthy food, naturally; it was the junkiest junk food you could imagine that was crossing my mind.
I also started getting some physical symptoms. My body temperature and blood pressure plummeted, I felt incredibly fatigued, and I had on and off tension headaches. I tried to work out during this, but my physical performance was much worse than normal. The day also seemed to go by a lot more slowly, as my brain increasingly became obsessed with food. Emotionally I became very irritable and questioned why I was even bothering with this, as my body seemed to be profoundly miserable during the process. My focus was much weaker than normal and I was tackling problems more slowly than I normally would.
To mitigate these issues, I drank a lot of water and reached out to people to try and keep me on track. It helped me get my mind off of food, and once the 20 hour mark hit of the fast hit, a lot of the issues (besides the coldness) receded. My mind was clearer and it felt a lot easier to focus than it had previously. I was able to put together my standing desk without issue and my brain stopped obsessing about food. I still felt pangs of hunger, but they weren’t accompanied by a compulsive desire by my brain to get food in the next 30 seconds.
My emotions stabilized as well and I felt really ready to focus and tackle what was ahead of me. I gained confidence the closer I became to completing my fast successfully, and my work pace picked up once again. It took a while to get to that point, but those 4 hours before I ended the fast were pretty decent overall (outside of the chilliness).
Ending the Fast
I had a regular sized dinner as I ended the fast, and I noticed I actually tasted the food I was eating. It made me aware that for a lot of the meals I had eaten recently, I was barely noticing them. They were just means to get more calories into my stomach to subsist further, and I regularly was just munching mindlessly.
I ended up going to bed pretty early due to exhaustion after the fast and unfortunately didn’t wake up as refreshed as I’d like. I’m not so sure that I really physically benefited from fasting like most people insisted would happen, but that may be partly due to my execution of it too. So if you’re fasting to feel better, I don’t know that you’ll necessarily find obvious benefits (beyond maybe some weight loss).
Conclusion
Overall, it was worth doing. I’m not sure I really got any physical benefits from it, but psychologically it helped me feel more in control and revealed my blind spots where I coped with food rather than other means. If nothing else, it was a good reminder that I’m tougher than I give myself credit for, and can push through to do the things that I really want to do.
I’m not going to board the hype train and suggest everyone try it; please consult a medical professional to see if fasting is safe for you! For certain conditions, fasting is not healthy and shouldn’t be considered.