As a practictioner of fasting, I don't think that "modern" Ramadan has much to do with fasting anymore - at least, in the way I see fasting working for me. Reason being that at the end of each day of fasting, there is a very large amount of food being consumed, and I mean a lot. Fasting is about calorie restriction for sustained amount of time - modern Ramadan (based on the experience I had in Saudi, which is a very conservative country) is not really about restricting calories, but just shifting the time of the day in which A LOT of calories are ingested.
Personally, when I started to eat moderately when fasting, I started to feel much better. Previously, I would be very tired when breaking the fast... I would be so full that I wouldn't be able to do anything except lie down.
I think that the current trends are due to people nowadays seeing it like a mega celebration, and they see that eating a lot and feeling tired after is just a sign of that celebration. Ramadan is more than just fasting, but I am going off-topic.
By the way, there's a sunnah in Islam to fast Monday's and Thursday's. Some here may find it beneficial.
The health benefits of fasting aren’t about total calorie restriction, but ARE about shifting when you eat to allow your body to kick over into the fasted state for a period of time to get the benefits of that.
I practice a 24 hour fast once a week, for spiritual and health benefits, not to lose weight, and enjoy a very full dinner after the 24 hour fast.
Ramadan looks very much to me to be about fasting, at least spiritually.
Still, it definitely gives you the opportunity to reset every year.
I don't know if that was always the case in history of this religion, maybe in the past the night meal was simply a shared meal with the group, of normal size.
It seems that in your case and mine, we're seeing something that has more to do with symbolism and morals (no gluttony, more thoughtful days, sharing, empathy).
I agree with the basic premise that religious fasting is an often overlooked but beneficial practice in the modern era.
In reading about Christian monastics I've found that their fasting practices are, and were even in the middle ages, much less dramatic than they seem at first glance, except in relatively rare cases. For one thing, many fasts aren't so much "don't eat" but "eat somewhat less, but still quite a bit", and there are tons of feast days to counter-balance that. And even those rules are thrown out for older monks and any who are ill, of course. You look at their calendar and think "damn, that's a lot of fasting!" but then you read accounts by actual monks and more detailed sets of rules and find they did very little actual no-eating fasting, in the typical case, and many "fast days" still involve a lot of eating.
I think it would be more common to find a lay practitioner adhering to the first five precepts.
In India, for example, there are fasting days in a month and many have certain days of the week even where they fast.
Never over two years did I feel any of the mental clarity or more energy you speak of. I follow guys like Cole (snake diet) and even he speaks of the feeling of dying and lying in bed shivering on a 5-7 day.
Are you sure about the metal clarity and energy levels, because I and the folks I know who fast don't seem to have those affects.
This is dangerous and please don't encourage others to do only water fast. Pure water fast is dangerous beyond 4 days or so.
You need to supplement minerals while on per-longed fast. Salt, magnesium and potassium are vital to regulatory processes in your body.
When your body uses up all reserves it will not be able to sustain those processes. It is serious business so please read up on the subject while trying anything longer than 3 days.
> feeling of dying and lying in bed shivering on a 5-7 day.
This is body telling you something is wrong, ignoring is outright stupid. Like ignoring that you are bleeding.
> I have fasted 100 lbs away Congratulations
"Starting in June 1965, Scottish man Angus Barbieri (1939 – 7 September 1990) fasted for 382 days. He lived on tea, coffee, soda water and vitamins, living at home in Tayport, Scotland, and frequently visiting Maryfield Hospital for medical evaluation. He lost 276 pounds (125 kg) and set a record for the length of a fast."
I’m about to give up on total fasts and have bone broth a few times a day for the minerals.
Keen to know if we have learned more in this space
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000394.htm
Magnesium and potasium main but not only function is to regulate heart beat. Lack of them might lead to arrhythmia and other complications.
Not sure about muscle loss.
If you supplement minerals and listen to you body response, then you can fast as long as you have fat stores in your body.
Its only dangerous if you don't know what you are doing or ignoring signals from your body. Lightheadedness is common thing people report or /r/fasting/ and almost always they don't take salt while fasting.
But I am not an expert, it feels like I have done more reading about fasting then actual fasting. So don't take advice from strangers (especially /r/fasting or worse dryfasting nutcases).
Your brain runs on carbs. The easiest source of carbs is carb rich food. This is why hangry people seem to want nothing but cookies & candy IMO. But your body can only hold a limited amount of free carbs at any time. Meanwhile, your liver can convert fat to carbs to feed your brain, and your body can hold a virtually unlimited amount of fat. This pathway is more difficult, so you have to train your body to use it.
So I don't think it makes you smarter or more energetic. But it does make you more stable & help avoid the crash.
Which actually brings me to another point; the brain does not run exclusively on carbs (glucose) - it absolutely has the ability to (and does) functions well on ketones. This is why ketogenic diets can work for many people.
But yes, there's lots of bio-chemical mechanisms that get kicked off when you're fasting for an extended period, so it could be something else that's unique to the people who experience the euphoria.
I am not sure if you've come across this concept, but "Metabolic Flexibility" seems to be trying to explain some of the "after burner" affects of switching around my dieting habits. Where I am no longer exercising strict caloric restrictions, or fasting on a regimen, but I am still observing some of the benefits of when I switched over. (Less bloating, more energetic even after a large meal, less voracious appetite on normal days).
Its a state where your body and mind need to be the sharpest in order to catch food. Or else due to lack of fuel you will enter actual starvation (no fat reserves).
When you have reduced calories intake ~~500kcal a day you are signaling to your body that you can find/catch food but there is not a lot of it. Your metabolism will slow down in order to adjust to reduce calories. You loose muscle mass much faster than when not eating at all.
I have done multiple >3 days fasts and I havent experienced this sharpness feeling though. It seems some people do and some don't.
Also worth mentioning keto is natural diet of Eskimo people, they survived generations eating seal's meat and fat. So keto is not some crazy nutjob diet invention of 21st cent.
On top of this, once you use up all your glycogen, your body enters a period of autophagy which causes disfunctioning cells and protein fragments to become broken down and reused. This causes your body to function more efficiently, including your brain.
I wonder if, if you are not a big eater, then the difference might be less than if you tended to be full of food, digesting away all day and night. Similarly, if there's not a lot of fat on you maybe, rather than burning fat with an energy boost, you end up burning muscle and feel tired?
I think I also just become more irritable if it's been too long since the last time I ate. It definitely doesn't seem to improve mental acuity for me, and any kind of physical activity is just going to feel worse. I've never tried any kind of a formal fast, though, so I don't know if there's something to planned schedules that makes it different.
I can kind of see how I might, under some circumstances, enter some kind of a state of quicker thinking after fasting, but I think it would be something similar to sleep deprivation, where you get perhaps a bit "hyper". That's not really a state I necessarily strive for either.
I've also never been overweight, and have always had more trouble gaining weight than getting rid of it. I wonder if that has something to do with it. I suppose the metabolism might be different if you've got some fat stores vs. if you're rather low-fat.
I can understand how fasting could e.g. have differential effects on cancer cells and thus be useful in specific circumstances. I also understand that people have rather different reactions, so I don't doubt that some people achieve some kind of a state that feels good or useful by fasting. But I don't really understand the hype, or calling it a panacea.
Each time I hit that point I get the clarity and energy, and remember that it happens each time. Pretty interesting. So much energy I can't sleep and end up eating when I can't sleep which breaks the fast.
I am only 5kgs over weight at this point if that is relevant for anyone.
Most days I feel amazing, some other days I feel quite tired and I experience some mental fog. I still haven't found the reason for such an oscillation.
I suspect it has to do with what I eat during the eating window (for instance, more sugarish food, more carbs, etc). I think I should record what I eat and compare it with the overall well-being to get to some conclusions.
Mentally however I found myself unable to have too many variables in my head and my mind was not more able to focus on something but less distracted with extraneous thoughts. I could if I wanted to shut off the chatter in my brain and meditation became very easy.
It is definitely a different mode for me and I do appreciate it but I'm told that many people in my family have ADD and that I might actually be showing symptoms that would go away when in ketosis.
I recently did a full check-up (I'm 48) and all my blood/urine values were spot on - before starting my fasting protocol some values mostly related to arteriosclerosis were slightly over the recommended values. Obviously, this doesn't say much or it's far from being a scientific proof: it's just an observation. There are good chances that for a lot of people fasting would just not help and make life misearable.
You might try reducing your fasts to just 24 or 36 hours on weekends.
Currently, I do intermittent fasting where I don't eat before noon or after 6pm, 7 days a week. It helps me to manage my weight, I feel consistently energetic (I work out most days, cardio and weights), my mind feels as clear as ever, and I have no trouble following the practice as a lifestyle.
I'd say that I don't feel quite that clarity of thought when meditating after fasting for 30 hours or so. But it strikes the right balance of achieving some benefits of fasting without feeling like a huge chore that I have to overcome.
It makes sense biologically you would get some heightened awareness mixed with periods of extreme lethargy as your body tried to preserve itself.
I'm very interested in reading more.
but a tiger has evolved to be an apex predator, and not much else.
our predatory speciality is more about leverage than brute force, or scavenging rather than hunting. so i think the logic still applies that cognition can be improved in a way that is beneficial to modern humans. resourcefulness implying that resources are found / conjured when they appeared to be lacking?
This was done in preparation for each chemo treatment.
I have actually completed a 10 day water only fast a few months ago (good use of lockdown), it takes my body around 4 to 5 days to switch completely to ketosis, then to the end of the fast I was burning through 1 pound/~0.5 kg of fat per day. You can watch it happen every morning when you weigh yourself.
i fast twice per week for ~30 hours and drink copious amounts of tea and coffee. but intermittent fasting also works, the really important information is that ketosis can begin after as little as 12 hours, so basically fast for a minimum 14 hours if you want any effect at all, and everything after that is bonus. no extras in your coffees btw, though a splash of milk / coconut oil in your breakfast coffee is acceptable :)
the possibly dangerous part is recommending that particular part of the book in response to a query asking for how long one needs to fast to feel the effects.
Also it would be weird to see people in those days, allegedly not having access to the cornucopia of yummy food we have in 2020, going into fasting. Maybe more diseases on average made them realize that the less fed survived better ?
Of course there are limits but when done right you end up with a plant that on average is stronger.
"Autophagy", that famous process which supposedly happens during fasting, that miraculously regenerates us, actually happens during caloric restriction, and it's actually a daily process that happens during the night, in everyone, while glycogen stores get naturally depleted.
And we have no evidence that increased autophagy levels are beneficial, quite the contrary, we have some evidence that, right after fasting, the immune system is suppressed. The bigger the caloric restriction, the larger effect on refeeding. An effect very relevant for malnourished populations that suddenly get access to food.
This is basically modern quackery, medical technobabble lacking any evidence other than obscure studies done on mice.
What "healers" and witches used to do, but taken to the next level.
And unfortunately it is also a recipe for serious eating disorders. Hello anorexia.
Is all that really necessary?
When it comes to human health, the unknowns are legion. Medical science is in its infancy, but too many act as though it's a mature discipline built upon rock-solid theories with few problems.
20 years ago, I noticed that my mental fog cleared up and I felt healthier when I ate very low carb, I looked to pioneers like Atkins and others who predicted my results much better than those pushing the "food pyramid". Those pioneers were called "quacks". I was told over and over by supposed experts: "Calories in equals calories out.", "A calorie is just a calorie.", "You're going to ruin your kidneys on a high protein, high fat diet.", and on and on.
The problem isn't science. Science is the best method we have to discover the nature reality. The problem is with science used as a religion or political weapon without humility or appreciation of its flaws and limitations.
Calories in calories out is 100% valid for weight loss. The problem is that people interpret it to somehow be a claim on overall health when it is just a statement on weight gain and loss, which while can be beneficial to health, isn't everything.
A calorie is just a calorie, so much as color is color. Its a single property of food that can be compared. If you want to lose weight that is the property you primarily need to look at. If you care about overall health then obviously there is a lot more to it than just calories. People somehow interpreted a calorie is just a calorie as a claim that all food is the same when its just saying that from a weight loss perspective, the energy component from any food source is the same -- there are no further claims about nutrition content.
And yet medical organizations backed government efforts to force it upon our society.
"Calories in calories out is 100% valid for weight loss" "A calorie is just a calorie, so much as color is color."
Yeah, and you can tell an obese person to cut off their legs to lose weight. Sure, you'll be factually accurate, but are you honestly talking about weight loss?
"If you care about overall health then obviously there is a lot more to it than just calories."
Is weight loss without health considerations really the subject you think people discuss when they talk about weight loss? Nobody talking about actual dieting and weight loss is talking about thermodynamics. We're talking about the complex interactions between food, exercise, mental health, and our individual bodies in order to reliably lose weight and be healthier.
Last I looked into it, we didn't really know the autophagy timeline in humans, because we can't really measure it. Of course there's a natural fasting window that every human adheres to while they sleep, but with food available at all times, three meals a day plus snacks, that window may be far smaller than what the body is evolutionarily adapted to. What if autophagy doesn't kick in properly until 10, 12 or 14 hours?
Anecdotally, I've been doing 16/8, 20/4 intermittent fasting and a couple of 24-48h fasts over the past 10 years and have not yet developed anorexia.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110222200902/http://www.soilan...
From being a Roman cure for epileptic seizures, through the integral practice in most religions, and to the 21st century where we start to prove that it increases both healthspan and lifespan.
I find it quite interesting that something so simple, which practically anybody can do, can have such a positive effect on one's life. You are literally healing and regenerating yourself by doing nothing! And instead of compounding medical bills you actually save money!
Thank you modern science for validating my no longer fringe medical beliefs :)