Health Experiment

I hope my experience as a 29-year-old female will help you. If you have any questions about fasting, please do not hesitate to comment below.

This fasting experience took place in my home. On the 7th February I had dinner was my last meal before the fast. I broke the fast with lunch on the 16th of February.

Preparation

From reading the experience of other people I understood that some do a load-out phase about a week or two before fasting. What this means is they reduce the number of calories consumed per day gradually. I did not do that. It is definitely a good idea to prepare your body like that but I could not afford it weight-wise. I was fasting for health reasons and unfortunately I was already at a lower end (~62kg at 173cm).

Daily creatine supplementation was there for about two weeks before the fast. This had nothing to do with the fast but creatine can cause weight gain (not fat gain!) because it brings water into body cells (which is a great thing along with other good things creatine does). This means that the weight on the scale was not actually my “real” weight for a valid BMI assessment. Just something to bear in mind.

I have bought all the products needed for a successful fast outlined in another blog.

Unlike my first 5-day water fast (in November) I did not book time off work for the duration of the fast but booked a few days for refeeding. I found it the hard way in my last fast that refeeding is the most difficult part of the fast.

I initially planned everything so that my fast would start on the first or the second day of my period. During a female menstrual period the hormones are low and so there is very little interference between fasting and hormones. But my period came too early so I started on the 4th day of it. This is still fine as hormones remain low for a duration of about 10 days.

Day 1 & 2

On the morning of Day 1 I had the last visit to the gym to play badminton for an hour. The rest of the fast I would only take gentle walks.

Day 1 and 2 physically were very tolerable. I had very little physical hunger. In my previous fast I had a lot more light-headedness and irritability and a strong feeling of an empty stomach.

This time the mental struggle was a lot stronger. It is funny, I remember reading in the book about cold-water swimming, it said that statistically getting into the cold plunge the second time is the hardest and not the first. This is because your brain knows what you are doing this time and does not want you to do it! I guess this is what happened to me.

The mental fight was real, I kept thinking that it is not worth it and I should stop. But the rational mind was stronger. It helps to have strong reasons for fasting. Mine were autophagy to get rid of the stubborn Candida Albicans.

Day 3

This is when the mental challenges subsided and I started feeling better. I was doing my daily activities and working.

On my previous water fast, I had a very strong mental focus on Day 3 which I was looking forward to but for some reason it never appeared.

I started feeling strong pain in my knees when using stairs (did not have this issue before fasting).

I pooped in the evening but had a feeling that there is more to come.

Day 4

I pooped! This time it was a lot more and oh my it did not look pretty… I’m hoping that my body was just working hard through that sleep time to eliminate the waste.

Day 4 was hard as F***. It started fine. I was working usual until lunch time but after that I had this tremendous feeling of sleepiness. I would finish a work meeting online and lay my head on a mouse mat wrist support pillow.

Pain in my knees got stronger (only when using stairs).

After pulling all my strength and finishing work I just laid on my bed and slept. I would sleep for an hour or two then wake up and scroll my phone. I would then fall asleep again. I thought this would ruin my night sleep but it didn’t! I slept through the night only waking up once around 4-5 am and falling asleep again.

Day 5

I had a tiny poop again (small wins huh).

I was still feeling tired but could do my daily activities normally at home. Pain in my knees was still strong. I felt unsure about how much longer I should do this fast for. So in order to have the food available for refeeding I decided to do some shopping. I thought I would take two buses to my favourite organic food store. Even bought a day ticket. But after leaving the first bus (literally two stops away from my house) I felt very lightheaded and decided to go to the nearest store (which sadly means no heirloom tomatoes) and head home.

Day 6 & 7

I have combined these two days because I felt they were almost identical.

I started feeling a lot better on Day 6 and felt great on Day 7. Almost so much better that I would often forget that I am fasting. It even scared me a little. “Will I remember to eat one day?” Days went pretty well with some gentle walks and 10-15 minutes of exercise with a resistance band.

By Day 7 pain in my knees reduced by quite a lot. I also became a lot less thirsty. I could feel that I could even go for long periods of time without water, but I drank it anyway just in case.

Day 8

I didn’t particularly enjoy how I felt on this day. Some odd bloats and throat pain and general weakness. I could still do everything I needed to do: clean the kitchen, vacuum the floors, study, go for a walk, but I felt like I was ready to end the fast. Somehow hunger reappeared out of nowhere again.

I noticed that a patch on my toe which is due to Candida has finally started becoming smaller. I hope it is a good sign that Candida is dying off.

Surprises

Vivid Dreams

I had a lot of dreams during this fast. Some of them were so vivid that I would seriously believe they are real. Only after a few moments after waking up I would realise they are not. Not surprisingly, I also had a lot of nights where I would eat something in my dream and then be very disappointed that I broke my fast. Waking up from those was always a relief!

Sneezing

I am not a sneezer but from about Day 3 to Day 6 I would sneeze a lot even though my environment did not change. I am still puzzled by that.

Moving Object Overload

I’ve noticed that in the previous fast as well. One of the biggest struggles for me during fasting is one of these two:

1. Being in a crowded space.
2. Being in a space with a lot of (car) traffic.

My best guess is that the ketosis brain processes information very well but not very fast. So when there are a lot of objects moving around it causes brain overload.

Refeeding (on Day 9)

I did not make the mistakes that I did in my previous 5-day water fast. The big mistake then was to eat a lot straight away and consume carbs (I definitely don’t recommend this approach). Those mistakes lead to a strong burst of depression, symptom havoc and dizziness. I cannot emphasize gentle refeeding enough.

Let me explain what happens here. For a prolonged period of fasting time, your body turns to fat for energy. Body cells adapt so well that they “forget” that glucose exists. This leads to a temporary state of insulin resistance. You can think of it as you become almost like a diabetic for a few days during refeeding. Let me clarify…

Pancreas releases insulin to put food (glucose) into cells but cells don’t respond because they have adapted to ketones (body fat). Pancreas releases even more insulin trying to force glucose into cells and this is where the whole symptom havoc starts. But don’t worry, this is temporary and reversible. The main thing is to be gentle and forgiving to your body. Start refeeding with a light salad and introduce carbs on the third day of refeeding and your body will thank you.

This is what I did, consumed salads for a few days before I started adding some barley to my meals. This time I didn’t have any of the nasty side effects that I had after my 5-day fast back in November. I did feel slightly lightheaded and avoided exertion for a couple of days but that is the limit of it.

Results

Okay, bad news – Candida is still here. In fact, after the refeeding the skin on my face got very painful again because of the fungal acne. My stool is still mushy and unformed and bloating is still here. I really hoped the outcome would be better but I must also admit that bloating has reduced, not much but it is definitely less than it was before.

Some other good news is that although my tongue is still covered with this white Candida layer, the back of my tongue got significantly clearer.

Interestingly also, I have been wearing a continuous glucose monitor for refeeding and I noticed that although during the day my blood glucose is quite chaotic, during the night it goes to a pretty good low level, much lower than I remember having it (used to be around 5-5.3, now it is 4.3-4.8).

By the way, my weight also came back quite quickly. I was 54.8kg at the end of the fast and after a couple of days of refeeding I am now at around 58.5kg.

Comment below if you would like more information on fasting!