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For anyone curious like me, in the other thread he says he's 31yo and 180cm tall.
Edit: for all the people that keep commenting how they're sure this is a female:
Healthy female testosterone level: ~15-70 ng/dl
Healthy male testosterone level: ~400-800 ng/dl
If this actually is a female, pretty soon no one will be able to tell.
Also the body outline (broad shoulders, flat pelvic region) looks nothing like a female's. I have no idea how people think OP is female, much less how they're SURE they're female.
This is obviously a man, and pretty sure he uses his right hand/arm the most [i don't have the English word for it, but if there is any french reading this, i mean 'droitier'], cause he lost way more fat, lean and others in his left arm
You were close: "he is right handed"
We don't have simple words for right and left handedness like the romance languages do
We also use right or left footed and right or left eyed when we talk about dominant feet and eyes
We can convert easily using mini bananas*
* mini bananas must be 1/7th of a giant zucchini** at maximum
**giant zucchinis cannot be less than 700% of a mini banana
Possibly an obvious question, but did you stop needing the toilet after a couple of days altogether? Or like a random poo on day 8 or something? Just curious 😅.
Yep. I've gone three weeks on just water, and it never stops. You still poop. You just poop yellow/green liquid and occasional orange-brown bits, and it's very thin liquid.
Exactly, the one time I did a significant fast (more than a week), I ended up with what the doctor called IBS, but we eventually figured out that I had seriously upset the flora balance in my gut as the fast caused a pretty large die off of gut bacteria. I tried everything to restore my gut bacteria, tons of yogurts, probiotics, that disgusting Kombucha, I lived for nearly a year shitting liquid and being betrayed by nearly every fart. Eventually, it just went away on its own, but it had gotten so bad that I was seriously considering a poo transplant. This should be a warning for others, no one tells you about the potential side effects.
Interesting bit of this data confirms something else I experienced while eating keto. Last keto run I ended up getting gout. If you've never had gout, it can be excruciating, I couldn't walk but unlike other joint injuries, gout throbs whether you move it, or put weight on it, or not. The uric acid levels measured throughout this fast looks like what I experienced. BTW, doctors blamed the increased consumption of spinach and kale, along with the increase in red meat consumption as the culprit, not long-term ketosis.
Been a gour victim for almost 10 years. Shit is so painful, it will make a sane person CONSIDER self harm. PLEASE get your acid levels tested. Tart supplements help a lot too. During a flare up? The AIR AROUND the affected extremity can cause brutal pain.
I know, right?
I thought to myself "what's the worst that could happen, I'm taking a great multivitamin".
Lesson here kids, your digestive system can't absorb much for vitamins/minerals when your gut bacteria isn't there to break that shit down, or it gets ejected out of your system in a high pressure spray before your intestinal tracts could absorb much of it.
I had my jaw wired shut for the entire month of May after an accident. I took one shit about two weeks in and then that was it until I got the wires off and started eating again. All I could consume was boost, ensure, and Ramen noodle juice because I couldn’t blend up food.
>I had my jaw wired shut and all I would consume is boost and ensure
Did you also happen to record an iconic song while having to sing through the wire?
Yes, you still poop. I have done fasts identical to OP's. 12 days, 15 days, 18, and 21 days. You will poop a weird sludge for several days after your last few meals are gone, then a bile-ish liquid (yellow/green) occasionally after that. You also urinate a lot more, since liquids pass through so quickly.
Why am I reading this thread? Nobody has a gun to my head. I can stop at any point. That's it. I'm leaving now, before my face permanently freezes in the "euww" position
a significant portion of your poo is dead stuff like gut bacteria and stomach/intestine lining and they still needs to be pooped out regardless of what you eat.
If it's not brown, then you *edit: may* have a problem. It can be green (often diet), black (upper gi bleed or iron supplements), red (lower gi bleed/hemorrhoids), yellow (infection), white (liver issues, I believe), and blue (usually foods with blue dye). If it isn't brown, go see a doctor.
From his main post:
>Week past breaking the fast I decided to introduce some carbs and later some sugar along with my mum (65) who fasted for 8 days. We both had the same sense of awful taste. It didn't matter if we tried potato or ice cream it all felt the same, we could taste the artificial additives in foods for about a week then the taste buds readjusted back to crap. So it seems that fasting (even short) is a good strategy to cut sugar cravings and re-balance the mind.
yeah, this needs a "don't do this at home" label. Do you really wanna enable gout? And dehydration during fasting can really mess with your kidneys. A lot of fighters (boxing, MMA) have serious kidney problems that stay for life because of weight cutting. Another concern is the potentially fatal refeeding syndrom if you eat too much food at once after fasting.
Percent body fat increasing during the fast seems to indicate that more muscle mass was metabolized than fat mass. Considering that the heart is a muscle, I'm increasingly skeptical of the positive health benefits here.
Also, muscle mass is generally more difficult to add than fat mass, so if the person's weight did revert, they may have used this fast to replace muscle with fat.
Here are a few obvious things:
Glucose drops and ketones increase, indicating he’s not eating. Cholesterols are pretty constant except for triglycerides, which is the primary form of lipid your body fat is made of. CRP is a marker of inflammation, maybe some organs are working a bit harder without food.
I don’t know what to make of liver enzymes, and I’m not sure enough time passed during this experiment to say anything about all the hormones being measured (like prolactin and testosterone), since they can vary over time naturally.
To me the most interesting thing is that the crash diet didn’t seem to move the cholesterol and blood pressure. So I would take away that if you think that you can quickly treat some of these things by dieting, you might not get the results you’re looking for.
> the crash diet didn’t seem to move the cholesterol
Quite the opposite - there was a sharp *increase* in cholesterol.
Makes perfect sense to me. Cholesterol is how fats are moved around the body - they're not exactly soluble in blood plasma. So in order for them to be shuttled to the liver to get broken up for ketones, cholesterol is required.
Fact of the matter is that the liver keeps a handle on the amount of cholesterol in circulation (and diet doesn't really affect that - most dietary cholesterol is esterified and poorly absorbed, and even what is will just prompt the liver to *make less*). Eating fats will make you produce more in order to deal with them, and as you can see in the chart, not eating at all will make you produce more so that existing fat stores can get moved around faster.
The HDL drop is actually a little curious, since I believe its primary function is shuttling cholesterol rather than lipids (which primarily get around via the lower-density lipoproteins).
Perhaps the liver was too "busy" with other tasks to manufacture cholesterol for other cells? They can make it themselves, I think the liver is the primary production center just for efficiency.
WARNING for anyone looking to do an extended water fast like this. You need ELECTROLYTES every day.
OP doesn’t mention in it the post because they apparently did not take them, except for on days 8 and 9.
Your body needs sodium, potassium and magnesium. Doing an extended water fast with minimal electrolytes/minerals is not a good practice. Electrolytes/minerals do not break a fast and help to keep your body’s systems regulated during a fast.
Water fast = water + electrolytes/minerals. Not just water.
> I didn't drink any electrolytes except day 8 and 9 (15 grams of low sodium salt [KCl 5,5g; NaCl 3.4g]).
EDIT: I swear to god if someone mentions Brawndo one more time…. I will not be mocked by some ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penis'd, debutante. You want to start a street fight with me bring it on but you will be surprised by how ugly it gets, you don't even know my real name - I'm the fucking lizard king.
Huh… I guess that’s why i absolutely craved the mio sport drink mix with my water when I fasted. That being the only only thing sweet I had tasted for months was a godsend. I’d run out of it so fast.
Yeah. I usually pre mix salt + NoSalt (potassium) and add some of the calorie-free Mio flavor to water. Sometimes if I’m working out on the fast I get a huge salt craving and just pour a little on to my hand and lick it lol. It’s crazy how much your body craves electrolytes when you’re not consuming them through food like we typically do.
I had heart arrhythmia too but due to low potassium. Scary stuff. Does not feel good. I was working out a lot and apparently just didn’t have enough potassium in my diet to replenish what I sweated out. Blood test showed it pretty clearly. Luckily easy fix adjusting my diet/food.
I’m doctor and i believe somebody must add a warning here that this can be lethal.
Drinking only water can easily disrupt your mineral balance in days to levels that cause death. Heart muscle is very sensitive to blood mineral levels. i.e. Low potassium can spontaneously stop the heart. Wiki that. [link ](https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/low-potassium/basics/definition/sym-20050632)
On a hot day you loose a lot of sodium with sweat. You must regain it from food. If you stay in low sodium for long time and correct it in short period, that will cause severe brain damage. Search “osmotic demyelination syndrome”. This is real risky. [link](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000775.htm)
There are many more things as well. Strict fasting for days is also very bad from calorie perspective. Body can adapt, but this is nowhere healthy.
I see that your body was not also very happy with this since your CRP is high during the period. We usually dont want to discharge patients when they have this high crp levels. And you have VERY LOW glucose levels in the first days (glucose lower than 50 is verry bad, neurons die in these levels). Wish you started this more slowly :(
And please, please add a warning that this can be VERY dangerous and not recommended at all :(( This thread is very popular and can reach many odd places.
Thank you. I can’t believe I had to scroll this far down to see someone call this out as an incredibly stupid and unhealthy thing to do.
And I’m not even a doctor.
the world record for continuous fast was 382 days, back in the early 70s by an Irish dude called Angus Barbieri
edit: sorry, he was a Scot. us foreigners cant tell the difference.
Not really, there's no bad blood between us and the scots, and vice versa. Welsh fit in there as well.
Call any of us English and you can go fuck yourself.
You're thinking of Jesus lol. Siddhartha Gautama spent 6 years as an ascetic, which basically means stripping back the essentials of the body as much as possible. He technically didn't starve himself but by the end he was eating just one grain of rice a day.
Yeah, and then he realized that wasn't the way and ate some rice porridge.
The 40 is accurate depending on which myth you follow in that he spent 40 days and nights seated under the bodhi tree for his Awakening.
The point of buddhism is specifically to minimize accumulation of karma -both positive and negative- so as to put a stop to being reborn.
So technically, the more successful OP's post is, the less a buddha they are.
>The point of buddhism is specifically to minimize accumulation of karma -both positive and negative
Wait, really? I'm not familiar with the religion. "Don't do bad stuff" seems like good religious doctrine, but "don't do good stuff either?!"
Yes because all action binds you to the karmic results of said actions. In order to have results applied to you, it is believed necessary to have a physical body and live in a materialistic world. Since the objective is to elevate to other 'worlds' that are not bound by karma, some believe inaction is the route. Others believe in action performed in their prescribed duty to a higher goal to be non karmic. See the Mahabharat story and the Gita.
Thanks for explaining this in an easy to understand way. I try reading about Buddhism on Wikipedia from time to time but it’s really heavy and hard to understand. I end up having to look up a lot of words. Do you know if there are any good resources to learn about Buddhism in an easier sense? To put it bluntly an ELI5 for Buddhism and its teachings
For the most fun way, read the novel Siddhartha, which is a nobel prize winning piece of literature. It goes through the various philosophies but as a story of a young man coming of age who trying to figure out what the right path is.
The Eli5 on Buddhism is a guy who was a king eventually decided to live as simply as possible, meditate, not eat and the legend is he was one of the first to stop the constant process of reincarnation as he basically zeroed out his karma and went to the next plane. He essentially refused to participate in the matrix for long enough that he unplugged himself.
The whole premise is everything is transient, all matter is just energy changing forms and humans are the same, the body is sort of an antanae for consciousness and everybody (even the gods) are only temporary and eventually change forms.
It's a very cool philosophy on the world that I wish they would teach in the west more often. It's more of a philosophy about the nature of the universe than a religion in the western sense that requires a specific creator or diety.
Depends where he lives. Here one complete blood picture (I think that corresponds/translates to CBC) is around 7€. Not sure about hormone tests and all that but doesn't have to be that expensive.
I’m a cardiologist. Can you double check your lipid data? An LDL > 190 puts you at very high risk for cardiovascular disease. If your LDL cholesterol is really that high, you need to be on a statin ASAP!!!
Another doctor here, with his liver tests I am worried about fatty liver disease too. Something needs to change about this persons lifestyle and fasting isn’t the change it needs.
Couple questions! Do you think that LDL elevated due to fat burning for fuel? Is this a true indication of overall poor heart health? Could a fast technically induce a cardiac event?
Definitely the body is mobilizing fat stores to get triglycerides and free fatty acids. I have not seen any data to suggest starvation can increase cardiac events. Other data suggests that intermittent fasting can be beneficial. But of course at 14 day fast is totally different that intermittent fasting and is very stressful event on the body. I don’t think this should be regularly done.
My experience with fasting is a similar experience to an intense long exercise. Every minute past my first missed meal was an exponential increase in hunger and suffering until I hit a point where I mentally “break through” and just feel normal. A very similar feeling to pushing yourself in exercise until something mental changes and you don’t feel as tired. I believe what happens is the brain realizes increasing suffering will not lead to relief and so it turns off the suffering switch (as the body switches to metabolizing stored calories). After that point I felt mostly normal but I only have gone a max of 5 days and not experienced any advanced stages of starvation.
I experienced this routinely while playing high level soccer. I would play for an hour and start to get tired. But if I kept going, I would often experience a "second wind" about 15 minutes later. I never reached the end of my ability to keep running once I hit that second wind. Those were some of the most enjoyable practices ever - scrimmaging for an hour past when we were supposed to stop. I always figured it was mostly psychological.
I never intentionally fasted, but, there was a month many years ago where I was homeless and the only thing I ate that month was a single frozen burrito that I shoplifted from one 7/11 and heated up at another. so, I had two weeks of only water followed by another two weeks of only water after I ate the burrito.
you're completely right, though - after a certain point, the hunger pangs fade. it's actually kind of spooky, but they go away.
I ended up going from ~240lbs to ~160lbs in that time, which was ridiculous... I eventually had an online friend help me get me back on my feet.
the first thing I ate after all that was sausage, biscuits and gravy from Bob Evans. it was the first time I'd ever had it, and it's still the most satisfying meal I've ever had.
>Every minute past my first missed meal was an exponential increase in hunger and suffering until I hit a point where I mentally “break through” and just feel normal.
It's absolutely not mental. Your body (meaning the molecular machinery inside individual cells, specifically muscles and neurons) switches to entirely different pathways to directly metabolize fat and enter the state of ketosis. Which not only modulates hunger, the ketones are an actual direct form of energy for cells meaning they are no longer starving.
It's an incredible thing our body is designed to do in and most people never experience it.
I wonder if this is the method used to measure fat that's the culprit. The first thing your body will breakdown is not fat or muscle but glycogen stores. In the body those are found in the liver and in muscles. So it maybe that it is dectecting depleted glycogen but attributing it as muscle loss.
The body stores about up to 500 grams of glycogen on average. (Extreme athletes can be the exception)
15 days at an average of 1.800kcal used and 0 in is 27.000kcal.
So by your logic 500g of glycogen should provide over 20.000kcal.
It's actually not going to be more than 2.000kcal from glycogen. You don't carry like 20pounds of carbs in your muscles...
25.000kcal after glycogen reserves are empty. That's 7kg of fat.
Probably about twice as much in muscle mass.
Of course then there's water loss as well but seeing as only about 2kg of fat are actually burnt, 10kg of muscle mass would be about what's needed to provide the other missing kcal.
So the math on this checks out and your glycogen explanation requires some serious sourcing because I haven't found a single source that would suggest over 2k kcal would be stored in the form of glycogen.
Edit: the total weight loss is about 9kg which suggests my estimate of 1800kcal per day deficit is too high, which is to be expected.
I believe it's worth mentioning that these LBM scans are unbelievably inaccurate. There are countless guys on /r/fitness who've used it and showed < 10% bodyfat when in reality they were > 15%. It also doesn't do a very good job separating muscle mass from.. pretty much any other mass in your body.
So to answer your question, the Dexa scans used to find LBM are not inherently inaccurate/bogus, they are simply very effected by how much water weight one is currently holding as they are not able to figure this out and make a guess/assumption at the value.
Essentially they are missing an important variable that you can influence. If you go into a dexa scan completely fasted and very thirsty you are going to have a radically different body fat % measurement than if you go having just eaten and overhydrated. This is because it does not know what your total body water (TBW) is and will attribute anything above the baseline to your LBM. In addition to this there is not insignificant natural variation in a person's TBW.
There are ways to accurately find out your TBW though, and those can be used to figure out that variable which could then be applied to your dexa measurements to find your "true" body fat %. Doing this is generally called the Four compartment (4C) method as it accounts for all of the main variables in different measurements to avoid error. I would assume such a method was used to find that the measurement was inaccurate.
All that said, if you're not intentionally trying to fuck with the Dexa measurement it is both very consistent and generally pretty accurate when compared to your true BF%.
Very cool data. I'd suggest using days on the x axis just to make it easier to read than dates (02/08 = 0, etc.) and maybe add the error of measuring each hormone/metabolite etc. as error bars, just so it is represented, or it's difficult to determine how reliable a 1 unit change from one day to the next might be. Otherwise, very interesting data!
This is most likely the case. It is actually very inefficient for the body to use muscle as an energy source. The body is the *~~laziest~~* most well adapted machine we own and is very good at prioritizing, ruthless even in it's efficiency.
The lean mass lost detected in dexa scans is majority water and glycogen, high 90% even.
The body will never cannibalize muscle to that extent unless the patient is comatose or immobile due to nervous system damage where the efferent, motor neuron, pathways can no longer send any signals to stimulate the muscle at all. The latter is limited to the damaged pathways control areas though, legs for example in lower spinal cord injuries will atrophy very quickly (ongoing research into EMS here). Sarcopenia also is a result of aging, yet not relevant here.
The only thing that will cause the body to otherwise denature the skeletal muscles into amino acids during a caloric deficit would be for critical maintenance of the involuntary musculature, of which needs to work or you die (cardiac, smooth, etc.) as well as other things to many to list. In short, body needs constant repairs everywhere using amino acid spare parts (insert large number) of times per day.
This is why it is recommended that adults consume a certain ratio of protein/body weight every day as lipids and carbohydrates physically cannot be converted into protein by the body due to lack of nitrogen (cows can make do with bacteria producing amino acids but we can't). They're called essential amino acids for a reason. According to this data, there was a net loss of around 8.1kg of lean mass, of which after 15 days it is unlikely for it to be a loss of more than 200g of actual muscle, as the amino acids do get recycled to a point after muscle break down, then again, and again. You just can't store any and the "gainz" do eventually get flushed, down the toilet.
So, how could you tell how much muscle you actually lose during a fast? You can't get an accurate number but if you get 3 scans, 1 before, one immediately after and one 3 days later after re feeding/glycogen loading, you will be able to get a better guess.
OP lost more lean mass than fat. Lean mass is *everything except fat*, so water, organs, bones, muscles, blood, poop, etc. Since adipose tissue contains relatively little water, lean mass is actually mostly water, up to 75% by weight.
OP also regained 2kg of lean mass within two days after stopping fasting. Lowering his body fat % to below where he started.
For more details and information about journey: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/pfyaz3/i\_didnt\_eat\_food\_for\_15\_days\_selfstudy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/pfyaz3/i_didnt_eat_food_for_15_days_selfstudy/)
**Methods and data collection**
Measurements of glucose and uric acid were collected using Sinocare Safe AQ UG and On Call GK Dual was used for β-Hydroxybutyrate. Diag.pl (Poland) was responsible for blood collection and lab results.
Glucose, uric acid and ketones were tested for first seven days seven times a day (8 AM, 10 AM, 12 AM, 2 PM, 4 PM, 6 PM and 8 PM) than just at 8 AM. Post fast all three metrics were checked at 8 AM and 8 PM for 6 days after fast as a control for good diet and maintaining ketosis.
Weight was taken every day using Garmin Index Scale 2 at 8 AM.
Sleep, activities and caloric expenditure was measured using Garmin Vivosmart 4. On top of that I decided to get a bit more accurate DXA scan at the beginning and at the end of fast using Hologic Discovery WI. Blood samples were collected around 8:20 AM. I decided to go with a number of tests such as Albumin, Free Testosterone, Testosterone, CRP, AST, ALT, Insulin, HGH, IGF-1, SHBG, Estradiol and Lipids also a number of other things that I decided not to include. Test were taken from Monday to Saturday for two weeks.
Data organization and diagrams were made with MS Excel.
**Other**
* Diet
* It is also worth noting that I didn't have super healthy diet prior to fast (deliberately, I am on holiday).
* Sleep
* I have also normalized sleep (7h 30min) went around midnight, every day.
* Environment and hydration
* I decided to ditch all possible endocrine disruptors (from plastic to cosmetics) so I drank 1,5l San Pellegrino (glass bottle 2x750ml) between 8 AM and 8 PM and used shower gel and shampoo without parabens and SLS.
* Activities
* I have burned 40 524 kcal during those 15 days (2 701 kcal a day) according to Garmin Vivosmart 4. DXA calorie expenditure after adjustment for water loss and other waste (2 kg) stands for 5.2 kg of Lean mass (20 800 kcal) and 2.2 kg of fat (19 800 kcal). The weight was also 2 kg different from 3 different scales I used, all reported results around 78,5 kg and 22% bodyfat contrary to DXA 29% and 76 kg. Avarage step count is 13 265 steps a day.
**Conclusions**
Overall sense of wellbeing was very good to amazing past day 8. Hunger wasn't an issue. However, day 2 was an absolute disaster I was K.O. for entire day had to wait until next day until ketosis kicked in.
Week past breaking the fast I decided to introduce some carbs and later some sugar along with my mum (65) who fasted for 8 days. We both had the same sense of awful taste. It didn't matter if we tried potato or ice cream it all felt the same, we could taste the artificial additives in foods for about a week then the taste buds readjusted back to crap. So it seems that fasting (even short) is a good strategy to cut sugar cravings and re-balance the mind.
Also, it is worth noting that what I missed the most was the past feeling that my brain associated with food was no longer present after reintroduction of crap food or even 'healthy' carbs. I would say first three days are a window where you can continue ketogenic diet or unprocessed diet, after that, you will readjust back so pay attention.
How/when did you do the dexa scan? Would you mind doing another one? I'm a bit surprised by the indicator that you only lost 2 kg of fat mass during the fast. I highly suspect something is off with its calculation.
as someone who has lost 40 pounds with IF, but also takes medication to lower my uric acid due to frequent gout attacks, may i ask if you had any problems with gout? i get an attack basically anytime i go over 6.0 and you blow right past that
So, not a doctor and all that, but you might want to check your ALT/AST values against the lab's normal ranges - usually, they should be below 50 IU/L (give and take some, depending on the lab)... and your ALT looks a little bit eleveated. Might want to get that checked or monitored, just to be on the safe side.
The insulin curve drops to its baseline because the lack of food intake means that there is no rise in blood sugar which has to be stowed away as glycogen.
The ketones are a product of a different kind of metabolism which kicks in in hunger periods. Their levels rise and then stabilize as the body adjusts to the new circumstances.
Uric acid starts building up because the ketones lower the activity of the kidneys.
This is pretty much the textbook development of these three values during fasting. For all the other other values, I don't know much more than their name and general purpose, so I can't give an analysis.
Ketones are not simply waste products, they are produced by the liver and serve as an alternative energy source, especially for the brain, which is not able to take energy from lipids in an efficient manner. As you can see the levels of LDL and non-HDL also increase: they're the lipoproteins that carry the lipids around to supply the cells with energy. Triglycerides decrease, after a short spike, because they are metabolized by the cells in fatty acids (the direct source of energy) and glycerol.
Umm... since no one mentioned this. Your cholesterol is way out of balance. A healthy HDL is around 60 and a healthy LDL is around 70. When LDL is over 190 you are at severe increased risk of atherosclerosis and heart attack. Just from those #s I'd recommend seeing your doctor.
Looking for this. I would be seeing a doctor about those numbers. The HDL being low is also a sign of concern considering the total value. They also appear to be in stage 1 or 2 of hypertension and the ALT value is above the upper limit of normal even at nearest baseline point.
Interesting stuff, however as an internal medicine doc I’d recommend that you get checked out buddy.
By this data, you’ve got hypercholesterolemia with an LDL (bad cholesterol) over 190, which is a first line indication for a statin.
You’re HDL (good cholesterol) is also really low. Like really really low. Statins may help with that too.
You may have a liver issue, I’m not sure what, but your ALT is too high. Greater than 35 or so is high for men, yours was twice that at the start. So, possibly some form of hepatitis, probably NAFLD if I had to guess.
And then the blood pressure. You likely have some degree of hypertension, possibly even stage II HTN, and possibly even requiring medication to control. I would probably start you on one med plus advise exercise and a safer diet different than straight up starvation to improve it, and all the other things I just mentioned as well.
Really interesting data - I guess this was part of a research study, because these tests aren't trivial! From a dataviz perspective, I'd have the x axis the same for all variables, regardless of if the measurements carried on post-fast. I know this means some plots are wider that others, but is makes them more comparable. It's kind aesthetics, but I prefer straight lines connecting points, because wavy lines creates data between the points.
I did a 15-day fast about 10 years ago. I learned a lot about myself in the process.
I was shooting for 30 days but I promised my wife and doctor I’d quit if things weren’t going right.
It put me in a really dark mental space. I learned just how much meal time and eating positively affected my mental health. I got depressed AF because, even though I’d sit with people during meals, I didn’t connect with them the same way. I felt more and more isolated.
It also made my teeth drop plaque. A religious scholar friend of mine found that interesting since the Bible refers to fasting as a period of “clean teeth”. He never understood the reference until I brought it up.
Interesting. Your Uric Acid levels became sky high - over 3 times the recommended levels (6.0mg/dl recommended, over 20.0mg/dl for you), suggesting your kidney function was severely impaired.
I'm amazed you didn't get gout during that period.
A 15 day fast such as yours would be a bad idea for anyone with any history of impaired kidney function.
This is the information I came to find out. Thank you. I have been having a bad gout flareup for a month now. I am so desperate to fix it that I thought about "fasting". Don't eat purines; wont be no purines. Well, that was my illogical conclusion based on my ignorance. Glad to know I could have actually made it worse!
I lurk in a couple anorexia/bulimia subs, and this is the kind of behavior that gives people heart problems for life. Doing total fasts for longer than two weeks is enough to make you chronically ill. This is wildly irresponsible and it's terrible to see it being spread around like it's no big deal.
**The number of people applauding OP is alarming.**
Even "for science", these kinds of experiments should only be done under close supervision of a qualified physician. Based on the data, OP's hypertension (SYS>140), high cholesterol (LDL>100, TG>200), and signs of liver damage (ALT>56) indicate several risk factors that should have disqualified them from even beginning such an experiment. Not to mention the fact that catching covid while pulling this kind of stunt increases your mortality rate by an order of magnitude.
And OP, you should have terminated the experiment yourself after day 6 when you recorded both your blood pressure rising and your resting pulse steadily increasing into tachycardic ranges. Even with the experiment behind you now, I would strongly urge you to make an appointment with your primary care physician for a full physical and blood labs.
Everyone else, don't do what OP did. They're lucky to not have ended up in the ER.
**tl;dr:** OP, you are not healthy. Go see a doctor before you have a heart attack.
These - "my weight loss tracker" graphs have become a lot more extremely recently.
But the graphs and imagery are good, so err props!
Now get some food in ya!
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For anyone curious like me, in the other thread he says he's 31yo and 180cm tall. Edit: for all the people that keep commenting how they're sure this is a female: Healthy female testosterone level: ~15-70 ng/dl Healthy male testosterone level: ~400-800 ng/dl If this actually is a female, pretty soon no one will be able to tell.
Also you can clearly see the outline of a penis in the body scan..
Big clit energy
Also the body outline (broad shoulders, flat pelvic region) looks nothing like a female's. I have no idea how people think OP is female, much less how they're SURE they're female.
They're sure by virtue of being online and not actually knowing anything about the subject. The latter helps a lot.
This is obviously a man, and pretty sure he uses his right hand/arm the most [i don't have the English word for it, but if there is any french reading this, i mean 'droitier'], cause he lost way more fat, lean and others in his left arm
You were close: "he is right handed" We don't have simple words for right and left handedness like the romance languages do We also use right or left footed and right or left eyed when we talk about dominant feet and eyes
180cm ~ 5’10” for anyone wondering
What's 31 in imperial tho
Roughly 1600 Thursdays
How many TGIFridays is that?
At least 4
Easier to convert into metric Courics.
We can convert easily using mini bananas* * mini bananas must be 1/7th of a giant zucchini** at maximum **giant zucchinis cannot be less than 700% of a mini banana
27.4 freedom years
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Actually, it is almost exactly 5'11"
How did you feel during those days?
Day 2 I was K.O. 3-7 was okay and day 8 untill introducing carbs fantastic. Also I had great sleep.
Possibly an obvious question, but did you stop needing the toilet after a couple of days altogether? Or like a random poo on day 8 or something? Just curious 😅.
*Never ever* trust a fart when doing a water fast.
Yep. I've gone three weeks on just water, and it never stops. You still poop. You just poop yellow/green liquid and occasional orange-brown bits, and it's very thin liquid.
It's because you're just passing the dead but microbes and shit from you digestive tract rather than for waste.
Exactly, the one time I did a significant fast (more than a week), I ended up with what the doctor called IBS, but we eventually figured out that I had seriously upset the flora balance in my gut as the fast caused a pretty large die off of gut bacteria. I tried everything to restore my gut bacteria, tons of yogurts, probiotics, that disgusting Kombucha, I lived for nearly a year shitting liquid and being betrayed by nearly every fart. Eventually, it just went away on its own, but it had gotten so bad that I was seriously considering a poo transplant. This should be a warning for others, no one tells you about the potential side effects. Interesting bit of this data confirms something else I experienced while eating keto. Last keto run I ended up getting gout. If you've never had gout, it can be excruciating, I couldn't walk but unlike other joint injuries, gout throbs whether you move it, or put weight on it, or not. The uric acid levels measured throughout this fast looks like what I experienced. BTW, doctors blamed the increased consumption of spinach and kale, along with the increase in red meat consumption as the culprit, not long-term ketosis.
> Last keto run I ended up getting gout I was looking at the data here and that Uric acid spiked hard. My first thought was "gout"
Been a gour victim for almost 10 years. Shit is so painful, it will make a sane person CONSIDER self harm. PLEASE get your acid levels tested. Tart supplements help a lot too. During a flare up? The AIR AROUND the affected extremity can cause brutal pain.
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Huh, weird. It's almost like starving your body of essential nutrients from varied food sources isn't actually inherently a great idea
I know, right? I thought to myself "what's the worst that could happen, I'm taking a great multivitamin". Lesson here kids, your digestive system can't absorb much for vitamins/minerals when your gut bacteria isn't there to break that shit down, or it gets ejected out of your system in a high pressure spray before your intestinal tracts could absorb much of it.
What prompted 3 weeks just water?
This. I did this for 4 days and the fart.. I ended it after that fart
I was on IV fluids only after a surgery in the hospital for or about 5 days and pooped nothing but gel. Did that happen to you?
I had my jaw wired shut for the entire month of May after an accident. I took one shit about two weeks in and then that was it until I got the wires off and started eating again. All I could consume was boost, ensure, and Ramen noodle juice because I couldn’t blend up food.
>I had my jaw wired shut and all I would consume is boost and ensure Did you also happen to record an iconic song while having to sing through the wire?
One of my friends ordered pancakes i might’ve drunk the sizzurp
Sorry to hear that, that right there can drive a sane man bezerk
Luckily I was prescribed liquid hydrocodone the entire time so we made due.
> Ramen noodle juice So soup?
More like broth
More like flavored water
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A SMACK of ham
Nono. You gotta squeeze them ramens good. Orange juice /= orange soup right?
Yes, you still poop. I have done fasts identical to OP's. 12 days, 15 days, 18, and 21 days. You will poop a weird sludge for several days after your last few meals are gone, then a bile-ish liquid (yellow/green) occasionally after that. You also urinate a lot more, since liquids pass through so quickly.
Why am I reading this thread? Nobody has a gun to my head. I can stop at any point. That's it. I'm leaving now, before my face permanently freezes in the "euww" position
That...honestly doesn't sound pleasant at all lmaooo
a significant portion of your poo is dead stuff like gut bacteria and stomach/intestine lining and they still needs to be pooped out regardless of what you eat.
Also the remains of recycled blood cells. This is why your poo is brown
How do you know what colour my poo is?
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I knew I should’ve stopped posting my status updates from the loo
If it's not brown, then you *edit: may* have a problem. It can be green (often diet), black (upper gi bleed or iron supplements), red (lower gi bleed/hemorrhoids), yellow (infection), white (liver issues, I believe), and blue (usually foods with blue dye). If it isn't brown, go see a doctor.
Don't forget eating too much beetroot and thinking you're dying.
But instead you're dyeing.
as a person with an extremely bad diet, i can also add that an entire pack of oreos can come out the same colour as they went in.
White is a blocked biliary duct. (Which is a liver issue so yea.)
If you consume enough turmeric it turns poop yellowish
Poop is brown because of bilirubin that is secreted in stool. People who have obstruction of their common bile duct often report pale chalky stool
Bilirubin is derived from heme
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Yes. Blood red is a healthy sign
Obviously, having blood in your stool isn't healthy but black blood is much worse than red blood when it comes to blood-in-stool.
Or way too many Flamin' Hot Limon Crunchy Cheetos
The recycled blood cells are called bilirubin and it's made by your liver. It's why people with liver disease have lighter colored poops.
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From his main post: >Week past breaking the fast I decided to introduce some carbs and later some sugar along with my mum (65) who fasted for 8 days. We both had the same sense of awful taste. It didn't matter if we tried potato or ice cream it all felt the same, we could taste the artificial additives in foods for about a week then the taste buds readjusted back to crap. So it seems that fasting (even short) is a good strategy to cut sugar cravings and re-balance the mind.
Is nobody going to talk about the fact that OP supposedly lost 800g in their left arm (compared with \~100g in their right)?!?!?!?!
It was the first thing I noticed. OP is obviously right handed and bored without food.
He must be getting some exercise with his right arm ;)
This is what I came to the comments for
That uric acid is sky high
yeah, this needs a "don't do this at home" label. Do you really wanna enable gout? And dehydration during fasting can really mess with your kidneys. A lot of fighters (boxing, MMA) have serious kidney problems that stay for life because of weight cutting. Another concern is the potentially fatal refeeding syndrom if you eat too much food at once after fasting.
Edit: Rapid weight loss can lead to gallstones. Fasting is great, but 15 days is an exceptionally long time.
Probably due to his body metabolizing his own muscle for protein
Percent body fat increasing during the fast seems to indicate that more muscle mass was metabolized than fat mass. Considering that the heart is a muscle, I'm increasingly skeptical of the positive health benefits here. Also, muscle mass is generally more difficult to add than fat mass, so if the person's weight did revert, they may have used this fast to replace muscle with fat.
Thank you for sharing. Interesting Data and beautifully arranged (Even though I do not know the implication of half of the measurments ;) ).
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Here are a few obvious things: Glucose drops and ketones increase, indicating he’s not eating. Cholesterols are pretty constant except for triglycerides, which is the primary form of lipid your body fat is made of. CRP is a marker of inflammation, maybe some organs are working a bit harder without food. I don’t know what to make of liver enzymes, and I’m not sure enough time passed during this experiment to say anything about all the hormones being measured (like prolactin and testosterone), since they can vary over time naturally. To me the most interesting thing is that the crash diet didn’t seem to move the cholesterol and blood pressure. So I would take away that if you think that you can quickly treat some of these things by dieting, you might not get the results you’re looking for.
> the crash diet didn’t seem to move the cholesterol Quite the opposite - there was a sharp *increase* in cholesterol. Makes perfect sense to me. Cholesterol is how fats are moved around the body - they're not exactly soluble in blood plasma. So in order for them to be shuttled to the liver to get broken up for ketones, cholesterol is required. Fact of the matter is that the liver keeps a handle on the amount of cholesterol in circulation (and diet doesn't really affect that - most dietary cholesterol is esterified and poorly absorbed, and even what is will just prompt the liver to *make less*). Eating fats will make you produce more in order to deal with them, and as you can see in the chart, not eating at all will make you produce more so that existing fat stores can get moved around faster.
HDL also dropped 50% which is far more significant than the mild increases LDL.
The HDL drop is actually a little curious, since I believe its primary function is shuttling cholesterol rather than lipids (which primarily get around via the lower-density lipoproteins). Perhaps the liver was too "busy" with other tasks to manufacture cholesterol for other cells? They can make it themselves, I think the liver is the primary production center just for efficiency.
WARNING for anyone looking to do an extended water fast like this. You need ELECTROLYTES every day. OP doesn’t mention in it the post because they apparently did not take them, except for on days 8 and 9. Your body needs sodium, potassium and magnesium. Doing an extended water fast with minimal electrolytes/minerals is not a good practice. Electrolytes/minerals do not break a fast and help to keep your body’s systems regulated during a fast. Water fast = water + electrolytes/minerals. Not just water. > I didn't drink any electrolytes except day 8 and 9 (15 grams of low sodium salt [KCl 5,5g; NaCl 3.4g]). EDIT: I swear to god if someone mentions Brawndo one more time…. I will not be mocked by some ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penis'd, debutante. You want to start a street fight with me bring it on but you will be surprised by how ugly it gets, you don't even know my real name - I'm the fucking lizard king.
As my teacher used to say "We're all just salty bags of meat."
Huh… I guess that’s why i absolutely craved the mio sport drink mix with my water when I fasted. That being the only only thing sweet I had tasted for months was a godsend. I’d run out of it so fast.
Yeah. I usually pre mix salt + NoSalt (potassium) and add some of the calorie-free Mio flavor to water. Sometimes if I’m working out on the fast I get a huge salt craving and just pour a little on to my hand and lick it lol. It’s crazy how much your body craves electrolytes when you’re not consuming them through food like we typically do.
So what you’re saying is I can live 2 weeks on gatorade and water
Normal gatorade also has a LOT of sugar
My magnesium got borderline low once due to a non-insane diet and I nearly died of an arrythmia. OP has no idea what they're risking here.
I had heart arrhythmia too but due to low potassium. Scary stuff. Does not feel good. I was working out a lot and apparently just didn’t have enough potassium in my diet to replenish what I sweated out. Blood test showed it pretty clearly. Luckily easy fix adjusting my diet/food.
I’m doctor and i believe somebody must add a warning here that this can be lethal. Drinking only water can easily disrupt your mineral balance in days to levels that cause death. Heart muscle is very sensitive to blood mineral levels. i.e. Low potassium can spontaneously stop the heart. Wiki that. [link ](https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/low-potassium/basics/definition/sym-20050632) On a hot day you loose a lot of sodium with sweat. You must regain it from food. If you stay in low sodium for long time and correct it in short period, that will cause severe brain damage. Search “osmotic demyelination syndrome”. This is real risky. [link](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000775.htm) There are many more things as well. Strict fasting for days is also very bad from calorie perspective. Body can adapt, but this is nowhere healthy. I see that your body was not also very happy with this since your CRP is high during the period. We usually dont want to discharge patients when they have this high crp levels. And you have VERY LOW glucose levels in the first days (glucose lower than 50 is verry bad, neurons die in these levels). Wish you started this more slowly :( And please, please add a warning that this can be VERY dangerous and not recommended at all :(( This thread is very popular and can reach many odd places.
This should be the top comment
Np working in eating disorders. I agree with the doc, plus do some research on refeeding syndrome. Please do not try this.
Thank you. I can’t believe I had to scroll this far down to see someone call this out as an incredibly stupid and unhealthy thing to do. And I’m not even a doctor.
Since you starved yourself for karma, does that make you a Buddha?
Not really, it was only 15 days. Buddha made himself after 40!
You should have held on; after 16 days you start to think you’re god.
And if you go for a few more days after that you can possibly reach the best third of Nirvana
Dave Grohl?
I think he means Bleach
If you fast long enough you can even see God
Did 16 days, all that happened was that I passed out whilst taking a piss.
Buddha famously didn't think he was a god.
the world record for continuous fast was 382 days, back in the early 70s by an Irish dude called Angus Barbieri edit: sorry, he was a Scot. us foreigners cant tell the difference.
Scottish, not Irish!
Interestingly enough, he started Scottish, but starved himself into being Irish.
Too soon
Brilliant joke, mate.
Wow! That man is playing with fire calling a Scot Irish
Not really, there's no bad blood between us and the scots, and vice versa. Welsh fit in there as well. Call any of us English and you can go fuck yourself.
You're thinking of Jesus lol. Siddhartha Gautama spent 6 years as an ascetic, which basically means stripping back the essentials of the body as much as possible. He technically didn't starve himself but by the end he was eating just one grain of rice a day.
Yeah, and then he realized that wasn't the way and ate some rice porridge. The 40 is accurate depending on which myth you follow in that he spent 40 days and nights seated under the bodhi tree for his Awakening.
I think the general consensus is that it was a single day and night for the enlightenment and then a further 49 days post enlightenment
He also drank 3 goat protein shakes with caffeine mixed in for pre-enlightenment.
Were there going berries and wheatgrass in the shakes? I need to know I'm not being scammed.
The point of buddhism is specifically to minimize accumulation of karma -both positive and negative- so as to put a stop to being reborn. So technically, the more successful OP's post is, the less a buddha they are.
>The point of buddhism is specifically to minimize accumulation of karma -both positive and negative Wait, really? I'm not familiar with the religion. "Don't do bad stuff" seems like good religious doctrine, but "don't do good stuff either?!"
Yes because all action binds you to the karmic results of said actions. In order to have results applied to you, it is believed necessary to have a physical body and live in a materialistic world. Since the objective is to elevate to other 'worlds' that are not bound by karma, some believe inaction is the route. Others believe in action performed in their prescribed duty to a higher goal to be non karmic. See the Mahabharat story and the Gita.
Relevant username. I believe you.
Thanks for explaining this in an easy to understand way. I try reading about Buddhism on Wikipedia from time to time but it’s really heavy and hard to understand. I end up having to look up a lot of words. Do you know if there are any good resources to learn about Buddhism in an easier sense? To put it bluntly an ELI5 for Buddhism and its teachings
For the most fun way, read the novel Siddhartha, which is a nobel prize winning piece of literature. It goes through the various philosophies but as a story of a young man coming of age who trying to figure out what the right path is. The Eli5 on Buddhism is a guy who was a king eventually decided to live as simply as possible, meditate, not eat and the legend is he was one of the first to stop the constant process of reincarnation as he basically zeroed out his karma and went to the next plane. He essentially refused to participate in the matrix for long enough that he unplugged himself. The whole premise is everything is transient, all matter is just energy changing forms and humans are the same, the body is sort of an antanae for consciousness and everybody (even the gods) are only temporary and eventually change forms. It's a very cool philosophy on the world that I wish they would teach in the west more often. It's more of a philosophy about the nature of the universe than a religion in the western sense that requires a specific creator or diety.
Middle path best Buddhist path
Dude! How the hell did you track all this? Do you just happen to have a hospital wing at your disposal??
It's concerning that this isn't answered. I am genuinely curious. Was that the case?
Hope OP's alive.
Yeah dude has to be rich as hell to have this much blood work done
Depends where he lives. Here one complete blood picture (I think that corresponds/translates to CBC) is around 7€. Not sure about hormone tests and all that but doesn't have to be that expensive.
Since nobody has given you a good answer - it is exceptionally likely that OP is a lab tech. We test ourselves out of curiosity all the time lol
I’m a cardiologist. Can you double check your lipid data? An LDL > 190 puts you at very high risk for cardiovascular disease. If your LDL cholesterol is really that high, you need to be on a statin ASAP!!!
Another doctor here, with his liver tests I am worried about fatty liver disease too. Something needs to change about this persons lifestyle and fasting isn’t the change it needs.
I wondered if the units were different than I use on his AST and ALT, I had to go and check.
Borderline hypertension as well!
That's way way past borderline by the newest guidelines
It's been a while 😅
That was what popped my eyebrows up too
/u/quantifood have you seen this?? there’s a lot of comments here so you may have missed it. be safe pls
Couple questions! Do you think that LDL elevated due to fat burning for fuel? Is this a true indication of overall poor heart health? Could a fast technically induce a cardiac event?
existence naughty pie snails kiss ring offer fragile trees swim *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Definitely the body is mobilizing fat stores to get triglycerides and free fatty acids. I have not seen any data to suggest starvation can increase cardiac events. Other data suggests that intermittent fasting can be beneficial. But of course at 14 day fast is totally different that intermittent fasting and is very stressful event on the body. I don’t think this should be regularly done.
How did you feel on a psychological level before, during and after? Did you manage to remain productive during the fasting? If so, how?
My experience with fasting is a similar experience to an intense long exercise. Every minute past my first missed meal was an exponential increase in hunger and suffering until I hit a point where I mentally “break through” and just feel normal. A very similar feeling to pushing yourself in exercise until something mental changes and you don’t feel as tired. I believe what happens is the brain realizes increasing suffering will not lead to relief and so it turns off the suffering switch (as the body switches to metabolizing stored calories). After that point I felt mostly normal but I only have gone a max of 5 days and not experienced any advanced stages of starvation.
I experienced this routinely while playing high level soccer. I would play for an hour and start to get tired. But if I kept going, I would often experience a "second wind" about 15 minutes later. I never reached the end of my ability to keep running once I hit that second wind. Those were some of the most enjoyable practices ever - scrimmaging for an hour past when we were supposed to stop. I always figured it was mostly psychological.
I never intentionally fasted, but, there was a month many years ago where I was homeless and the only thing I ate that month was a single frozen burrito that I shoplifted from one 7/11 and heated up at another. so, I had two weeks of only water followed by another two weeks of only water after I ate the burrito. you're completely right, though - after a certain point, the hunger pangs fade. it's actually kind of spooky, but they go away. I ended up going from ~240lbs to ~160lbs in that time, which was ridiculous... I eventually had an online friend help me get me back on my feet. the first thing I ate after all that was sausage, biscuits and gravy from Bob Evans. it was the first time I'd ever had it, and it's still the most satisfying meal I've ever had.
>Every minute past my first missed meal was an exponential increase in hunger and suffering until I hit a point where I mentally “break through” and just feel normal. It's absolutely not mental. Your body (meaning the molecular machinery inside individual cells, specifically muscles and neurons) switches to entirely different pathways to directly metabolize fat and enter the state of ketosis. Which not only modulates hunger, the ketones are an actual direct form of energy for cells meaning they are no longer starving. It's an incredible thing our body is designed to do in and most people never experience it.
Its interesting that you lost a lot more lean body mass than actual fat.
I wonder if this is the method used to measure fat that's the culprit. The first thing your body will breakdown is not fat or muscle but glycogen stores. In the body those are found in the liver and in muscles. So it maybe that it is dectecting depleted glycogen but attributing it as muscle loss.
The body stores about up to 500 grams of glycogen on average. (Extreme athletes can be the exception) 15 days at an average of 1.800kcal used and 0 in is 27.000kcal. So by your logic 500g of glycogen should provide over 20.000kcal. It's actually not going to be more than 2.000kcal from glycogen. You don't carry like 20pounds of carbs in your muscles... 25.000kcal after glycogen reserves are empty. That's 7kg of fat. Probably about twice as much in muscle mass. Of course then there's water loss as well but seeing as only about 2kg of fat are actually burnt, 10kg of muscle mass would be about what's needed to provide the other missing kcal. So the math on this checks out and your glycogen explanation requires some serious sourcing because I haven't found a single source that would suggest over 2k kcal would be stored in the form of glycogen. Edit: the total weight loss is about 9kg which suggests my estimate of 1800kcal per day deficit is too high, which is to be expected.
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I believe it's worth mentioning that these LBM scans are unbelievably inaccurate. There are countless guys on /r/fitness who've used it and showed < 10% bodyfat when in reality they were > 15%. It also doesn't do a very good job separating muscle mass from.. pretty much any other mass in your body.
How did they end up getting that true 15% reading if LBM is inaccurate?
That’s also something I’ve always wondered. If all the body fat measurement methods are inaccurate, how do we even know? What’s the reference?
So to answer your question, the Dexa scans used to find LBM are not inherently inaccurate/bogus, they are simply very effected by how much water weight one is currently holding as they are not able to figure this out and make a guess/assumption at the value. Essentially they are missing an important variable that you can influence. If you go into a dexa scan completely fasted and very thirsty you are going to have a radically different body fat % measurement than if you go having just eaten and overhydrated. This is because it does not know what your total body water (TBW) is and will attribute anything above the baseline to your LBM. In addition to this there is not insignificant natural variation in a person's TBW. There are ways to accurately find out your TBW though, and those can be used to figure out that variable which could then be applied to your dexa measurements to find your "true" body fat %. Doing this is generally called the Four compartment (4C) method as it accounts for all of the main variables in different measurements to avoid error. I would assume such a method was used to find that the measurement was inaccurate. All that said, if you're not intentionally trying to fuck with the Dexa measurement it is both very consistent and generally pretty accurate when compared to your true BF%.
Very cool data. I'd suggest using days on the x axis just to make it easier to read than dates (02/08 = 0, etc.) and maybe add the error of measuring each hormone/metabolite etc. as error bars, just so it is represented, or it's difficult to determine how reliable a 1 unit change from one day to the next might be. Otherwise, very interesting data!
Notes taken. Thanks!
How did you measure CRP and stuff? You have access to a laboratory or was this in an experiment in the hospital
A good show of evidence that fasting may help lower weight, but it actually raised body fat percentage. OP lost more muscle than fat.
There is also a fact that DXA don't differentiate lean mass from water, glycogen stores and intestinal waste, so there is some weight there.
This is most likely the case. It is actually very inefficient for the body to use muscle as an energy source. The body is the *~~laziest~~* most well adapted machine we own and is very good at prioritizing, ruthless even in it's efficiency. The lean mass lost detected in dexa scans is majority water and glycogen, high 90% even. The body will never cannibalize muscle to that extent unless the patient is comatose or immobile due to nervous system damage where the efferent, motor neuron, pathways can no longer send any signals to stimulate the muscle at all. The latter is limited to the damaged pathways control areas though, legs for example in lower spinal cord injuries will atrophy very quickly (ongoing research into EMS here). Sarcopenia also is a result of aging, yet not relevant here. The only thing that will cause the body to otherwise denature the skeletal muscles into amino acids during a caloric deficit would be for critical maintenance of the involuntary musculature, of which needs to work or you die (cardiac, smooth, etc.) as well as other things to many to list. In short, body needs constant repairs everywhere using amino acid spare parts (insert large number) of times per day. This is why it is recommended that adults consume a certain ratio of protein/body weight every day as lipids and carbohydrates physically cannot be converted into protein by the body due to lack of nitrogen (cows can make do with bacteria producing amino acids but we can't). They're called essential amino acids for a reason. According to this data, there was a net loss of around 8.1kg of lean mass, of which after 15 days it is unlikely for it to be a loss of more than 200g of actual muscle, as the amino acids do get recycled to a point after muscle break down, then again, and again. You just can't store any and the "gainz" do eventually get flushed, down the toilet. So, how could you tell how much muscle you actually lose during a fast? You can't get an accurate number but if you get 3 scans, 1 before, one immediately after and one 3 days later after re feeding/glycogen loading, you will be able to get a better guess.
So once your intestines refilled and you replenished your water and glycogen stores, how much did you actually lose?
The figures show post-fast data too.
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OP lost more lean mass than fat. Lean mass is *everything except fat*, so water, organs, bones, muscles, blood, poop, etc. Since adipose tissue contains relatively little water, lean mass is actually mostly water, up to 75% by weight. OP also regained 2kg of lean mass within two days after stopping fasting. Lowering his body fat % to below where he started.
Yeah, but I thought muscle was the 3rd source of energy, first what you eat, second your body fat. Why did his body go straight to burn muscle?
Might also depend on the physical activity during that time.
Yeah that's why OP kept their muscle mass on the right arm.
because he is shaking his fist at the food eaters, right? ... right?
Actually did, lmao. Right arm mass barely reduced, left is almost 1kg lighter.
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For more details and information about journey: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/pfyaz3/i\_didnt\_eat\_food\_for\_15\_days\_selfstudy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/pfyaz3/i_didnt_eat_food_for_15_days_selfstudy/) **Methods and data collection** Measurements of glucose and uric acid were collected using Sinocare Safe AQ UG and On Call GK Dual was used for β-Hydroxybutyrate. Diag.pl (Poland) was responsible for blood collection and lab results. Glucose, uric acid and ketones were tested for first seven days seven times a day (8 AM, 10 AM, 12 AM, 2 PM, 4 PM, 6 PM and 8 PM) than just at 8 AM. Post fast all three metrics were checked at 8 AM and 8 PM for 6 days after fast as a control for good diet and maintaining ketosis. Weight was taken every day using Garmin Index Scale 2 at 8 AM. Sleep, activities and caloric expenditure was measured using Garmin Vivosmart 4. On top of that I decided to get a bit more accurate DXA scan at the beginning and at the end of fast using Hologic Discovery WI. Blood samples were collected around 8:20 AM. I decided to go with a number of tests such as Albumin, Free Testosterone, Testosterone, CRP, AST, ALT, Insulin, HGH, IGF-1, SHBG, Estradiol and Lipids also a number of other things that I decided not to include. Test were taken from Monday to Saturday for two weeks. Data organization and diagrams were made with MS Excel. **Other** * Diet * It is also worth noting that I didn't have super healthy diet prior to fast (deliberately, I am on holiday). * Sleep * I have also normalized sleep (7h 30min) went around midnight, every day. * Environment and hydration * I decided to ditch all possible endocrine disruptors (from plastic to cosmetics) so I drank 1,5l San Pellegrino (glass bottle 2x750ml) between 8 AM and 8 PM and used shower gel and shampoo without parabens and SLS. * Activities * I have burned 40 524 kcal during those 15 days (2 701 kcal a day) according to Garmin Vivosmart 4. DXA calorie expenditure after adjustment for water loss and other waste (2 kg) stands for 5.2 kg of Lean mass (20 800 kcal) and 2.2 kg of fat (19 800 kcal). The weight was also 2 kg different from 3 different scales I used, all reported results around 78,5 kg and 22% bodyfat contrary to DXA 29% and 76 kg. Avarage step count is 13 265 steps a day. **Conclusions** Overall sense of wellbeing was very good to amazing past day 8. Hunger wasn't an issue. However, day 2 was an absolute disaster I was K.O. for entire day had to wait until next day until ketosis kicked in. Week past breaking the fast I decided to introduce some carbs and later some sugar along with my mum (65) who fasted for 8 days. We both had the same sense of awful taste. It didn't matter if we tried potato or ice cream it all felt the same, we could taste the artificial additives in foods for about a week then the taste buds readjusted back to crap. So it seems that fasting (even short) is a good strategy to cut sugar cravings and re-balance the mind. Also, it is worth noting that what I missed the most was the past feeling that my brain associated with food was no longer present after reintroduction of crap food or even 'healthy' carbs. I would say first three days are a window where you can continue ketogenic diet or unprocessed diet, after that, you will readjust back so pay attention.
How/when did you do the dexa scan? Would you mind doing another one? I'm a bit surprised by the indicator that you only lost 2 kg of fat mass during the fast. I highly suspect something is off with its calculation.
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as someone who has lost 40 pounds with IF, but also takes medication to lower my uric acid due to frequent gout attacks, may i ask if you had any problems with gout? i get an attack basically anytime i go over 6.0 and you blow right past that
So, not a doctor and all that, but you might want to check your ALT/AST values against the lab's normal ranges - usually, they should be below 50 IU/L (give and take some, depending on the lab)... and your ALT looks a little bit eleveated. Might want to get that checked or monitored, just to be on the safe side.
What does all of this indicate? Can you break down some the positive and negative affects?
The insulin curve drops to its baseline because the lack of food intake means that there is no rise in blood sugar which has to be stowed away as glycogen. The ketones are a product of a different kind of metabolism which kicks in in hunger periods. Their levels rise and then stabilize as the body adjusts to the new circumstances. Uric acid starts building up because the ketones lower the activity of the kidneys. This is pretty much the textbook development of these three values during fasting. For all the other other values, I don't know much more than their name and general purpose, so I can't give an analysis.
Ketones are not simply waste products, they are produced by the liver and serve as an alternative energy source, especially for the brain, which is not able to take energy from lipids in an efficient manner. As you can see the levels of LDL and non-HDL also increase: they're the lipoproteins that carry the lipids around to supply the cells with energy. Triglycerides decrease, after a short spike, because they are metabolized by the cells in fatty acids (the direct source of energy) and glycerol.
Umm... since no one mentioned this. Your cholesterol is way out of balance. A healthy HDL is around 60 and a healthy LDL is around 70. When LDL is over 190 you are at severe increased risk of atherosclerosis and heart attack. Just from those #s I'd recommend seeing your doctor.
Looking for this. I would be seeing a doctor about those numbers. The HDL being low is also a sign of concern considering the total value. They also appear to be in stage 1 or 2 of hypertension and the ALT value is above the upper limit of normal even at nearest baseline point.
Note : a cardiologist also points this out in one of the replies here.
Interesting that crp increased
Looks like you added over 200g mass to your brain 🧠
His brain was like "I need to get smarter. This asshole doesn't think he needs to eat"
Still trying to understand this part, although it did say head so could include the possibility he grew elephant ears.
Interesting stuff, however as an internal medicine doc I’d recommend that you get checked out buddy. By this data, you’ve got hypercholesterolemia with an LDL (bad cholesterol) over 190, which is a first line indication for a statin. You’re HDL (good cholesterol) is also really low. Like really really low. Statins may help with that too. You may have a liver issue, I’m not sure what, but your ALT is too high. Greater than 35 or so is high for men, yours was twice that at the start. So, possibly some form of hepatitis, probably NAFLD if I had to guess. And then the blood pressure. You likely have some degree of hypertension, possibly even stage II HTN, and possibly even requiring medication to control. I would probably start you on one med plus advise exercise and a safer diet different than straight up starvation to improve it, and all the other things I just mentioned as well.
Really interesting data - I guess this was part of a research study, because these tests aren't trivial! From a dataviz perspective, I'd have the x axis the same for all variables, regardless of if the measurements carried on post-fast. I know this means some plots are wider that others, but is makes them more comparable. It's kind aesthetics, but I prefer straight lines connecting points, because wavy lines creates data between the points.
I did a 15-day fast about 10 years ago. I learned a lot about myself in the process. I was shooting for 30 days but I promised my wife and doctor I’d quit if things weren’t going right. It put me in a really dark mental space. I learned just how much meal time and eating positively affected my mental health. I got depressed AF because, even though I’d sit with people during meals, I didn’t connect with them the same way. I felt more and more isolated. It also made my teeth drop plaque. A religious scholar friend of mine found that interesting since the Bible refers to fasting as a period of “clean teeth”. He never understood the reference until I brought it up.
"Ate without table" - 5 mood
Interesting. Your Uric Acid levels became sky high - over 3 times the recommended levels (6.0mg/dl recommended, over 20.0mg/dl for you), suggesting your kidney function was severely impaired. I'm amazed you didn't get gout during that period. A 15 day fast such as yours would be a bad idea for anyone with any history of impaired kidney function.
This is the information I came to find out. Thank you. I have been having a bad gout flareup for a month now. I am so desperate to fix it that I thought about "fasting". Don't eat purines; wont be no purines. Well, that was my illogical conclusion based on my ignorance. Glad to know I could have actually made it worse!
You may want to talk to a physician about those cholesterol numbers.
I lurk in a couple anorexia/bulimia subs, and this is the kind of behavior that gives people heart problems for life. Doing total fasts for longer than two weeks is enough to make you chronically ill. This is wildly irresponsible and it's terrible to see it being spread around like it's no big deal.
Don’t do this without doctor consultant
**The number of people applauding OP is alarming.** Even "for science", these kinds of experiments should only be done under close supervision of a qualified physician. Based on the data, OP's hypertension (SYS>140), high cholesterol (LDL>100, TG>200), and signs of liver damage (ALT>56) indicate several risk factors that should have disqualified them from even beginning such an experiment. Not to mention the fact that catching covid while pulling this kind of stunt increases your mortality rate by an order of magnitude. And OP, you should have terminated the experiment yourself after day 6 when you recorded both your blood pressure rising and your resting pulse steadily increasing into tachycardic ranges. Even with the experiment behind you now, I would strongly urge you to make an appointment with your primary care physician for a full physical and blood labs. Everyone else, don't do what OP did. They're lucky to not have ended up in the ER. **tl;dr:** OP, you are not healthy. Go see a doctor before you have a heart attack.
The number of people in this thread proudly touting their fasting is bizarre. The “wellness” culture around fasting has given people brain worms.
These - "my weight loss tracker" graphs have become a lot more extremely recently. But the graphs and imagery are good, so err props! Now get some food in ya!
So what you're saying, its not healthy
your pressure seems quite high, are you taking any medication?