What I’ve Learned From My First 120 Hour Fast

Like many people, I’ve looked for ways to improve myself from learning new skills, hobbies, and ways to eat healthy. New skills and hobbies come easy to most when putting their mind to it, but the eating healthy thing is extremely tricky. Living in a must have it now society, where patience is not taught, and instant gratification is rewarded with a like or a clap (please clap away).

So, what did the experience teach me? First a quick background so you know where I’m coming from. I tend to eat a keto diet (for those that don’t know its low carb, high fat, and protein) and probably go to the bar 1 times too many a week. I have fasted before in the past with a few 72 hour fasts under my shrinking belt and regularly eat the 16:8 (fast 16 hours and eat in an 8-hour window) lifestyle. Through research I learned that the true fasting benefits occur after the first 72 hours.

1. Irritability: I don’t know if in the past since I knew it was only fasting for 3 days, I never really had gotten ill-tempered after the first 48 hours but this time I did. However, like on day 3 I felt back to normal.

2. WARNING: this next section is not for the weak hearted or those whom do not like hearing about bodily fluids … last chance … ok, you were warned. The next unexpected physical mishap is water leaving the body, but not through its normal side road but instead it took the ol’ highway and more times a day then I was expecting. This did force me to stay within bathroom distance where ever I traveled. I tried everything I could read up on having not planned for this and taking charcoal isolate seemed to work best but did not solve the issue. I’m hoping that my next attempt, this can be prevented by avoiding coffee (diuretic) and taking charcoal isolate capsules before and during the fast.

3. Inflammation: I am a runner and on days I don’t run I normally walk a combined 7 miles throughout the day. When you combine this and adding food/drinks for too many days in a row which cause inflammation my knees, elbows, and knuckles begin to hurt. A licensed physician will claim its arthritis but that’s just pure rubbish. When I remove the causes of inflammation in my diet they magically disappear without a single gram of medication. I highly recommend researching the true causes of inflammation, it will change your life.

4. Fatigue: Day 1 I ran twice, Day 2 I ran once, Day 3 I ran once, and felt that 2 miles a day would not be over doing it and that’s why after the first day instead of running twice a day I’d just finish out the week with 2 miles a day. Well, let me tell you that by day 4 fatigue had set in. I started the day with my run and within the first two tenths of a mile felt like the last two miles of a half-marathon (I’ve run a few) the legs just did not want to go on. The mind agreed with the legs and kept asking me to turn off the Strava app and just walk home. However, just like those half-marathons I’ve learned how to quiet those inside voices and finish a task I wanted to complete. Hopefully this was just caused by the new experience of reaching day 4 of a fast but as the day dragged on (and it did) my whole body got more and more drained. I even took a cat nap midday to no avail. Day 5 I woke up feeling like I had the sore body of a flu patient. After lying in bed an hour longer than I had wanted to I forced myself out the door. Did some work at a coffee shop, walked around and took some photos and videos. Returned to a coffeeshop to work on those captures. I did this all in the name of staying active to fight off the fatigue and hunger as day 5 was clearly the hardest of hunger pangs. Every hour on the hour I just felt like throwing in the towel and getting a nice piece of steak or hamburger down the ol’ gullet but, I trekked on till 4:30pm which would mark the 120thhour of the fast.

5. 120 hours done: To make sure it would be very difficult to quit early I had emptied the fridge of all calories. All that remained were apple cider vinegar, lime juice, and lemon juice. With about an hour before the timer was up I headed to the market to pick up a few items. Kale, feta, alfa sprouts, and grass-fed hamburger and headed towards the checkout counter. It’s at this point I realized I still had 30 minutes to kill before that magic 120thhour and easing back into being an eating human being. As I prepared the food, I fought every urge to pop an alfa sprout in the mouth while the broiler lightly seared the hamburger. Just as I completed the rather large kale, feta, alfa sprout salad the timer went off and I had completed 120 hours of only water, tea, and coffee.

6. First meal back: Yet another surprise was how quickly I filled up on the salad. I know this was due to how the stomach shrinks during extended fasts and this was clearly the smallest my stomach had been since probably my pre-teen years. I had to put half the salad away, I removed the hamburger out of the oven and back in the fridge for the next day. Not the ideal way to cook a burger folks, but after about 4 folk full helpings of kale and feta and a cup of bone broth I was down for the count.

Conclusion: Was it worth it? YES! It’s not just a lesson in forcing yourself not to eat but it really teaches you discipline in its rawest form. If you want something that’s worth getting you have to give up things along the way and just accept that’s how it is going to but until that goal is reached. Will I do this again? Yes, and I believe I’m going to try to do this once a month while continuing with my 16:8 or may even give the warrior diet of 20:4 but we’ll see. Do I now have a new set of tools to tackle the next 120 hours fast? Yes.

Should you try it?: Yes. The benefits just out way the discomfort because that’s all it really is. When your working on a project, talking with friends, watching a tv show (until they show food) you simply stop thinking about food and don’t feel the hunger pangs. Take baby steps into the process if you’ve new to fasting. Start by skipping breakfast. Then one day skip both breakfast and lunch, around dinner time you’ve completed your first 24 hour fast. I’d love to hear any tips and experiences you’ve had with extended fasts.