The Fung Fasting Report #3: Improvements noted

By Holly Lisle

Fun stuff first.

Here’s where I started.  (And why I started.)

  • Waistline: 42″ even (106.68 cm)

Here’s where I am today.

  • Waistline: 35″ even  DOWN 7″
    (88.9 cm) DOWN 17.78 cm

As noted in a previous post, I’ve stopped checking blood sugars. My fingers were pincushions, and my blood glucose before and after meals is always healthy/ low normal.

In the previous month, I did one 4-day fast, and all the rest 23/1. (23 hours of not eating, one hour for meals).

Meals, by the way, have been stuff like:

  • Grilled bone-in fat-on pork steaks with asparagus
  • Grilled buttered porterhouse with broccoli
  • Butter-grilled chuck soup with mushrooms and onions, and blue and cheddar cheese

Fatty cuts of meat, above-ground vegetables, real butter, good cheese.

And I eat the fat.

One meal a day most days, with NO meals a day some days, no snacks ever, and drinking only water, tea, and coffee (no sodas, no sweetened stuff) gives the food budget major elbow room.

I had one problem that ran me into a wall, so I’m reporting that.

I have always run on the assumption that if I need water, I’ll be thirsty. So I didn’t bother watching my water intake. I drank when I noticed I was thirsty.

Turns out, when you’re doing this, you need to make SURE you’re getting enough water, and thirst may not be a reliable indicator.

You especially need to watch your water intake if you’re fasting. I apparently need about two liters of water a day. I didn’t get that — or even come close — and at the point where I started feeling bad, I’d had less than a liter two days in a row.

I have been working insane hours for a months, and while I make sure I eat, drink, and move, drinking while working is always a risk:

Water + Hardware = VERY BAD THINGS

Years of keeping my hardware safe while working has given me the camel’s perspective on fluid intake while I work — I’ll do that once I get where I’m going.

SO…

The first three days of the fast, I felt great. The fourth day, I felt tired. Ate that night, figured I’d be fine the next day.

But eating didn’t help. I felt sick for several days, until I realized I’d been on the same 2-liter bottle of seltzer for two days, and remembered the admonition to Drink. More. Water. in the fasting book.

I still needed a couple more days to get back to normal, but water was the solution. I pushed water. I rehydrated. I was fine.

So, not fun, but useful information.

Finally, a book for the folks who think I have lost my freakin’ mind: The story about how the “eat less, move more” low-calorie, low-fat, high-carb diet got railroaded into the AMA, AHA, and everyplace else where it should never have gone, in spite of very early knowledge that it was a BAD theory that didn’t hold up.

The Big FAT Surprise, by Nina Teicholz

The Big FAT Surprise
The Big FAT Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet

Massively researched, carefully documented, highly, highly recommended.

It reads a bit like a thriller where you’re the one looking down the barrel of the killer’s gun.

If you think eating low fat – high carb is healthy, you owe it to yourself to find out why the medical industry has been lying to you, me, and everybody for about sixty years.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved