I Quit Eating for 28 Days [Water Fast] : Day 8 (Focus)
I Quit Eating for 28 Days
To Lose Weight
For Better Health
To Attain an Elevated State of Consciousness
To be more like Jesus, for Jesus Fasted for 40 days
I Ran Out Of Money. ✔
I took a Leap of Faith with Steemit, and it didn't turn out so well, so I started fasting.
Fasting Makes You More Focus
People often associate hunger with poor focus and how they can’t work properly when they are hungry because they are irritable.
Yet somehow Intermittent Faster and Water Fasters alike can attest to the fact that they feel an elevated level of focus and concentration when they are fasting. As a matter of fact, I am on day 8 of my 28 day journey, and I can attest that my focus today is definitively higher than my usual state of being. I haven’t eaten anything at all in 8 days and I feel a heightened sense of focus.
So where is the discrepancy here? How is not eating providing better brain function than 3 proper meals a day?
Let’s compare the 2
Let’s presume that you eating 3 square meals a day, like most regular folks. More likely than not, you are consuming at least a third of your diet from carbohydrates, some of which, I’m presuming is sugar.
Glycogen
It turns out that the more you often you eat, especially when you are having a diet with high amounts of carbohydrates, your body in turn gets hungrier much quicker.
This is because your body is relying on your glycogen stores as a primary source of energy. Glycogen is your body’s storage for energy for immediate use that is fueled by carbohydrates and sugar. Glycogen stores run low pretty quickly, like you would imagine, in 4-5 hours, which leads you to be hungry and irritable once again.
With the consistent intake of food, your body also uses an excess amount of energy to digest said food, which taps your short term energy stores as well. In essence the more you eat, the hungrier you get.
You know that feeling after lunch where you really just want to pass out? That’s your body channeling all of it’s energy to digest the Burger King whopper you just shoved down your throat but no worries you had a diet coke.
Your focus is in the gutter, and you need to spend an hour or so re-orientating your brain with 2 cups of coffee before you actually are ready to seriously get back to work.
Alright, to be fair, not everyone has fast food for lunch, but let’s not kid ourselves that there are a lot of people who do. This however, still doesn’t take away from the fact that eating during the day, is actually pretty detrimental to your focus.
Digestion Costs Energy Which Is Taken Away From Your Brain
When food is consumed, blood and energy is rushed away from your brain to your stomach to aid digestion, which then, lessens mental focus. Given that you are relying on glycogen as your main source of fuel, the irritation of hunger will then take away from your focus once again in 4-5 hours to have more food. This is the perpetual loop that the majority of the world is stuck in.
With some exception given to a ketogenic diet, where 60% of your calories come fat, 30% protein and 10% carbohydrates, essentially putting your body into a ‘fasted-like’ state without actually fasting, where your body starts utilizing fat as energy, instead of glycogen, which has proven to reduce hunger and increase mental focus.
However even in that scenario, you can expect that your focus is taking a toll by eating as blood and energy is channeled away from your brain and into your stomach.
The more often you eat, the less focus you have.
Heightened Focus in a Fasted State
The basic premise is simple, if you don’t eat, you don’t spend energy and blood to digest food, making the energy and blood more accessible by your brain.
What About Irritating Hunger Pangs?
This is how hunger pangs work. When your body runs out of glycogen in your liver, your body sends out a signal to say “Hey! We need more food down here!”. Your body does so by releasing a hormone called ‘Ghrelin’, the thing about Ghrelin is, that if you ignore the Ghrelin signals for about 2 hours or so, it goes away!
Not only that, the more often you ignore Ghrelin, the less often it is released. So as any seasoned Intermittent Faster will tell you, not eating is not the slightest issue to them and the odd chance that they feel hungry, it is absolutely negligible. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
No Food, More Focus
Given that you are not having to process food, you don’t face any problems like:
- “Food Coma” from energy and blood being siphoned off to digest food
- Hunger Pangs Being an Issue
- Deciding what to eat
- Actually finding a place to eat or preparing food
- Distractions are also a huge boon to focus, the more time your attention is taken away from your task, you have to go back and re-orientate yourself on where you left off.
Your Body Aids Focus During a Fast
Also on the flip side, if you are well-fed all day long, you are signalling your body that everything's A-ok and it can relax! A relaxed state is far from a state of focus.
Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, your brain does more than just focuses better when in a fasted state. Your brain actively releases additional BDNF(Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor) which is akin to “Brain Steroids” discussed in yesterday’s post.
All in all, fasting is proven to in multiple ways to be an excellent means of boosting focus and getting more done aside from saving you more money, from not having to eat multiple meals, saving you time from having to prepare and consume food, and most importantly so that you don’t have to spend lunch-time with that fucking dumbass Chad.
If the idea of doing an extended fast like what I am doing is tad extreme for your taste, which, I won’t be so idiotic as to imagine what I am doing is normal to anybody, I would suggest considering Intermittent Fasting and eating once only in the evening.
This has been the way that humanity has lived since the beginning of ages as a normal practice and just because it isn’t any longer doesn’t make what modern day people do normal. If you compare how long since humanity adopted eating 3 meals a day to how long humanity has been eating once a day, we are actually the freaks.
Some scientific circles believe that during the morning and for most of the daytime, people are meant to be on the move, expending energy (hunting and gathering, if you will). Only when night comes along are people meant to eat, relax, and recuperate. Some say this is the natural order of things, or a human’s natural biorhythm.
On a final note! Finally something nice to say about eating!
If you do adjust to eating once a day, you will find that meals are absolutely far more enjoyable. Go enjoy the shit out of your steak and potatoes with extra sides at the end of the day and feel glorious after an effective day of high-focus, productive work and a feast to end the day. It is honestly quite the way to live.
If you’d like to learn more about eating once a day, I highly recommend this youtube video by What I’ve Learned
NBA basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon feels “more focused” while playing during Ramadan.
Day 8 of 28
Start of week 2 and things are mostly smooth sailing with slight bumps. I woke up in the morning feeling pretty shitty with stomach discomfort. Even after I had my shower and had my breakfast cup of water and need to lie down again for another hour or so.
Last night, I had one of my heaviest food cravings since the start of this fast, and of all the foods in the realm of amazing foods to be had, I wanted nothing more, than my goddamn Micky D’s Double Cheeseburger baby. Nothing more I wanted in the world.
Alas, I remembered, these were just the parasites were screaming to be fed. Why else, of all of the amazing foods I have had across my life would I choose something as close to garbage as possible. That’s what parasites want.
However, now knowing full well that of what they are and what want, I hope they know they have no chance. After about 15 minutes or so, it subsided and all was fine.
State of Being
Mental State today, as I mentioned earlier in the post, is starting to improve more and more so. I am in the realm of focus of which I am sure I never attained before. Though it is maybe only a slight improvement in all honesty. I’d rate it a 11/10 if my baseline of 10/10 was my best performing day. I am excluding exercise highs which are often shorter lasting periods of time, where my focus has remained consistent, and I have been working away for 13 hours or so now.
Hunger Pangs is a weird one today. Since last night it has come very rapidly and left just as quickly. Pretty much the same can be said for today. It comes for a short while and is moderately strong, then it leaves me completely for hours at a time. Overall, I do suspect parasites at work here and I am sadistically enjoying the process of starving them.
My overall well-being today is pretty much comparable to any regular day I would have with challenges both when eating and when not. Maybe the difference being that when not eating I am also effectively spring-cleaning my entire body and I sincerely believe, brining it to new heights.
What I am most appreciative of is the Autogaphy effect of fasting as I do believe I have so much gunk in my body from my terrible abuse of my body for so long. I have long felt I had “mental blockages” long after I stopped my heavy drug abuse and it truly does seem to be doing better in that regard. For that I am very grateful to be on this journey.
That’s all I have for today! Till tomorrow,
God Speed Brethren.
Some of my earlier posts you may like :
A Journey to Total Human Optimization : Breaking the Chain of Nicotine
Journey to Total Human Optimization : Breaking the Chains of Substance Abuse
Join The Highest Paying Bitcoin Faucet
I still eat more than once a day because I'm pretty much locked up to my work for 8 hours every day, with an hour lunch break in between (and I don't want to spend my off work with only eating). Though my core lunch always consists of beans and peanuts which don't cause such "food coma" like consuming carbs does, so it works fine for me. But whenever I'm not working I start eating after 4 PM.
That's a pretty good schedule as is! Roman soldiers actually did something similar where, during the daytime, day only lightly snack on nuts and berries and have a full meal in the night.
Though beans are still carbs in nature, it's important to distinguish that beans are low glycemix index, by which means they are digested much slower than say, wheat or barley, and of course much much slower than sugars. So that's pretty good!
That's about right! I intend to revert to a 1 meal a day at around 6-7pm (or whenever work is done) to then have my meal. This fast has really shown me that hunger in of itself is something that is absolutely over-glorified.
If I were to have to for some reason, stop eating for 24 hours abruptly, that would call for a shrug of the shoulder and an oh well.
I like being in that position. It's a postion of immutable strength that no one can take away.
That's pretty much how I roll on weekdays.
Yup, for some reason we think we are already dying just by skipping a few meals even though the feeling of hunger is based on hormone(s) - especially on Grhelin, like you said - not in the scarcity of available energy.
not that I know what you are going through, the longest ive ever went without significant solid food was 3 days.
But i have noticed now that you mentioned it, a severe energy drain when i eat 3-5 times a day.
As recent as 5 months ago, I started eating just dinner with snacks in between and there is a significant difference between how i feel on a fasting diet as compared to a eating diet. I spar (muay thai) on both diets and i feel significantly better if I fast most of the day. But afterwords i have to eat 1500+calories in a meal otherwise I feel like absolute shit the next day.
I weigh 5'6" 148lbs
You absolutely would! It is actually quite surprising at what point your body is no longer in need of nutrients. Everything you have past that point is sheer "entertainment food" which in turn taxes your energy levels!
Wow that's really interesting! That's literrally a warrior diet! In regards to eating once a day, you have more experience than me for sure, and it's good to know that on the 1 meal that you do eat, it has to be significant.
I think nearing the end of my fast will be quite interesting as I have a huge array of stuff that I will repopulating my clear and empty gut with to repopulate the gut microbiome. That's still quite a while from now though!
Dont forget to slowly introduce solid food back in. I hear you can get some serious pains if you eat too much too soon too quick.
My dinner meal tends to be SUPER high in fats and protein. I think thats the only reason why I can last 16+ hours without a snack. If instead I ate a ton of rice and vegetables, my morning energy would be very low. I've tried that one too.
The other thing I've noticed is that I have significantly less intestinal movements if I don't eat breakfast and lunch (uhhh how do i say this, i fart and poop much less). But Im still a once a day person. :p
Oh yes absolutely! I only intend to eat my first piece of solid food after 3 days of veggie shake refeeds! I have a whole list of things that I will be consuming to refeed which I think will be very interesting to see how my body reacts to!
I will be doing exactly that when I eat one meal a day! But a higher focus on fats, I like staying in deep states of ketosis.
You are absolutely right, if you rely on your glycogen stores as your main source of fuel you will suffer immensely.. I don't think I could make it 16+ hours while eatings too much carbs.
I would make sure that you are not doing very much exercise at all so that you are not breaking down your muscle. Make sure that you are drinking enough water.
Fasting for that long is not an ideal situation.
Well, believe it or not, though your statement is logical, the truth of the matter is quite the opposite. My friend, who fast for 18 days which he completed just last week, spent the entirety of the fast doing high-intensity exercise and reported significant muscle growth and strength gain. The reason for that is your body releases an excess amount of Human Growth Hormone when you are fasting and will not ony protect from muscle loss, but can even build muscle. I covered this in my blog of this fast on day 2.
All throughout humanity, human-beings have been made to survive extended periods of time without food. There are many scientifically studied cases of individuals going on extended periods of fasting, much longer than mine and not only survived, but were found to be in better health than when they began.
Nonethless, thank you for your concern and your generally good advice :)
how long was your friend working out for? Was it daily?
I agree that fasting can be very beneficial for health but everyone likely has their own threshold of how long it is safe to fast for. You most definitely don't want to get down to the point where your body is attacking your organs for energy or amino acids.
There are essential amino acids that your body needs that it can't make on its own.
Yes it was daily, before going to work full-time as a bartender!
That I absolutely agree with you. However I believe that on a fast there are many sources of which your body is pulling energy from, far more than just fat in the process of autogaphy to be converted into energy.
Also, the amount of energy actually required by the human body to survive, is I would say, surprisingly less than most would imagine. Given the fact that a portion of the food we consume is turned around and utilized to digest even more food, the truth of the matter is, during a fast, you utilize way less energy than usual.
Here is where I am confused.
One of the videos that is in one of your earlier posts on day 2 states that fasting increases the basal metabolic rate of the body but you are saying that it slows it down. Which one is it?
It also says that Leucine is increased in fasting which allows muscles to bulk but where is that Leucine coming from since it is classified as a essential amino acid meaning that mammals can't produce it. Is it the person's microbiome stepping up production in response to the lack of food? If so what are they using as fuel?
What are these other sources that you mention? If it is your internal organs you could quickly have a problem.
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STOPAs always, much support being sent your way from Texas!! But I have a question, you talked about the parasites and how they are being starved out. Will intermittent fasting do the same thing? Or will they just stick around and wait on the one meal per day? I was just curious as to how long one must go before the parasites are gone.
Thank you so much! It is very much appreciated!
No, you will not see the sae results from Intermittent Fasting. I am curretly on day 10, and even now I am not quite sure I've flushed all of them out. Or will they just stick around and wait on the one meal per day?
There is really no saying as parasites in general come in a massive array of varying sorts and work in varying ways. Of course there are more than just fasting that can be done to rid your body of parasites!
Here are 3 resources for foods you can eat to kill of parasites within you! I'd suggest reading all 3 :
https://www.tylertolman.com/health-articles/parasite-cleanse-for-parasites-in-humans/
https://draxe.com/parasite-cleanse-top-5-treatments-naturally-2/
https://blog.paleohacks.com/9-herbs-that-naturally-kill-parasites/