This week I engaged in a 4-day water fast and I felt inspired to share with you my experience and the benefits.
Why would I do this? Simply, I was invited at the end of last year to join a group and I didn’t hesitate. I am familiar with the benefits of fasting. I am an intermittent faster with a 16-8 routine, meaning a 16-hour fasting daily with an eating window of 8 hours. (I feature this method in The Vitality Secret and The Vitality Code.)
I’ve engaged in a 5-day juice fast before, and I wanted to experience the benefits of nothing but water – and herbal tea. I must say, the herbal tea made it easier, even though I consumed no calories. I wanted to see what it would do for my mind more than anything. I was aware of it being an energy reboot, system reset, thorough detox, rapid fat burner (although that wasn’t a main priority), that it create autophagy (the clearing out of dead and dysfunctional cells), stimulated stem cell production and more.
Main benefits for me?
- I got noticeably leaner and more toned (I didn’t weigh myself as I don’t have scales where I am currenlty in Mexico!)
- Energy returned on Days 2/3 after a few days of lower energy and hunger pangs – and it was a different type of energy
- I felt like my body had a reboot.
A brief diary of my experience
Day 1: lower energy, hunger pangs (galore), boredom!
Day 2: lower energy, minor headaches, hunger pangs, lower back pain – possibly from kidney detox, most likely my spine that a chiropractor adjusted this morning
Day 3: Energy back, fewer hunger pangs, feeling lighter, feeling good despite back pain
Day 4: more energy, still have hunger pangs. Lovely, deep, meditation this morning.
Note: not for everyone. It comes with risks. If one is not metabolically flexible (meaning one is able to transition easily from carbs to fats), the first few days are very challenging. And it’s not suitable for those with certain underlying health challenges. Please check with a medical professional.
I geared up for it for the previous few weeks and went into ketosis for a week beforehand to transition more gracefully. It was quite the experience! A brief 90-second real of my experience on Day 4 with a detailed explanation of its benefits below :
Benefits of 3-Day Water Fast (My notes from Dr Jin. Sung´s presentation below)
- Cleans the brain,
- Resets your energy,
- Improves immune function,
- Repairs damage to cells removes dysfunctional cells and pathogens.
- Reduces neural inflammation,
- Increases autophagy,
- Breaks down cells and other pathogens in our system,
- Decreases autoimmune disease,
- Benefits gut Flora or recesses the gut flora,
- Increases DNA repair
Who is this NOT for
Notes: Consult a physician especially if you are an insulin-dependent diabetic, because if you go on a fast and you continue to take your insulin it’s going to be problematic.
Women menstruating – you could deplete your hypoglycemics.
Those who when going without eating get shaky, irritable, and angry. Do not want to do a three-day fast immediately. Get into a keto-adaptive state before going on a three-day fast.
People who are on a lot of different medications because medications can change or dosages can change related to how much you’re eating and depletion of energy. Make sure if you have any of these conditions, please consult your physician before going ahead and doing a three-day fast.
DAY 1
8 to 12 hours
You start to deplete your glucose or sugar and your glycogen stores. You get a bump in hormones called glucagon, human growth hormones, cortisol, and adrenaline.
All this will start to bump up your glucose levels, People don’t realize that there are hormones that increase glucose in our system as we need it. Insulin brings glucose down in our system.
In terms of regulating blood sugar you will also increase ketones from fats so as you deplete your glucose stores or glycogen stores. Your body will start to use fat for fuel and it will produce something called ketones to fuel your body. (Brilliant if you want to burn fat!)
You will experience hunger.
18 – 24 HOURS
You will deplete your glycogen stores even further and you’re going to go through a process called gluconeogenesis. Gluconeogenesis is the process of producing sugar through the liver.
It’s amino acid acetate and glycols so you can use that to fuel your body. (And brain!)
AUTOPHAGY
Your body will have a natural mechanism to fuel itself, further increasing autophagy. This is when you have cellular debris – things that are in your system that are old/dysfunctional are broken down. It’ll start to kind of clean those things out of our system it will also start to decrease autoimmunity because a lot of autoimmune conditions are related to food proteins.
AUTOIMMUNE CONDITIONS / INFLAMMATORY ILLNESSES
If you’re eating inflammatory “food” (aka toxins – e.g. man-made / man-altered, fake, chemicals, pesticides), they’ll cause an inflammatory response. The fact that you’re on a fast will start to decrease that autoimmune process.
CLEAN YOUR BRAIN
It’ll decrease neural inflammation so when your body is used to using glucose, especially in the brain it can cause some inflammatory process processes. When you switch your fuel from glucose to ketones your brain will start to become a hybrid. It will start to use ketones for fuel rather than glucose and it will start to decrease inflammation.
BDNF & HGH
It will also increase hormones called brain-derived neuro-trophotropic (BDNF) factors and human growth hormone. You’ll start to see ketones in your blood so what you can do is you can pee a little Ketone meter or you a glucose test – just prick your finger and you can check your level of ketones.
In the first 18 to 24 hours you’re going to see 0.5 to maybe one in terms of the Ketone levels now everyone’s different in terms of how fast they can go into ketosis.
If you’re someone who’s very experienced and you do intermittent fasting and you’re on a ketogenic diet you’re going to get into ketosis a little bit quicker.
DAY 2
More Brain fuel, Growth Hormones and Clean Out
Continue to increase brain-derived neurotropic factors (BDNF) as well as growth hormones.
You’re going to increase autophagy and this is where the real cleanup starts to occur.
You’ll start to break down Tau proteins and amyloids, Lewy Body alphas and nucleons, and Prime glial cells all in the brain. These are all related to things like post-traumatic stress concussions, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Lewy Body dementia.
It starts to break down these aggregates in our brain and it clears it.
MITOPHAGY
There’s a process called mitophagy. It’ll start to get rid of inefficient mitochondria in your cells.
Mitochondria (aka the battery of your cell) produces energy ATP and you want mitochondria to be very efficient and produce the number of ATP that is supposed to. It’ll start to get rid of things that are damaged and get it out of our system.
REDUCTION IN INSULIN RESISTANCE
Your insulin resistance starts to come down. For those who are pre-diabetic / diabetic – your insulin resistance or the problem of (mad enough) glucose transport will start to break.
REDUCTION IN FATTY LIVER
Insulin resistance will start to improve. It’ll decrease fatty liver and the reason is because you’re using fat for fuel and part of that fat will come from the liver so fatty liver will start to break down.
You can clear fatty liver if it’s not too far advanced 90 to 95 of your energy will start coming from ketones. In Day 2 instead of glucose, because you haven’t eaten, your hunger pangs will start to actually subside for a lot of people. They go “I don’t really feel hungry” – “I feel actually pretty good”
DAY 3
CLEAN OUT (DETOX) AND REVERSAL OF CHRONIC DISEASE
Continued autophagy and clearance and reversal of real chronic disease. Those who have chronic autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, joint pain, those types of things will start to clear to a certain extent.
IMPROVED IMMUNE FUNCTION
Immune function will start to reset and improve. There will be an improvement in the overall function of the white blood cells.
STEM CELLS (THIS IS HUGE!)
You’ll also have an increase in stem cell production. These stem cells will differentiate into other tissues so the stem cells will help you to heal. (HUGE!)
METABOLIC FLEXIBILITY
The goal of this three-day fast is metabolic flexibility – or metabolic switch – the ability for your body to use both glucose and ketones whenever it wants. If you are someone who eats every day three, four, five, six, seven, or eight times a day, what happens is you’re using insulin mostly because you never let the sugar drop. This means you get this wild fluctuation so you have spiking sugar spiking insulin dropping sugar dropping insulin so experience a wild swing.
REGULATION OF BLOOD SUGAR
The purpose of a three-day fast or any type of fasting is to even out the blood sugar throughout the day. If you eat one meal a day you’ll have a spike in insulin and then you’ll have a drop and your other hormones will kick in like glucagon, growth hormones, adrenaline etc. They will kick in and you’ll stabilize the blood sugar for the rest of the day.
That’s what we want. We want stable blood sugar throughout the day – not this wild fluctuation so as you do this intermittent fasting or three-day fasting there’ll be a lot of health benefits but the main point here is that it will start to stabilize blood sugar, and your body will become a hybrid – meaning when it has the sugar it’ll utilize it. (NC: An engine tune-up!)
If it doesn’t have it and you skip a day of eating then it will start to use ketones as fuel, so it’ll be as if your engine becomes more of a Hybrid engine rather than a gasoline engine so it’s very important to do that.
BREAKING THE FAST
Don’t just eat whatever you want. Consume maybe bone broth, a vegetable soup to break our fast. Maybe a small amount of protein.
WATER: When you’re doing the fast you can use distilled water if you like or purified water would be best. (NC: Ionised water such as Kangen is also recommended.)
You can use minerals and sea salt, especially on day two maybe 24 to 48 hours you want to start to use a little bit of minerals because you might feel a little bit depleted so you can use minerals or sea salt in your water.
And then you can also use sparkling water but not flavored water. That would increase hunger pangs in your system.
Be careful about some of those conditions spoken about in the beginning of the video. It is recommended to consult a physician before doing it.
Dr Jin sung we’re a clinical Excellence meets excellent results and we’ll see you guys next week on the healthy side have an awesome day
Neil Cannon notes.
For those who might struggle with a three-day fast, there are other ways – such as Intermittent Fasting. As mentioned, this is a regular routine for me with 16-8 fasting. This entails fasting for 16 hours a day (this means for me, no breakfast) with an eating window of 8 hours. You can also consider experimenting with ketosis – aka the ketogenic diet, to help you transition into ketosis for the fast, and become more metabolically flexible. I did this for 1 week before this fast.
HOW I CAN SUPPORT YOU
If you would like support with this, I have various offers. If you are a man, I have The Vital Man Code online course with optional group coaching, and for private coaching, men and women, please go here: https://VitalitySecret.com/coaching