Alertness And Energy Boosts
People often report during prolonged fasts that they begin to feel particularly alert, especially after 18 to 24 hours. This may be in part due to rising cortisol levels with prolonged fasting.
There is data suggesting that your cortisol or stress levels will cycle daily but rise throughout a prolonged fast. Cortisol levels reach low points when your ghrelin or hunger hormones are highest and high points in the evenings when ghrelin levels are lowest. Cortisol levels also slowly rise over the course of a multi-day fast as your hunger slowly dampens. This is your body telling you to hunt for food, just as cortisol tells birds caught in a sudden spring snowstorm to stop singing, suspend reproduction, relocate and making finding food a priority.
In other words, cortisol can be a great thing in healthy doses. It can increase energy levels, alertness and the activity of brain cells as long as it doesnt become chronic. The key is how long it stays elevated, and when. In one study of healthy young women, increases in cortisol were significantly associated with a subsequent rise in activeness, alertness, and relaxation, and a trend-level reduction in stress and nervousness. It helps to consider that exercise also temporarily raises your cortisol levels in ways that prompt your body to adapt by ramping up stress reduction and anti-inflammatory processes.
Veggie Broth With Miso
Nourish your body and soul with a serving of our vegetable miso broth for lunch. Packed with eleven vegetables and herbs, and enriched with traditional Japanese red miso along with our plant protein, our vegetable broth is equal to one serving of veggies, making it even easier to get your daily dose.
Its brimming with essential vitamins and minerals like vitamin B12 and zinc for immune protection and increased energy along with fermented soybeans, renowned in Japan for promoting digestive health.
Ingredients:
Vegetable Broth , Turmeric*. Contains Soy
Day Diet Plan For Weight Loss
Using this 5 Day Diet plan will help you lose up to 10 pounds fast.
This diet helps you lose weight fast, but it can be pretty intense so I wouldnt follow it all the time. The goal of creating this 5 Day Diet was to create an easy-to-follow plan that will get you some impressive results.
Most people will just starve themselves when they have to lose weight in a short amount of time. That doesnt work too well. This diet can be used if you need to lose some unwanted weight fast or if you want to jumpstart a new nutritional meal plan.
You will have to follow this diet to the T if weight loss is your goal. Going off this diet meal plan during the 5 days can really hamper your results. I know if you have to lose some weight fast then it can be confusing what you need to do.
Follow this quick 5 Day Diet meal plan so you drop some fat fast without having to starve yourself the whole time.
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What Would I Do Differently Next
For my next fast I will:
- Be more careful with my transition back to normal eating. I will follow Valter Longos suggestions of eating predominately complex carbs and minimal fats and proteins I was visiting the bathroom numerous times after breaking my fast!
- Get into nutritional ketosis prior to beginning a fast to help reduce the brain clouding effects
- Try a fasting mimicking diet , which allows you to eat a small amount of food each day for five days, getting you many of the benefits of a 5 day water fast but without the strain of not being able to eat. This also means I can drink coffee!
- Collect more data including:
- Sleep
- Blood glucose
- Body fat percentage before and after the fast
Whats Happening With Your Body: Fat Burning Mode
When you consume a typical diet of carbohydrate rich foods, your body breaks down sugars and starches into glucose. Glucose is the primary source of energy for the body. However, when you fast or go into ketosis glucose becomes limited, and your body must turn to fat stores for the energy it requires. Your body breaks fat down into glycerol and fatty acids. The liver synthesizes ketones using glycerol. The glycerol is broken down by the liver for additional glucose, and finally, those ketones are used by your brain as glucose becomes less available.
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Eliminate Your Own Sources Of Toxins Alcohol And Caffeine
Caffeine, alcohol in all forms, fatty processed foods, and too much salt and sugar can upset the natural functioning of the body. In large amounts, they are toxins that the body must work harder to process and eliminate.
Dr. Hopkins recommends following these rules for dealing with toxins:
- Limit alcohol to the recommended one or two drinks a day.
- Restrict caffeine to the amount that causes no side effects for you no jitters, sleeplessness or heartburn.
- Eliminate processed foods and substitute fresh, natural products.
- Reduce or eliminate processed sugar in your diet. If this one seems impossible, try the seven-day Sugar Detox Diet designed to help you stop the cycle of sugar overload.
How To Break The Fast:
My general rule on breaking an extended water fast is to add up the amount of days you fasted and divide by 2. Give yourself that many days before adding back harder to digest foods such as raw veggies, meat and eggs.
The first meal when you break your fast should be a protein shake with high quality ingredients, possibly bone broth or vegetable broth and a fermented drink like coconut water kefir. Here is a helpful infographic to guide you.
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Healing Activity On Day :
Here are some of the really cool things that ramp up on Day 2 of the fast. You get these on Day 1 but in smaller amounts and each successive day up until Day 5, the levels continue to increase.
How Much Does Prolon Cost
The ProLon meal kit costs between $225 $249 depending upon how many meal kits you buy at one time. If you buy 1-2 boxes, you pay $249 per box. If you order 3 or more boxes, you pay $225 per box. There is also an option to get subscribe to an auto-ship for $225 per box.
If you break it down by day, your cost is about $50 per day.
That is a bit steep, but since this lasts only 5 days and is to be done only once every 6 months it could be a good option.
For those who like the idea but want to do this with food from the grocery store, Ill outline a do-it-yourself version.
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Freeze Beans In Souper Cubes
Soaking and pressure cooking beans and lentils in advance and freezing them in individual portions are some of them. For freezing, I use Stasher bags and Souper Cubes.
Souper Cubes
My favorite ways of freezing food are with Souper Cubes. You can buy the Souper Cubes here.
Take out a frozen cube, warm it up in the microwave, on the stove, or bake in the oven. Warm your food up the way that works best for you!
The Water Fast Vs Juice Fast
I like to do the extreme version of things.
For example, when I rode the length of New Zealand last year, I did that in the middle of winter.
So basically when theres a list of one to ten , Ill go straight to number one.
The 5 day fast is considered to be the longest period someone would typically fast for general health and well-being purposes. From what Ive learned, you would only go beyond 5 days if you have some type of serious and chronic illness.
Just drinking plain old water over the 5 days is the most extreme version of the 5 day fast. So that was my plan.
Until I met with fasting expert Tim Altman.
Tim not only treats patients with fasting programs hes actually been on the other side of the fence.
Tim was a keen paddler in his 20s and started to suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome. However, back in the late 80s and early 90s, it wasnt called chronic fatigue syndrome. No one really knew what is was.
Tim battled chronic fatigue for almost 5 years, until he met a doctor who said he knew what Tim was dealing with, and was then told he had to rest.
Rest didnt work.
Luckily, following a failed attempt to simply rest, Tim was introduced to a highly regarded Russian doctor via an old coach. Dr Vagif Soultanov was his name.
When Tim met Dr Soultanov in the early 90s, he was prescribed a number of natural remedies to overcome his chronic fatigue. A major part of the program was a two week juice fast.
Tim said, after about day 7, I had never felt so good.
Why?
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Rule : Its Free Of Sugar Including Fruits
We can include a small number of berries, but thats probably something you will have to decide, depending on your current health state. The original ProLon meal plan has some nut bars that include a small amount of honey. So in my interpretation, this plan can include a tiny amount of sugar from fruits or honey if that fits your needs. Dr. Steven Gundry will probably advise against it.
How To Do A 5 Day Juice Cleanse
The 5 day juice cleanse is a great way to address issues relating digestion, constipation, failing health, weight loss, lethargy and more. There is, however, a method to it.
It is recommended to start your day with a glass of warm water with some lemon or lime juice followed up with your first glass of juice.
Drink juice a minimum of five times during your day and make sure you drink lots of water in between the glasses of juice.
You can drink the juice in the morning, mid-morning hours, lunchtime, around four pm in the afternoon and at 8 pm in the evening.
Now at the end of the day, you may indulge in a warm cup of herbal tea. This may help to soothe your cravings and dampen any hunger you might experience.
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Health Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
Cheerfully succumbing to confirmation bias, I began googling around for serious research substantiating these claims. Here are a few potential benefits I found even fact-checking science types wont oppose, entirely.
- Prevents obesity and neurodegeneration
- Boosts your immune system
- Saves money on food 🙂
Fasting has the potential to delay aging and help prevent and treat diseases while minimizing the side effects caused by chronic dietary interventions.
Fasting: Molecular Mechanisms Valter D. Longo and Mark P. Mattson
Fasting also has a nice track record. Religious and spiritual groups have been fasting for centuries. Practitioners of meditation and yoga use fasting to improve concentration and self-discipline.
How You Feel: Less Hungry And More Energetic
By stage two, ketosis has begun. Ketosis is a critical phase of the fast where your body starts to burn stored fat as its primary power source. As the processes of ketosis are carried out inside your body, you might stop feeling hungry and tired. The practice of putting your body into ketosis has a growing movement behind it. It is ideal for weight loss, balancing blood sugar, and more. Best of all, you dont even have to fast to put your body into ketosis. Eating the right foods at the right time can be enough to start this fat burning process. There are even vegan ketogenic diet plans available so you can still eat health-promoting foods to stay in ketosis.
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Day Fourthings Getting Beautiful
By day four you should be nearing the 100 hour mark of fasting. This is a significant milestone both in terms of the psychological achievement as well as the physiological state.
A ketogenic state is often characterized by blood ketone readings of 0.5 mMols and above. The optimal range is between 0.5-3.0 mMols. Starvation ketosis begins after 3.0 mMols and ketoacidosis occurs at 7-12 mMols.
Ketoacidosis is generally unachievable with eating a standard ketogenic diet. Usually, it happens in people with severe alcohol poisoning or diabetes. While fasting, you shouldnt go beyond starvation ketosis either because of your body downregulating its own ketone production.
Higher amounts of ketones arent indicative of better metabolic health or more fat burning. In fact, people whove keto-adapted for a long time tend to show lower amounts of ketones in the blood because their body is using them for energy rather than keeping them in the blood.
When I did my first 3 day fast, my blood sugar was at 64 mg/dl, which is termed as hypoglycemic, but my ketones were in the normal range at about 0.9 mMol range. This prevented me from passing out or falling into a coma because I was utilizing those ketones very well.
Delicious Recipes To Consider
While completing the 5 day juice cleanse you wont just be detoxing and loading up your body with nutrients and vitamins.
It also aims to eliminate some comfort food you may have become accustomed to. Once the juice cleanse is over you wont crave those sort of foods as much.
Your fruit and vegetable juices should not be boring or bland. In fact, nutritionists recommend indulging in a colorful juice fast to liven up the whole experience.
Incorporate as much color as you possibly can. Below are some juice recipes for your consideration.
- Apple, Carrot and Lemon juice: It should contain 4 carrots, two large apples and one lemon.
- Apple, Carrot and Ginger juice: This winning combination contains three carrots, two apples and a small piece of ginger root measuring about an inch or 2.5cm.
- The sunrise combo: It contains two oranges, four carrots and one beet.
- Green Lemonade: Eight kale leaves, two celery stalks, three handfuls of spinach, one green apple, one cucumber, and one lemon.
- Peach Delight: Two ripe peaches, one sweet potato, one red apple, a handful of blueberries and a dash of cinnamon.
- Apple-Beet juice: One apple, one beet, three carrots, a small piece of ginger root measuring about an inch, and three cups leafy greens.
As you can imagine, I could go on and on with juice recipes. I will, however, recommend that you experiment with different leafy greens and fruits.
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That One Time I Didnt Eat For 5 Days
When someone was to ask you: When are you going to have your next 5-day fast? then you probably dont have an immediate answer to give UmmmYeaLets do it right now!
Even though fasting for extended periods of time is part of the history of humans, we dont experience these periods of food abstinence anymore. You can eat whatever, where ever, and whenever. Is it good? Definitely, it is to a certain extent. The problem is that most people tend to fall victim to their primal urges and eat all the time, which may not lead to obesity or diabetes per se but it can still cause some emotional addictions to food.
Fasting has been used as medicine and as a therapeutic method against many diseases in the past.
- In Greece, it was thought to cure abominations of the flesh, including obesity.
- In religious practices, its used for spiritual as well as bodily purposes.
- In modern society, there are some who do it just for fat loss but to also clean and heal the body.
And so have I
One day I was about to face 4 days of traveling to Finland and I thought why not practice some hardcore fasting during that trip? Alright, I havent had a longer fast in a few months so lets take advantage of this opportunity. Sold!
Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. Im your host Siim Land and this episode is going to be about my 5 day fast which lasted for 120 hours. Im going to walk you through my experience and give you some of the core principles of fasting for such a long time.