Am I going to(o) fast?

A guy that I follow on Facebook talks occasionally about his fasting programs. This is where he only drinks water for ten days or so. It is apparently good for you as it flushes out all of the bad stuff in your body and gives you more energy. That sounds weird doesn't it because you would think that food gives you energy and then you would be able to do more things, exercise harder and generally feel better about yourself.

Anyway, apparently what happens when you fast is that the first three days or so are hell but after that the body starts looking for alternative forms of energy and it starts eating into your fat reserves and if you are like me you probably have quite a bit floating around. So it eats into your fat reserves and because your body is not busy digesting the food that you have gorged on, you start feeling really energetic. My friend also tells me that you start to smell bad too but I suppose everything can't be perfect.

After reading this I decided to find out for myself. I read a couple of books and I figured that ten day fasting or twenty one day fasting or whatever is probably not for me but there is something called intermittent fasting where on a daily basis you fast. So the two examples that resonated with me are the 16/8 fast in which you do all of your eating in an eight hour window and the 24 hour fast in which you basically eat once a day.

I tried it. I did the 24 hour one and it is interesting. I don't recommend doing it everyday. Maybe two or three days a week. Since I live by myself I also find it easier as I'm not dictated to by other people's diet requirements. I found for me the best time was to eat when I got home at night. A lot of people say that is bad but I was finding that I wasn't eating a lot anyway because I didn't feel that hungry and as you probably can imagine after all of that fasting the scales are looking quite good when you weigh yourself. So why would you want to ruin that by eating junk food just to get your calories up?

My friend who is an expert in weight loss says that he wouldn't recommend doing it but if you are going to you would have to ask yourself if you will still be doing it in one years time.

I assure you that some days are difficult and other days are great. I remember one day in which I felt like I was on a real high. It was about 5pm in the afternoon. I hadn't eaten anything for about 19 hours and I felt great. All of my senses seemed very heightened and it was like I was almost floating on air. It was crazy.

This is just my opinion and I'm not a doctor but it works for me and maybe it works for you too but be careful. It would be interesting to hear other people's experiences.