Thanks Subby and rjolley!
Fasting Duration: 132 hours (5 1/2 days)
Weight: 297.4 pounds
Blood Sugar: 63
I was able to focus on work fully yesterday and that was great. In the late afternoon, I got this really intense feeling of very nervous energy. My last fast that ended on day 5 the same thing happened. That day I took a long walk on an extremely hot day to try to deal with it, came home and crashed, completely drained, and couldn't function anymore and called off the fast.
Yesterday I took a walk as well, but it wasn't as hot and I didn't try to burst out all of the extra energy. I just thought I should move around and do someting and see if it would help. I also asked specifically about this in the fasting discord that I participate in, others that have fasted for 20+ days haven't experienced the same thing, but the general suggestions were something to do with stress/anxiety and suggestions for deep breathing/relaxation/lie down. So when I got home I did some deep belly breathing which is great for relaxation... even though I really don't think that this was just anxiety manifesting itself. But that's still never a bad thing to do.
Regardless, this time I didn't completely crash, and things returned to normal after an hour or so. It was just a rather weird sensation.
I did some reading:
https://idmprogram.com/fasting-physiology-part-ii/
Quote:
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Protein conservation phase – >5 days – High levels of growth hormone maintain muscle mass and lean tissues. The energy for maintenance of basal metabolism is almost entirely met by the use of free fatty acids and ketones. Increased norepinephrine (adrenalin) levels prevent the decrease in metabolic rate.
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So maybe for me this was simply a weird spike in adrenaline.
Quote:
Growth hormone is known to increase the availability and utility of fats for fuel. It also helps to preserve muscle mass and bone density. Secretion is known to be pulsatile, making accurate measurement difficult. Growth hormone secretion decreases steadily with age. One of the most potent stimuli to growth hormone secretion is fasting. Over a five-day fasting period growth hormone secretion more than doubled. The net physiologic effect is to maintain muscle and bone tissue mass over the fasting period.
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The increase in growth hormone is another one of the reasons fasting is said to have "anti-aging" benefits. Neat.
Anyway, other than that one instance, which I was able to manage, yesterday was pretty standard and pretty easy.
So this is longer than I've ever fasted before. Many people once they get past 5 days find it to be smooth sailing for quite some time. I read an account of a 7 day fast from someone on the myfitnesspal low carb forum who had an easy time on days 4-6 and crashed on day 7 and had to stop. We shall see what happens now for me!