My water fasting results.
I’ve had a fascinating journey through the world of health and fitness over the last few years. I was overweight and unhealthy, and now I’m lean and healthy.
In fact, at thirty-six, I’m the fittest I have ever been, and I didn’t follow the traditional health and fitness rules.
Sometimes I’m lazy, undisciplined, and like to overindulge. Eating a strict diet, or many hours of exercise each day wasn’t going to work for me.
Overall I do eat healthier than before, but I still overindulge on occasion. I’m currently exercising most days, but sometimes I don’t do anything for a while.
Interestingly I now do occasional water fasting, as I’ve got great results from it. But we aren’t there yet, let’s start at the beginning.
The journey to quick weight loss results begins, but it doesn’t start with water fasting.
My journey started a few years ago with an innocent comment from a three-year-old. It was my nephew who said: “That is a big belly”.
You have to love the complete honesty of kids. We laughed it off, but it certainly stuck with me.
He was right though, you can see the before, and after photo below, I had a big belly. I did lose a lot of weight, and this was my journey.
Initial good results without water fasting.
My nephew’s comment struck deep. Time to stop pretending I wasn’t overweight and improve my fitness. Being over 110kg I wanted to lose weight and quickly.
Water fasting wasn’t something I knew about yet, but I still got great results from traditional methods. I set an ambitious goal of losing 10kg in five weeks, so 2kg per week. So I started eating healthier and exercising more.
I managed to achieve my goal, losing 10kg in five weeks.
Going from no exercise and never eating healthy, to exercising and eating healthy, does produce quick results. And five weeks wasn’t too long, so I was able to be strict with myself.
Being incredibly proud of the results I had achieved, I was expecting encouragement from everyone close to me, but it never came. Not a single person noticed that I lost weight quickly. But I was happy with my results, so that didn’t stop me.
I extended my goal for another five weeks to lose another 10kg.
I struggled to reduce my weight in the final two weeks but was successful again. My strategy was starting to falter. In the end, I achieved my initial goal as well as the extended goal. Over ten weeks, I had lost 20kg and felt amazing.
Now all of a sudden people started noticing, everybody noticed. The encouragement I was expecting earlier started coming in thick, and it felt great.
I settled into the new me, exercising a little, and eating healthier than before, staying around 90kg. But then the weight loss urge returned, and I wanted quick results again.
Can water fasting get quick results?
I had been experimenting with losing more weight, but my previous strategy wasn’t producing quick results, so time to try something new.
By researching water fasting, I saw others getting incredible weight loss results. And then found out about the many benefits of fasting.
Considering the health benefits and possible rapid weight loss results, I was ready to give water fasting a try.
I also figured my digestive system deserved a break, as it had been working nonstop for decades, it had earned itself a well-deserved week-long vacation.
My results for a week-long fast.
I gave water fasting a try for a week and achieved incredible results. Over the week, my weight started at 90kg and went down 1kg per day to 83kg.
Fitness-wise I was still exercising during the fast but did find it more difficult, especially when doing cardio. I felt my max effort while fasting was around 80-90% of normal.
On the other hand, with normal activities, I felt more energized. I put this down to my digestive system being on a break. It’s like the opposite of a food coma by overeating.
Throughout the experience, there were a few things that caught me off guard, like my hunger decreasing.
The surprises, reduced hunger, and super smell.
During my water fast, I was hungry for the first few days, and then unexpectedly, my appetite reduced. I thought my hunger would continually escalate, but it didn’t.
I did some research and found there is a “hunger hormone” called ghrelin which reduces during a fast. A detailed study is here. That explanation matched my experience, so I had found my answer. But there were tempting influences like food smells.
During my fast, my sense of smell was suddenly a superpower. I could smell foods from miles away, especially fast-food chains they are the worst. And great smelling food wasn’t my biggest temptation, boredom was.
Boredom.
The hardest thing I had to deal with was boredom.
I do strict water fasts. Water only. So as well as no food, I don’t have tea, coffee, zero-calorie drinks, etc.
Water is uninteresting by itself. I have tried all different methods of drinking water to break the boredom, hot, cold, iced, room temperature, not many options.
Less strict fasts, such as including tea, coffee, a drop of lemon juice, cause me to bend the rules more, so I stick with just water.
My best defence to defeat boredom is to keep busy, which is challenging, as I end up with a lot more time than usual.
An unexpected benefit of extra time.
I hadn’t imagined fasting would free up time, but adding up the time spent cooking, eating, and cleaning up, for each meal, it made sense.
I enjoyed the extra time, but then a week was up, and I really wanted to break the boredom, so I finished my fast.
Everything then returned to normal. My weight climbed a little, and I stabilized at 85kg. But a few months later, I wanted to fast again.
My two-week fast.
I wanted to do another longer fast, so I decided on two weeks.
In the first week, my results were very similar to my initial fast, and I lost around 1kg per day. The second week was different though I only lost about 1/2kg per day.
My body had adjusted to fasting, and I had also stopped doing cardio workouts. Sweating a lot, while doing long water fasts, isn’t a great combination.
But still, over two weeks, I lost 10kg. I started at 85kg and ended at 75kg.
My weight did increase after I resumed eating, going up to 80kg. But I was happy at this new weight, so it didn’t change for a while. But then curiosity — insanity — got the better of me.
Now an even longer three-week fast.
I started with one week then two, three weeks seems the next logical step. Starting at 80kg, I undertook a three week fast.
My first week’s results were the same as previous, losing 1kg per day. Then the remaining two weeks around 1/2kg per day.
After the three weeks, I was down to 68kg. My weight hadn’t been this low since I was 18 years old.
But in the final week of the fast, I had felt drained and wondered if I had overdone it. I wanted to organize some blood tests to look for answers, so time to visit the doctor.
Doctors visit.
Explaining my fast to my doctor was an awkward conversation. He instantly thought I was crazy and asked if I heard voices.
I did try to explain the health benefits to him, but he is the doctor after all, and I’ll admit a three-week fast isn’t usual. He still thought I was crazy in the end, but we did organize some blood tests.
My test results were amazingly good. I was expecting many things to be down, after not eating for three weeks, but the tests showed everything in the normal range.
The only abnormality was my LDL (bad) Cholesterol was very high at 200. Maybe that was the cause of not feeling great, or we missed testing for something. Annoyingly the tests didn’t produce any concrete answers for my feelings.
But for me, three weeks didn’t feel right, I trust my gut feelings, so I won’t do a fast that long again.
I did also track my weight for the three-week water fast, and continued after but wasn’t impressed by the long term results.
My results after a three-week water fast.
My three-week water fasting results were disappointing. During the three weeks of fasting, my weight did drop rapidly, but most of it quickly returned.
I had a ravenous hunger the days after my fast finished, so I was eating everything I could. Healthy or unhealthy it didn’t matter, I was going to eat it. I guess my body wanted to replenish itself.
Over the three weeks, I started at 80kg, dropped to 68kg, and then stabilized at 76kg. I feel I could have achieved the same with a one-week fast. I had tracked my weight daily, so I have a graph showing progress during and after the fast below.
Regression due to holidays.
I stayed at 76kg for a while but then went back to Australia for my holidays. Everything got thrown out the window, I didn’t exercise and was indulgently eating and drinking. My weight quickly increased to 88kg in under two months. But then it was time to go back to Dubai.
Time to get back into shape.
After returning to Dubai, it was time to get back into shape. I started exercising and eating better.
I wanted to speed up my weight loss by fasting, as it was reducing slowly. But I didn’t want the fast to impact my gym routine. Then it got interrupted anyway, as my gym closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It was time to change my exercise routine.
I dug up an old exercise plan called Insanity – its name seemed to match my doctor’s thoughts about me – which didn’t require any equipment. It was a nine-week plan, four easier weeks, followed by a rest week, then four harder weeks.
I saw an opportunity to do a week-long fast during the rest week, so I started the program.
Fasting impact on fitness.
I completed the program, which took longer than nine weeks due to a sprained ankle. I also did the week-long fast in the recovery week as planned.
A benefit of this program was a built-in fitness test. I had felt a reduction in fitness from previous fasts, but now had a tracking system to investigate.
The fitness test involves counting max repetitions of different exercises within a minute. The test is repeated every two weeks throughout the program to compare. The below graph shows my average results.
The feelings of my fitness temporarily dropping due to a fast matched the results I recorded. There was a reduction on the 1st of May, which was the test after my fast.
But overall I’m happy with my final results, they do show good improvement, especially when compared to the first fitness test.
The continuing journey.
That’s my fitness story. Right now, I’m happy with my weight and fitness. What’s next? Kaizen, which is Japanese for continuous improvement.
I will start from the beginning of the exercise program again as I enjoy it and may explore some weight training options as the gym is now open.
I find water fasting interesting due to the rapid weight loss results, and health benefits. At my current weight though, I won’t be undertaking any long fasts but may do occasional short ones.
I do like a short day or two fasts to compensate for occasional overindulging. My diet is mostly healthy now, but I’m not going to go through life, avoiding everything unhealthy. Chocolates, ice-creams, pizzas, burgers, etc. aren’t exempt from my diet.
And when indulging, I can go overboard. If I’m going to order Pizza, I usually get garlic bread, a starter, a dessert, and wash that down with beer. I can eat double my daily calories. But then I can take the next day off eating. All guilt gone. Living life.
