fasting

[papangue]

Hello
What you guys and girls think about fasting?
Do you think it is better than a paleo diet to cure illness?
I’ve always thought that I should fast to regenerate my body and then start a raw paleo diet to rebuilt my body.

Here I’ve found a very interesting link about fasting and mental illness which is my main issue.

This is an absolutely must read:
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1974/pdf/1974-v03n04-p301.pdf

[TylerDurden]

Long-term fasting can be very dangerous. Ask Lex Rooker re this issue. And read online about the nasty side-effects of Caloric Restriction/CR fasting.

I personally practice IF/Intermittent Fasting most of the time, eating one large meal every 24 hours, eaten within a 4 hour period. I also do whole-day fasts here and there, though not as frequently as before. Eating raw meats helped me, fasting pre-rawpalaeodiet was a waste of time for me, health-wise.

The worst thing one can do is to eat dozens of small meals a day, which is what Aajonus recommends. The constant digestion diverts the body's resources away from healing.

[eveheart]

I had intended to use certain fasting methods, such as juicing regimens and Master Cleanse, for healing many times prior to using the raw paleo diet. I did get "results" of temporary relief from inflammations and signs of detoxing in my eliminations, but the overall effect was weakness. Even when I planned short-term fasting for only a week or ten days, I couldn't continue. An additional shortcoming of fasting regimens was that I constantly had the fast on my mind.

I got immediate relief and sustainability with raw paleo, which I have followed for over four months. Physically, I have gone from near-invalid to almost total activity, including housecleaning and light gardening. I have tremendous stamina. The details of eating do not occupy my thoughts. I could never recommend fasting to anyone for any reason.

[magnetic]

I agree with TD. Why fast when you can eat a ketogenic diet? Most of the benefits of fasting come from putting the body into ketosis, which is the normal evolutionary metabolic state. Non-paleo eaters who recommend fasting do not realize this, they think that the body is supposed to run on carbs, so to them fasting is "magical." There is no magic to eat, just eat lots of fat and meat, and little or no carb foods. Fasting works because fasting metabolism mimics low carb metabolism (http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/metabolism-and-ketosis/), your body is eating itself (which happens to be meat and fat). But with fasting you are lacking nutrients, and the fat on your body is probably mostly from grains and vegetable oils (birdseed and diesel, see: http://www.gnolls.org/). Eating very low carb or zero carb, you can get healthy fats and nutrients, and eat once a day, giving your body rest in-between meals.

You could space your meals out even further once you are used to eating once a day. I read in National Geographic about Inuit hunting in Greenland. They would hunt for days with little or no food, but when they made a kill, they would gorge themselves, eating upwards of six pounds of walrus meat and fat in one sitting, or eating for an entire day (meals throughout the day). These large meals (tens of thousands of calories) allowed the hunters to go many days afterward without eating.

[goodsamaritan]

Aajonus in his books convinced me that raw paleo diet is better than fasting.

It is people on cooked diets that need fasting.

[TylerDurden]

Just bear in mind that a number of people do not thrive on raw, zero-carb diets.

[The King of Currumpaw]

I've fasted 40 days on water. It felt good.

[goodsamaritan]

I've fasted 40 days on water. It felt good.

And did you do this after a few years of raw paleo diet?  Or did this happen during your cooked days?

[The King of Currumpaw]

During my cooked days.

[goodsamaritan]

During my cooked days.

I'm wondering if there is any benefit to doing long fasts after a few years on raw paleo diet.

[TylerDurden]

I'm wondering if there is any benefit to doing long fasts after a few years on raw paleo diet.

People have died after doing only 13 day water-fasts. Not a good idea to recommend them, IMO, regardless of diet.

[magnetic]

The body never stops "eating", it just "eats" itself. What is the point? Why do it? Hunger tells you when you should eat. Paleolithic theory and/or instinct (anopsology) tells you what you should eat. The rest is experimentation.

[The King of Currumpaw]

What is the point? Why do it?

Spiritual reasons.

[achillezzz]

Spiritual reasons.

how much lean body mass did you lose? did you regain it?
lean body mass is linked to mortality 

[zbr5]

I used to fast whenever I felt I was about to get sick (catch a cold). And it helped.
But it was when I was on a standard cooked diet.

I wonder now what would be better for me to heal a minor flu effectively - to fast or to just eat raw meals normally...

[achillezzz]

I was wondering exactly the same thing today!!! Because when you fast the body feeds from it's own Raw flesh so I assumed feeding it animal flesh would be the Same but then digestion takes energy so conclusion when you get sick just fast your body has Plenty of energy to start with so let it hit it all on the detox rather than digesting

[zbr5]

Yeah, and a natural reaction of the body when we are about to get sick seriously is to decrease apetite, so it makes sense.

My dog (and most mammals I suppose) eats nothing while sick instead of looking for good quality foods.

[sabertooth]

I did a 10 day master cleanse fast three years ago when I was suffering from severe candida and pre diabetes. I seemed to feel much better coming out of the fast, because of all the candida die off, but it left my body so weak and malnourished that I quickly got reinfected after a couple of weeks.

After going paleo the only time I fasted for more than a day was when I spent three days in jail. I refused to eat their garbage. What I found surprising was that even after three days without eating I still had good energy and wasn't all that hungry. As soon as I got home I ate a little bit of lamb and shortly after began feeling better than I had felt in years, and spent the afternoon shoveling mulch into my backyard with more energy than I ever had up until that point of my recovery.

[klowcarb]

I eat one meal a day in the evening, all of my calories, and that fluctuates depending on my lifting schedule. This is a modified version of the Warrior Diet. I love it. I love having all the volume at once, and fasting has a lot of benefits, from fat burning, muscle retention through growth hormone, ending hunger, etc. I do this easily despite being highly athletic. I find it enhances my gains.

[raw]

I know that 4 days fasting with fresh green coconut juice and spring water can calm a mental patient without any medications. Eight days fasting on just water will calm a mental patient also. Orthomolecular treatment is very effective for mental patient like my brother . Recently he improves almost 65% within 15 days only. I would like to publish a topic on his condition and improvements.

For people like me who is mostly on raw paleo don't need fasting. Raw paleo itself is a healing diet. For mentally ill people, it's just a magic pill. But people who are too sick, they need orthomolecular help. Great topic. Thanks.

[Wolf]

I am fasting for Ramadan, which means for the entire month of August there is no drinking or eating from sunup to sundown.. so not even a drop of water as long as the sun is out.  Women are not allowed to fast while menstruating though, so for 5 days I did not fast, but otherwise this whole month I have not ate or drank anything during the day.  I seem to do fine as far as hunger goes, as long as I eat enough fat during the night, I don't much get hungry throughout the day.  The worst part is dehydration, but that's probably only because I work at domino's delivering pizza in a car with no a/c in the middle of August Summer in Southern California.. so I'm pretty much sweating the entire time I am at work, and I can get pretty dehydrated that way. 

Otherwise I don't see much benefit from the fasting from sun up to sun down.  I have fasted before where I consume nothing but water for a day or two, and sometimes I feel awesome and better than ever, and othertimes I feel weak and tired and hungry.  The energetic feeling is certainly worth it, but the tired and weak feeling is not.

[papangue]

Thanks for your opinions.
I can’t make a decision because you have many different views about fasting.
I also read Shelton who has successfully treated thousands of patients.
From what I read when you fast your body eats fat and every damaged cells so it’s a little bit like regeneration. The only think I’m not sure is about mercury which is usually stocks in the fat and when you fast the mercury is release in the bloodstream and go straight to the brain
Raw I’d love to know more about your brother improvement.

[raw-al]

Depending on the person and issues, fasting can be a blessing or a curse.

Yes you can drive across Canada in a car with no seats, but why? Get a car with seats.

If you have serious weight issues or chronic health problems that are tenacious, fasting may be a possibility, but it's kind of like being your own lawyer in court. You have a fool for a client.

Unless you just want to see what will happen, or are curious, I suggest simply start a raw paleo or primal diet. There may be others but this is what my experimentation has led me to conclude.

A properly conducted fast with appropriate vege juices may be good for some and disastrous for others.

[Wolf]

I think the times that I feel good when I fast is when my body resorts to burning it's own fat for fuel.  That's probably why most people who live on eating mostly raw animal fats probably have such high energy levels, because they are burning the animal fat they eat and it's about the same as burning your own fat.
I'm really skinny though, so I don't really have much reserves of fat to be burning by fasting.. although I feel like it would be best to burn off all the bad fat I had gained from my SAD days and instead try to build up fat from eating a healthy raw diet instead.. not that I had much fat from eating SAD, but still had some stores of fat in places.  I think I have burned most of it away a couple times not, it's just difficult to build up fat on a healthy diet.
As far as burning fat and gaining fat, it's probably best to build up all your fat during the summer and spring times, to store for winter and fall like most animals do.