My video from Day 12 of 14-day water-only fast.
Two weeks ago I decided to do another one of my much-loved experiments 🙂 I was in Northern Italy with my EO Forum. I had recently heard that a friend of mine had been on a seven-day juice fast. I was impressed when we talked on his fifth day and he sounded very energetic.
I was in the mood for something to test my mental strength and it felt like the perfect environment: While my forum mates were enjoying five-course lunches and dinners, I opted to go on a water-only fast for seven days. Here’s what happened.
Video Transcript:
Hey everyone. I want to take a few minutes to tell you about a personal experiment I’m currently doing. But before we start, a quick disclaimer!
Disclaimer
This is not personal advice, no medical advice, or advice of any sorts; this is just some experience that I’m sharing with you.
Fasting
All right, so if you followed me and some of my past videos, you probably have an idea that I do like experiments. So every now at then, I set out to challenge myself, push my limits, and figure out where they are and where it gets too painful. Recently, I was on a phone with a friend of mine, who’s also an entrepreneur and he mentioned that he was at that day, at that moment, on Day Five of his seven-day fast. So I thought it was really interesting.
I never personally fasted, never really believed in fasting but then again I’ve read a lot of positive things about intermittent fasting and I thought maybe this is an interesting mental challenge.
So about a month ago I did a seven-day fast where I would only eat very small amounts of food every day – usually that was 1 or 2 fruit juices per day. I tried to live a very normal life, other than that, just no food. About 10 days ago, actually 12 days ago today I decided to restart the experiment, and this time go with water-only fast. Now this has just changed things. I’ve not eaten anything in 12 days and I feel great but that was not always the case. I want to walk you through my experience so far.
Water-Only Fasting
About 12 days ago, I was on my way to a retreat in Italy with EO. We started on a Wednesday morning very early and I decided to redo the experiment and go with no food at all. Unfortunately, we went to Italy and everyone else was having five-course lunches and dinners I was just looking at food. The first day was easy. The first day of a fast was at least for me personally super easy. There’s not really, other than the psychological element, there’s no pain at all. The second day was really hard. I got what you could call the “keto flu”.
Keto Flu
Keto flu is from the ketogenic diet when you deplete your body of carbs or carbohydrates. You got into a flu-like status. I had very low energy, I had a headache the whole day, it was very hard for me to do any kind of physical exercise; even just walking up a hill was a pain. I needed a lot of sleep.
Day 3:
But Day Three was extremely good. On Day Three, I felt pretty healthy, I felt lean, clean, I had a lot of energy, I needed less sleep than before which makes sense my body didn’t have to process food anymore. I think in the afternoon of Day Three was when I finally reached ketosis and my body learned how to produce energy directly from fat or fat storage. That’s also when I started to lose weight.
Day 12:
Today, I’m on Day 12 of the experiment. I think I’m going to go till Day 14 – so two more days. I have to say I feel great overall but I do not feel as energetic as otherwise. I feel very lean, I feel very clear, focused, but when I go to the gym I can’t lift the same amount of weights if I’m doing the exercises.
Now why? Why am I doing this? Well, for one – I really do like the challenge, I really like the mental strength that is required to go through 12 for 14 days without food, but then I also, I think, it has a lot of healthy benefits.
Ketogenic Diet
For one I’ve lost a ton of excess fat storage in my body, not a ton but about 10% of my body weight is gone and I feel a lot cleaner, focused, lean, which usually comes with the ketogenic diet for me as well, which makes sense. Because I didn’t eat anything else, I also did not eat any carbohydrates and that way my body just had to create energy from fat, which is basically the same as living in ketosis or being in ketosis.
Now, over the weekend I was in a three-day survival training course and there was quite a bit of physical activity. Sometimes, I would get a little weak or I would feel that I’m closer to my energy limits, then I would otherwise be, but at the same time it was a great experiment. Everyone else, who was eating regularly up and until Friday before we left, had a really big down on the second day because they didn’t give us a lot of food.
State Mind of Fasting
It’s also interesting how because I had already adjusted to the status or the state of mind of fasting that everyone else was so looking for food all the time. I think it was mostly psychological but still you could basically see them urging to get their hands on food, whereas I could focus on – I was a lot more relaxed, I was a lot more focused on the task at hand and so overall it was a great experience.
All right, that’s it. I just wanted to share this real quick how my experience has been going so far. As I said, I’m going to do it another two days and then I think after 14 days I’m just going to stop. There’s no point in pushing the boundaries too far. Also I’m just looking forward to a good steak or some healthy food and I’m probably going to start small. Well, actually that’s something I wanted to share.
So at the beginning what I saw with this time and with the time before when I had little food is that at the beginning I would usually think, “When I’m finally going to be able to eat again, the first thing I’m going to eat just like chocolate cake or big steak or whatever. Then, after I’d say about three or four days, my mind automatically tunes into or focuses more on much healthier stuff like salads, cooked vegetables, maybe a small piece of meat.
So it’s been a really interesting experience for me. And with that, I hope, maybe some of you are inspired, maybe some of you have some ideas or comments.
If so, please leave them below. With that, I’ll talk to you soon.
My takeaways (in no particular order):
- You can get by without food for a very long time. Being hungry is first and foremost a psychological signal.
- The experiment has reset my relationship with food. I believe that going forward I’ll eat smaller portions and generally healthier. The longer I went without food, the more I was craving healthy food like veggies while at the beginning chocolate or salty stuff was at the top of my cravings.
- It was fun testing my mental limits and powering through those moments where I was tempted to make an exception.
- No water is way tougher than no food.
What are some other fun experiments to test your limits? (I’m looking for my next challenge already).
This is no medical, personal or any other type of advice, just my experience. Don’t try this w/o medical supervision.
