I have been experimenting with fasting over the past two weeks.  I became intrigued with discussions on different blogs but I was especially interested in intermittant fasting.  As I understand (and have been practicing) this is when you skip eating for only a day or even part of a day.  So far I have fasted on four days.  Two were partial days where I broke the fast in mid-afternoon with some fruit and nuts and then ate whatever my wife had cooked for dinner.  The other days I was attending a business meeting in the evening which didn’t give me time to go home and return so I fasted all day.  Well, it was all day yesterday but last week, my partner dragged me to visit his brother who was being entertained by neighbors and I ended up with a piece of excelland pecan pie.  Amazingly, I don’t feel hungry during these fasts.  Nor do I feel week.

It is liberating to realize that I don’t need to eat three times a day and that I don’t need as much food as I once believed.

My intention was not to lose weight although that seems to motivate many fasters.  It’s not that I couldn’t stand to lose 15-20 pounds – in fact my loss of about 20 pounds over the past year seems to be over.  My interest was in the idea of calorie restriction and life extension.  Apparently intermittant fasting produces some of the benefits of calorie restriction.  (I havn’t had time to organize all my sources but that will be coming.) In fact, however, I have lost weight over the two weeks.  Time will tell if it is real loss or will come back.

More on this later.

Originally posted 2009-03-10 17:23:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter