48 hour fast...why would anyone do that?

Ever wonder what it would be like to challenge your body to a new limit? I am not sure if I am the only one but sometimes I like to just try different diets, workouts, or health things just to see what it would be like. I am typically awful at diets and work much better with calorie or time restriction than actually cutting out certain foods (I just always end up craving ice cream or pizza). However about a month ago I was listening to some Joe Rogan and heard about a guy/girl doing intermittent fasting for up to 48 hours and figured…..why not? This blog will run through the real time notes and what I was feeling during that time. If you ever thought of taking your body to a limit might I suggest maybe working into a 48 hour fast with a nice 24 hour one or a 36 hour one because going from 3 meals a day to no meals for 2 days was…interesting.
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So to set the rules to this fast (because no one should go without food or water for 2 days by choice) I was allowed water, green tea, and black coffee for this fast. I also took my vitamins and supplemented fish oil and magnesium. While some may consider that kind of cheating because my vitamins had calories and the tea/coffee actually can curb hunger…to them I say; get off my back until you fast longer than 48 hours because it still wasn’t fun with the little additions haha.

Alright so let’s set the scene. It was on the Heidi’s birthday and we were down in Austin celebrating. However, after a long night the night before we decided to get an early dinner and call it a night by 7pm to go back to the Airbnb and relax instead of staying out late to eat/drink more. The following morning we had to be up at 3:30 am because she had to fly out. At this point I got the idea to try the fast because we had an early dinner and I would be alone the next week so she wouldn’t be around if 48 hours without food made me a little cranky. After we dropped her off at the airport I made it back home around 6am and slept until 830. Then the fun began.

At 9 am I went a got a long workout in until 11 then went to HEB to get food for the week. I figured if I was going to be on a fast it would be better to get this big temptation out of the way on only 16 hours without food instead of waiting any longer. Once I got home and started unpacking the food the first bout of hunger kicked in so I had some tea and coffee which seemed to do the trick. For the next 3 hours I had to keep myself busy working on level up stuff, my last blog, and random paperwork that I had been putting off.

Once 3:30 pm came around the bears game came on and I finally had something else to occupy my mind. Believe it or not the urge to eat seemed much more related to me being bored than me actually being hungry. At 4:30pm I had to meal prep for the week so I decided to make a nice big pork loin because I could already tell after this was over I was going to smash some food. However, during that meal prep and seasoning I accidently got some cayenne pepper up my nose so that did a good job of getting my mind off of the amazing smelling pork.

Once the Bears game was over and the pork was done it was about 7pm and I had another round of hunger come in strong. Had some more tea and then loaded up PubG to keep myself busy. I ended up calling it a night about 9 pm and tried to lay down to get through another 8 hours without food.

Here is where the funny stuff starts happening. It was about 930 and I noticed how awake I felt. My mind was wide awake and I felt like I had so much energy. If any of my dietician friends have a good reasoning for this I would love to know. I am notching it up to some sort of fight or flight response after over 24 hours without food but who knows. I ended up having to play about an hour worth of meditation music from youtube to actually fall asleep.

Now the morning came and at 520 I woke up a little hungry. Apparently it wasn’t anything too bad according to my notes however I did realize that without prepping breakfast I had a lot more free time in the morning….Side note this has led to me skipping breakfast for the last month and doing a 16 hour intermittent fast daily which has been awesome…back to the story… Also without eating breakfast this morning I forced myself to be a little more productive than usual because just sitting there was just making me think about food.

With it being a Monday morning, it was time to head to work. The morning patients went well. I felt sharp and energized. When lunch came around though that was a whole other story, this was by far the worst hunger craving I had through this whole experience. I am not sure if it was more the conditioning to have food on the break…or the 39 hours of fasting…regardless lunch that day was awful. I did notice that I ended up being much more social during that lunch break as I had to 1. Keep my mind off of the fact that I wasn’t eating and 2. Keep my mouth occupied from all the food it wasn’t chewing on.

Of course on the day where I am trying to keep busy I had 2 no-shows from 1-3 so I just got to sit there in my hunger…luckily I packed some extra tea. However, my kind co-workers also brought in a bunch of candy so there was a giant bowl of chocolate right behind me the entire afternoon.

The drive home was okay with some Joe Rogan podcasting however once I got home the cravings hit hard one last time as we closed in on hour 46. Instead of sitting around the house I decided I would go workout instead…bad idea. I took myself up to our club house and got on a treadmill for 10 mins and realized I was not properly fueled for any cardio—shocking. With still over an hour and a half left before my meal I decided to try some strength training…if you ever want humbled and realized why you need food, try to lift after a long fast. Everything felt heavy and I felt absolutely beat.

It was now 615pm and there were only 45minutes left before it was time to chow down! I showered and started prepping the food. I decided my 48 hour fast meal would be the pork loin that I had cooked for several hours the day before and a salad. I decided that I needed to keep the portions small because I probably wouldn’t feel great if I ate a big meal…should have reminded myself of that as I went back for my second plate of porklion and veggies. After the long fast and a big meal I then spent about an hour with stomach cramps and other GI stuff going on. Moral of the story don’t destroy food after a long fast because your stomach will hate you.

No real major lesson from this blog but it was an interesting experience to say the least. In March four buddies and myself are going to try to do the sober October challenge from the JRE podcast with myzone heart rate monitors so I will have another blog coming on how it feels to push your body through 4 hour workouts for several days. According to the JRE podcast they all felt great working out that much…we shall see.

Thanks for checking out this blog about me being an idiot and challenging my body. If you have done anything like this or found any great workouts to push yourself through feel free to let me know! Hopefully everyone’s year is going pretty smooth thus far and those with New Year’s resolutions are going strong!