Shorter Dry Fasts

[MikeB]

Hi Yannick

Wondering about the benefits or pitfalls of shorter dry fasts e.g. 24-48hrs and also frequency of these.

I know intermittent dry fasting isnt really recommended, but for someone with minimal experience in longer fasts (only up to 3 day water fasts), would a weekly or fortnightly 24-28hr dry fast be beneficial to a) help with rebuilding metabolic flexibility b) building up to longer dry fasts over time?

Thanks!

[Yannick]

Hi Yannick

Wondering about the benefits or pitfalls of shorter dry fasts e.g. 24-48hrs and also frequency of these.

I know intermittent dry fasting isnt really recommended, but for someone with minimal experience in longer fasts (only up to 3 day water fasts), would a weekly or fortnightly 24-28hr dry fast be beneficial to a) help with rebuilding metabolic flexibility b) building up to longer dry fasts over time?

Thanks!

Depends what you mean by metabolic flexibility? Are you hoping to improve your glucose metabolism or fat metabolism? eating low carb and high fat will improve your fat metabolism over time and lower your glucose metabolism. Eating high carb low fat should do the opposite (but if you just do this diet with a dysfunctional glucose metabolism you risk lots of complications, cancer, diabetes, etc).

Your strategy, just in general to improve ability to fast, is a good one. Each fast should improve your fat metabolism and slowly down your overall metabolism a little bit each time. These are both GOOD if you want to fast safer and longer.

However, If you want to keep your metabolism as high as possible while doing all of this then you need to feed in between the fasts with a very high carb diet with low fat.

My specialty lies in the scorch protocol -> low carb/keto prep -> 5 day dry fast -> T3 therapy and high carb low fat diet -> ray peat diet You should be able to do this with no dry fasting prep, the keto for 1-2 months is enough.

[MikeB]

Thanks Yannick.

I guess both really. I would like to be able to seamlessly shift between substrate oxidation. In general I find higher fat easier however I want the drag racer performance that comes with clean carb oxidation. Its not that Im awful on higher carb diets, only that my eczema and folliculitis does flare more when I go in that direction.

I might experiment with shorter period carb cycling and fasting for a bit and see how that goes and if I dont notice a shift in 6 weeks or so I might try more of a reboot with the scorch protocol. Sourcing T3 is really difficult in Aus so Ill have to do it the longer/harder way if I go this route.

Sorry if you have this posted somewhere on the members info but what do you think the best objective measures would be for assessing effective carb utilisation? e.g. thyroid levels, OAT Kreb cycle metabolites etc?

P.s. Did my first 36hr dry fast this week and it was interesting. I was fine during the day but felt wired in the evening (I did take 200mg paraxanthine - water - first thing to avoid caffeine withdrawal), sleep was difficult but my Oura ring showed my HRV bumped up to 45, which is good for me considering its been completely tanked in the mid twenties for the past 2 weeks).