Four weeks. I have Crohn’s disease and had perforated my bowel roughly 15 years ago. I wasn’t allowed anything by mouth and was on a saline drip for 3 weeks. After my surgery I was on TPN for another week before I was allowed to eat anything. I went from 185lbs to 130lbs and it took about 6 months to get back up to 160lbs.
2 days. I had hemorrhoid surgery and pooping was so painful that I fasted for two days just so I could rest for 1 day.
A week, massively depressed, no food or water, by day 3 I decided to conciously continue the fast in hope of death. by day 6 I was feeling normal, by day 7 was completely ok, had energy, no headaches no hungry or thirsty.
got so upset that I’m apparently immortal I gave up on that scheme.
37 days. One day I took a look in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw. So I changed it. Honestly it’s not at all difficult after the fourth or fifth day, it just gets really hard to sleep. I was in my early twenties and I still had the willpower for that (and probably the metabolism) but I don’t anymore.
Edit to be clear: I don’t recommend this. It was a harsh decision born out of a lot of depression and other issues. I drank a lot of water and took multivitamins. It worked but I was probably just lucky I didn’t end up in the hospital.
Two and a half days. Also how I came to really understand how abusive my mother is. I needed surgery for a knee injury. I wasn’t allowed to eat since the evening before. I went in, had surgery and my parents took me home to “take care of me”. I was so hungry after the surgery because it was like 2 pm and I hadn’t eaten since maybe 4 pm the day before, so I asked if we can stop for food. I was told no, we have food at home. “Home” was an hour by car away.
So we come home, I somehow manage to get into bed and ask for food. My mother exploded, yelled at me to not be a lazy good-for-nothing that slouches around on the bed and that the only way I was getting any food was by getting up and sitting at the dining table like a normal person. I really don’t know why I thought they’d treat me better this time. I guess I thought they’d know it’s a legit surgery (unlike non-legit things like flu and fever that has never been an excuse to stay in bed). Anyway, I had my bottle of water with me but no food. Probably not enough water either. On the evening of my second day there my leg was feeling good enough for me to hobble into the kitchen and grab some snacks.
On the bright side, I learned that the stuff I’ve been telling myself like “Yeah they’re assholes but will be there for me when I need them” was a lie.
4 days
No food in the house. Everyone who had a job bought food for themselves. I, being 16 at the time, didnt have that luxury.
Jesus christ, where the fuck are your parents/guardians. You were still a minor ffs.
I feel sorry that you had to deal with that.
Parents mismanaged the funds. But hey, we got to make the rent payment on a PS4 and Flat-screen TVs!
Jokes aside, it was a dysfunctional house. It came down to survival mode that week.
Knew a guy back in the day who, as a kid, used to cry himself to sleep at night with hunger. He was the most cheerfully violent human I’ve ever met. Kinda like a skinny Amos Burton, without the sociopathy, well, maybe a little. Seriously nice guy! Man said he never lost a fight, and I believe him. Only picked fights with larger men. BTW, his last name was Fight. Can’t even make that up.
skinny Amos Burton
Amos: Belter Edition
Aight, that got a sensible chuckle, got a picture in my head.
Nearly a week when I had swine flu
Willingly: 2 weeks, fasting. I was really sick and desperately trying to find something, anything, to make me feel better.
Unwillingly: 4 days. No money for food.
I think 48 hours was the most. Did it as a Kickstart to a diet.
I’ve done 7 days on a fast, water only. My partner and I were testing if their seizures would stop without food and they did.
Well no shit. That’s fascinating. So now where are you at with the problem?
Yeah, it worked really well actually. It seems that their seizures are related to sugar metabolism in the brain and switching to a fasted state enabled the production and use of ketones instead of glucose. That leas to a reduction from seizures as much as twice an hour to one or less per day most of the time. Now we (solidarity and other benefits) eat a really simple diet of mostly simple cuts of meat cooked to medium-rare as well as chicken wings and butter. The butter maybe an issue though, so we are testing removing that too after the next long fast to see if we get better results.
So down from ~30 seizures per day to maybe 1 seems like a fairly good fix and we just treat it like an allergy. No carbs, no fibre, no sugar alcohols, no artificial sweeteners, and soon maybe no butter either. Better thab seizures, good for overall health so far, and fairly sustainable. I may miss cheesecake but not as much as I don’t miss my partner having seizures all day.
On a keto based diet, you’ll need those fats. Perhaps consider something like sunflower oil instead though? Nuts also come with plenty of fats and have a lot of fiber too. Some have carbs more than others, so you’d have to check which ones fit your specific diet, but these are a great source of healthy fats and help keeping the gut biomes working well.
Edit: just to add, you could experiment with the fiber more. Long carbs have a very different effect on the body vs. short ones, so those, in moderation to keep the keto state up, could be okay for the partner too, and perhaps give more robustness/variety to the diet?
Yeah, we need fats for sure. Our thinking at this point is to aim for saturated fats as much as possible, less than 5% polyunsaturated and less than 30% mono. That said, pork belly has a tonne of fat but a surprisingly large amount of mono. Also, it is delicious.
The nuts and seeds are just not something we are doing at the moment. We will experiment with introducing small amounts of interest foods but I think seeds are largely out because of the various chemicals in the casing. Some beans may be OK after sprouting them because that takes the acid from the skin and recycles it into energy for the growing plant, but there is no similar disarming strategy for most seeds.
As for fibre, adding fibre led to a fairly serious gut issue, think blood and pain. For now fibre is banned, not allowed in the food club. Given some time it may be tested again, but the last time showed me unspeakable horrors.
I think the diet is currently robust enough for the next year. After that other things may be viable, but most likely it will be very small amounts and infrequently. If we do try fibre again it will probably be home ferments like pickles because the bacteria which break down the fibre are there in the food, so even if there is a problem with my partner digesting the fibre the bacteria there can help.
A little over 24 hours. Nothing fancy, I had started a keto diet and at one point I realized that my previous meal had been lunch the day before, hadn’t had dinner nor breakfast since and it was lunch time again.
I once wanted to see how long I can go, at 32 hours I felt like I was about to die so I stopped. Literally one bite made all of the terrible feeling go away and to this day it both annoys me and freaks me out that it was all psychological.
Like seriously brain? Couldn’t handle not eating so badly that you decided to make me feel like shit? But also damn, if that’s how I felt about not eating, addictions sound much scarier now.
I went roughly 2 weeks without food after I got out of the hospital from a severe head injury. I tried to eat, but I temporarily lost my sense of taste and my brain hallucinated this absolutely terrible taste in its place. Even my saliva and the inside of my mouth had this taste. In the hospital I mostly got my nutrients via IV.
8 day water fast as a catalyst for change. Worked perfectly despite the risky lack of preparation.
Not breaking any records, but probably ~20 hours. A mix of fasting (the Muslim kind, so from dawn till dusk) and not waking up to eat before dusk can get you that long when it’s the summer and days are long.
