As an addition to the Paleo diet with intermittent fasting (16 hour fasts) I have decided to throw in a couple of 24 hour fasts.
For those who are about to say that fasting is bad for you, thanks for your concern and maybe you want to check the updated information on that.
So the last time I had any food was last night at 8pm. I went to sleep at about 1:am and woke up at 9:am. What I have had is water and vitamins. Checking my blood pressure, the systolic was low normal but the diastolic was a little high. I checked blood glucose which was normal and ketones which were near "high".
I did experience a little hunger at noon, which is when I usually break my daily fast. And I seem to be having a little right now, since I'm thinking about it. As the video above shows, there is a rhythm to our production of ghrelin (the hormone which stimulates hunger sensations). So I expect I wil be hungry again at 7-8:pm which is when I plan to break my fast. Unless I feel really good and want to hold off till morning.
Now, I am a meat eating paleo-type dieter. Which means I ended my eating with meat, and I will break my fast with meat. Since I was a vegetarian for most of my life and learned about fasting in the 70s from other vegetarians, that sounds like the absolute wrong thing to do. But in the last several years I have learned that it is both easy and comfortable to break a fast with meat. Unlike what I was taught, meat digests easily and quickly.
In fact, traditional hunter societies would usually fast during a hunt, and break their fast with what they caught. Since this often involved hours or days of tracking a herd animal, it was usually not an insignificant fast.
I did restrict my activities for the day, since this is my first 24 hour fast in a couple of years. But my goal is to increase my length of fasting and add some light exercise to the process. I'll be talking about it here, perhaps with more detail, as I go along.
