3 ms·

>My longest fast was 3 days and while I liked it, I function much better with food. Three days is the longest people should go for if they haven't tried fastin

>My longest fast was 3 days and while I liked it, I function much better with food. Three days is the longest people should go for if they haven't tried fasting before and don't have experience with gradual refeeding. Any longer than five days and you risk running into the refeeding syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome

paulgerhardt 4y ago
There's a lot of people overindexing on the dangers of refeeding. It is important to factor in after a week (honestly more like 15+ days) but also trivially addressed.
alecst 4y ago
This is something I hear repeated without hard evidence. Plenty of people do 10+ day fasts and don’t get refeeding syndrome. I have never heard of it happening. While I can’t prove it doesn’t happen to some sensitive people in rare cases, my tendency is to think this is an urban myth. We’re not talking about holocaust victims or hunger strikers.
- paulgerhardt 4y ago
  If you’ve practiced a normal diet and do a seven day fast you’re going to be fine. If you’re anorexic, fast for 40 days, and don’t supplement with salts (particularly potassium) you’re going to have refeeding syndrome. If one’s worried about it, just get ones blood work done before one starts eating again. It takes about an hour and will show you exactly what you are low on what to supplement to get to baseline. To the extent people are advising one not to do an extended fast without medical supervision - eh - basically the extent of the medical supervision is "let's run a panel every few days and see if anything is dangerously out of whack" - and maybe confine you to a hospital for the duration - but if you're not outside and walking a normal amount and say confined to a room you absolutely will lose a large amount of muscle.

paulgerhardt 4y ago

There's a lot of people overindexing on the dangers of refeeding. It is important to factor in after a week (honestly more like 15+ days) but also trivially addressed.

alecst 4y ago

This is something I hear repeated without hard evidence. Plenty of people do 10+ day fasts and don’t get refeeding syndrome. I have never heard of it happening. While I can’t prove it doesn’t happen to some sensitive people in rare cases, my tendency is to think this is an urban myth. We’re not talking about holocaust victims or hunger strikers.

paulgerhardt 4y ago
If you’ve practiced a normal diet and do a seven day fast you’re going to be fine. If you’re anorexic, fast for 40 days, and don’t supplement with salts (particularly potassium) you’re going to have refeeding syndrome. If one’s worried about it, just get ones blood work done before one starts eating again. It takes about an hour and will show you exactly what you are low on what to supplement to get to baseline. To the extent people are advising one not to do an extended fast without medical supervision - eh - basically the extent of the medical supervision is "let's run a panel every few days and see if anything is dangerously out of whack" - and maybe confine you to a hospital for the duration - but if you're not outside and walking a normal amount and say confined to a room you absolutely will lose a large amount of muscle.