Daily enhanced fasting logs, starting from 6/1/2021

IMPORTANT NOTE: In this log, I do take some risks, such as going out to stores, walking around cities and such. This is dangerous. During the enhanced fasting protocol, energy must be managed - and if a crash happens for whatever reason, the only rescue is succinic acid. I did so because I had 1-2 people with me every time, who were fully informed of the protocol, had the contact info for Josh and others who would know what to do, and had plenty of properly-dosed succinic acid on hand with us at all times. Please do not take any unnecessary risks!

Day 1: It sucks. But I'm committed to pushing through and in a supportive environment. It's going to be the least-worst time to get it done for work too. The biggest symptoms I had were vague nausea and malaise - it's much more intense than the usual "I'm starting a fast and switching off the food intake for now" phase.

Day 2: Seesawing between "hey, this is less worse than expected!" and "oh god back to having been run over by a truck, nap time". Went for a half hour stroll outside, which was nice. The diarrhea began at around the 36hr mark for me, but nothing too major.

Day 3: Still on the seesaw. Generally feeling slightly better than yesterday. Had a solid bowel movement middle of the day, which is weird - possibly my gut is so screwed up that it just took that long to finally pass.
Took another stroll around the neighborhood, then later an IKEA because about all I'm mentally capable of right now is organizing supplements. GF drove me, don't worry!

Day 4. Feeling better overall throughout the day, got some work done in the morning and took a short walk, napped, meandered about on the treadmill for about 2 miles, took a 15 minute nap and felt great. Been organizing work stuff while playing DND, feel more and more like my old self - we'll see if the trend continues tomorrow.

Day 5. Still generally improving - we went to the mall of America and walked around for a few hours before I started feeling crappy again. Went back home, I slept for a couple hours, then went for a short walk outside. Activity level is up, waves of sickness are down, everything seems to be moving in the right direction. Took 10mg CBD isolate powder sublingually, either that or the general recovery process seems to have increased libido - usually it's completely zero deep into a fast.

Day 6. I'm fairly confident I'm now happily in the "piles of energy" phase that Josh reported. Been up for 15hrs getting stuff done now, feels like when I'm on a perfectly dialed in supplementation protocol and piles of noots, but without the vague uneasiness of "this perfect balance of productivity is fragile and fleeting".
Only downside now is the diahrea. I'm strongly considering getting some adult diapers. We keep it real here in the trenches of this blog.
I'm going to see how well this goes with a full normal workday tomorrow (which is 16hrs of writing some of the most complicated code possible while herding cats)

Day 7. Nothing major to report, skin continues to heal at an amazing rate, generally feeling good. Walked a lot, did some light BW training, everything's peachy.

Day 8. Anhedonia in the afternoon related to work, but 100mg sublingual phenylpiracetam as per Josh's suggestion seemed to fix it up. Watched a movie with GF and spent 2hrs walking on a treadmill, 13 degree incline at 1.5-1.7mph, estimated another 1/3lb of fat burnes through just from that.

Day 9. Was going well until I overexerted myself with BW training and fast walking at max incline on the treadmill - zero energy the rest of the day, muscles ached and twitched, felt like they were burning up and desperate for aminos. I toughed it out (read: alternated sprawling out on the couch and bed, like a beached whale, regretting my poor life choices) until just past midnight, ~6hrs past my last sip of the EGCG mix. Even with melatonin, there was no chance I'd be able to sleep as I was still wide awake, acutely aware of how terrible I was feeling, and unable to think of anything but food.

So I took 50mg succinic acid to be safe and officially broke my fast, ended up eating through just about an entire day's worth of the diet plan.
That's about 218 hours of fasting completed by my count - nearly double my previous record of only 5 days!

Lessons learned:
- First day is actually easier than anticipated, all things considered - consider things like caffeine to tough out the hunger signalling as your body slowly accepts that it's going to have to do without food for a little while.

- The next few days were miserable as the process began in earnest. Give yourself time and accept that this is necessary, temporary, and worth it.

    "I must not fear.
    Fear is the mind-killer.
    Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
    I will face my fear.
    I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
    And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
    Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

-fear, +cells with disregulated metabolisms

- At some point, the clouds will part, the sun will break through, and you'll feel like "hey, this is great, I could probably do this forever!". Just keep expectations in line and don't push yourself too hard. Like I did.
- Enjoy the healing and recovery process - it was fun to watch old skin wounds heal in near real time.

Just took my first dose of the maintenance stack with some coffee and a few handfuls of plain popcorn - going to make some oats with berries soon and see what the next phase has in store.

that's an example of a log bro

holy shit that bloat, doesn't even look like the same person xD

nothing like being free to eat all that food again, i miss eating granola or plain rice without getting instant diarrhea

like you I've only found "temporary cures"
e.g metformin, telmisartan/candesartan, 5day fasts, though reishi/oat seems the most incredible

you're running this management phase for almost 10 days now right, how long you intend to keep it??


Thanks for sharing your journey.

that's an example of a log bro

holy shit that bloat, doesn't even look like the same person xD

nothing like being free to eat all that food again, i miss eating granola or plain rice without getting instant diarrhea

like you I've only found "temporary cures"
e.g metformin, telmisartan/candesartan, 5day fasts, though reishi/oat seems the most incredible

you're running this management phase for almost 10 days now right, how long you intend to keep it??


Thanks for sharing your journey.

You're welcome! I intend to stay on the management supplementation indefinitely. The diet will be/already has been tweaked a bit to fit my current needs, but very minorly so - the building blocks are the same as my usual diet, just in different proportions.

I've been in the maintenance phase for 10 days now. In that time I've moved ahead way quicker in my excitement to test out my amazing new superpower of "being able to eat food again".

First, physique update:

I'm back up to my usual training volume and intensity. I should probably describe what that entails for context - a minimum of two hours in the gym every day, the meat of training being three different supersets of three muscle groups. E.g. the first group is shoulder press -> bench press -> tricep cable pushdown; 4 sets of each, each work set taken to failure (= "I can no longer perform another rep without compromising form"), last set of each taken to failure++ (e.g. 2-3 dropsets of progressively lighter weight). Then again with shoulder lateral raises -> decline bench -> floor press. That session is bookended with cardio / mobility / prehab work. So far I seem to be recovering better than I have previously - hopefully all the cellular energy that had been going to viral replication is now going to muscle protein synthesis.

I was able to induce a minor amount of bloating this weekend. I did so by finding the tastiest middle eastern restaurant around (Holy Land in Minneapolis - cannot recommend it enough!), ordering appetizers, a main course, and their Chef's Special, their description of which enthusiastically stressed that it "makes a great sharable feast for 3-4 adults". I then proceeded to eat all of it by myself, while also stealing a decent amount of everything the others I was with had. And then we went to an ice cream shop.

I regret nothing.

Current plan is to spend the weekdays cutting with just potatoes/oats for carbs around training sessions, sip EAAs all day, stay on the maintenance schedule, and resume eating my way through the city on the weekends. GF will be out of town for a bit for a big family event while I need to stay here for work, so I'm going to go through the enhanced fast again with her when she returns.

Oh... and guess what my BP was the morning after the cheat day to end all cheat days? 116/68. Previously, after eating out anywhere, I'd be lucky to keep it under 140 systolic.

I think I'm pretty close to maxing out the benefits seen from 80% of the day's calories coming from oats and wheat germ.

holy shit man

we vegan now

pics not loading here

I had some more fun this week.

First, I saved the receipt this time - we ordered 39 maki rolls. I estimate that I ate at least 2/3rds of them myself. Random picture... But only one, because I was too busy eating after that.

Then, ice cream. There's a local shop that makes their own, and has a 12 scoop challenge - finish it all by yourself, get your picture on the wall.



I now have my picture on their wall.


In more productive news, I started another enhanced fast two days ago. Feeling great on it this time around - I expect because I was on reishi up until the day before starting it, so any remaining viral activity will still be silenced for ~5 days.

I definitely noted the intense kick from this combo when I fasted. This is what had me very cautious about ROS and issues for CFS/ME people.