oh shit, I meant under 5 minutes, somewhere in the realm of 4:50. I jog at home, but I run varsity track and cross country at my high school.

You get a billion points for awesomeness.

Mormons and other religious denominations practice frequent fasting, I'm fairly sure it's plenty safe. As for doing it every other day, I don't know. If your doctor says it's a sound plan, go for it. Making positive changes is always good.

I've come to find fasting interesting because it's a lifestyle choice that seems to have originated way, way, back in the past. I mean, today we mostly associate muslims with it, but in the past it was practiced in nearly every society and every religion. There's mention of fasting in texts going back to ancient egyptian times, so this is something we've had with us for a while.

I began to thinking about why, and perhaps our ancestors were on to something. Modern research seem to show almost exclusively positive effects from fasting, obviously granted that you watch your intake on your "offdays" and make sure to get the sustenance you need - balanced diet to go with it and all that.

To go without food for 24 hours seems a long time, it's going to be interesting to see how my body reacts to that and if I start becoming too lethargic at work. If so I'm probably going to push it back to a 8/8 cycle.

My first day of intermittent fasting starts today. My first day of 100 consecutive sugar-free days also starts today.

I also thought perhaps this thread could scare some lurkers out of the woodwork who have experience with this sort of thing and may offer me some advice.

I used to do it once a month or so, it's not that bad, remember not to do heavy exercise on fast days. Sometimes it's harder because you're craving something, but if you're engaged in something you won't notice after the first meal, the pangs go away.

Doesn't fasting fuck up your metabolism and make it hoard every joule of energy you put in the next time you eat?

Yes and no.

If you do it regularly enough and intake very low amounts of juice and rice / lots of water you will be fine. Plus just doing it once doesn't work either - it needs to be over an extended period of time too.

Not really. The change in the body that basically makes it go "oh fuck" doesn't happen fast enough provided you don't just stop eating and leave it at that. A span of 24 hours isn't enough to make the body start conserving energy any much beyond normal. If you go a week without food, then yes. But as I said I'm doing fasting basically 3 days a week, eating fairly normally otherwise (subject to some changes, see resolutions).

I'll be mainly drinking water, but I can take some calories through other liquids (just nothing containing sugar, which means storebought apple and orange juice and such is already out). I'm going to start pressing my own orange juice, then perhaps sweeten it up by adding some naturally sweet juice, such as cranberry.

By "no sugar" I basically mean "no refined sugar". Obviously it's not possible to avoid sugar alltogether seeing as how nature comes up with it in lots of different forms. But no refined sugar of the type you buy in bags at the grocery store.

In other news, it's now been almost 12 hours without food and I'm starting to feel SOMEWHAT PECKISH. Gotta hang in there ...

Really? We have 2 types here, Orange Juice & Orange Juice Drink, the latter being something that has had a drop of orange flavour put into the sugar water, the former being actual juice of a real identifiable orange

Try squeezing the juice out of a couple of average oranges and then throw that down. Your wrinkle count has increased by 34.

Yeah, you need a good sugar ball in both apple and orange juice to make it palatable to the population at large, which is why those drinks can be calorie bombs. Half a liter of apple juice can net you 200+ calories, depending on what they've actually put in it.

Well, in Aus and NZ, we do have 100% pure orange juice. That's the best stuff ever - I have no idea what you guys have over in Europe and America but I've never had a real juice there, just junk.

And yeah, i squeeze my own juice and everything too, man. This stuff be real, yo.

Not only pure juice but juice with pulp in, awesome when combined with half a glass of really fizzy lemonade

You.... you.... HEATHEN! How could you do that to the precious juice? *sobs*

Haha, I've never been a soft drink guy, love the pulp and juice as is. But yeah, I hear ya buddy.

Well, 24 hours without food ends .... now.

Not much of a difference, I actually feel a bit better than what I usually do after work. Hm.

Well, time to start logging the progress. One thing I didn't mention this far is that I plan to lose 15 kgs of weight also. I currently weigh in at 106 kgs, which is too much even if a fair bit of it is muscle due to years and years of working out earlier. But in the past two years I've been doing it less and less and eating just as much, and after a bilge eating christmas again I weigh at least 15 kgs too much. My match weight is around 90.

Target is to lose all 15 in three months, and be back to status quo more or less.

Dinner now then normal diet tomorrow, around 1500 calories the next 24 hours. Will also start working out again tomorrow, first time in over a month.

Been at it for week now. Down 3 kgs. That's a bit much, hopefully a good bit of it is just excessive fluids.

Other than that I can't really feel much of a difference at all vs. eating every day. In fact I think my blood pressure is noticeably lower now.