How long have you been without food? In your whole life? For many this is only a few hours. The idea of going without food terrifies people. I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a 3 day fast for years now. The timing never seemed to fit though. I couldn’t face deliberately not going without food. I had leftover fears from my time being homeless. Not knowing when your next meal will come will rattle you.

While listening to an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show he said that he does a 3 day fast once a month. It was the reason for the fast that pushed me to try it. It is not for the many health benefits but for reasons picked up from Stoic philosophy. He has a podcast about it called How to practice poverty and reduce fear. It was the fear reduction I was most interesting.

I will talk about the health benefits in this article. There are many. It is not, however, our main concern. We will be focusing on overcoming the fear of hunger and gaining the knowledge that you can do a 3 day fast. 3 days, 72 is the time frame we focus on most in prepping. The first 72 hours are the most critical in a disaster. You need to be thinking clearly to increase your survivability. Dealing with a disaster while being hangry would suck.

How Long Can You Go Without Food?

Many put food as the top survival priority. That is completely wrong. If you follow the rule of 3’s this should be clear. You can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 Hours without shelter, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. All of these are approximations but are a good place to start from. Going without water is pretty set to 3 days. Three weeks without food it 21 days. And I have a feeling this rule was made for average weight people.

James Scott, made world headlines when he survived in the Nepalese Himalayas without food for 43 days. That is just over twice what you should be able to survive. There are a few other rare examples of going much longer without food. It is hard to find credible ones on Google, though. You get a bunch of crackpots and a little science. Including an Indian guy, that has not eaten in 70 years.

Jimmy Moore author of Keto Clarity and former guest on the show has done many fasts. He has taken a scientific approach to fasting with records and measurements. I found a video he did on day 18 of a fast. Having the mental clarity and energy to do a video after 18 days is pretty amazing. Still worried about a few hours without food?

Fasting Health Benefits

My 3 day fast was prompted by a desire to test myself. The health benefits of fasting were an added bonus. Weight loss is one. Not one that will be our focus, though. I did not weigh myself before or after my 3 day fast. I was told by several people at work that I look like I’ve lost weight. It is an effect of fasting. Fasting should not replace eating healthy and lifting weights for fat loss. If you are looking to lose weight try this 3 day fat blast instead

Fasting improves Insulin sensitivity. Which means that it improves how sensitive the body is to insulin. If you have a high insulin sensitivity then you will require smaller amounts of insulin to reduce blood glucose levels than someone with a low sensitivity. To compensate your body will produce more insulin. Improve your insulin sensitivity and improve your blood sugar levels. You will boost your fat burning by lower blood sugar levels.

A fast will improve your hunger. Fasting acts like a reset button for hormones that control hunger and satiety. If you are binge eating your body is not regulating the hormones correctly to tell you to stop. If you are eating every few hours you don’t even know what hunger is. You are suffering from out of control hormones.

Fasting promotes autophagy. Autophagy, meaning “Self-eating” is the processes used by your body to clean out various debris, including toxins and recycles damaged cell components. Autophagy is a detox that actually works. Unlike your wheatgrass smoothie. I’m all for anything that removes damaged cells. Not all damaged cells are cancer but all cancer cells are damaged cells.

Health Benefits Bullet Points

Improved Insulin Sensitivity.
Fasting Improves Your Immune System
Fasting Speeds Up The Metabolism
Human growth hormone Increase
Fasting is Good For Your Brain
Promotes Longevity
Fasting Improves Hunger

Many of the health benefits from a 3 day fast could be had from doing intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is only eating during a certain window of time. For many this is skipping breakfast and eating lunch and dinner. For me, it’s a 14-hour window of noneating. I eat breakfast at 12 and dinner at 8. That is an 8-hour gap in between my first and last meal. I may experiment in the future with moving the last meal closer to the first meal to extend my intermittent fasting time.

3 Day Fast

For all the reasons talked about already I decided to do a 3 day fast. I wanted to face the fear of going without food. I knew that it was all in my mind to fear such a short fast. When Tim was talking about doing a monthly fast I had a twinge of fear. 72 hours without food? How will I work? My stomach will be in constant pain. It will be boring. So on and so on with the excuses. Realizing this was an unfounded fear I knew what I had to do.

“Fear is the Mind Killer I will face my fear and let it pass through me”

Dune was right about having to face your fears. I ate my last meal at 12 on my last day of work. The 3 day fast lasted till 12 on my first night back. I skipped my weekly cheat day along with all food. In addition to this post, I did daily Youtube update videos on the fast.

The rules for my 3 day fast were simply. No food. I drank water, black coffee, 1 bullion cube a day, and I used True Lemon and True Lime to flavor some water. The true lemon and lime are crystallized juice. Just like squeezing in some lemon juice in your water.

Hunger

I got hungry about the time I would normally have eaten dinner on the first day. I had some coffee for energy and a few glasses of water to get past it. After the first twinges of hunger, it went away until the very end of the 3 day fast. I had some a lot of mild stomach grumbles during the fast. Not a painful loud ones but quite and gentle.

I thought that I would be consumed with hunger and think about food the whole time. Food did cross my mind often. The hunger was like background noise though that could be tuned out. If I were to focus on it then I would feel it. I could choose not to think about eating and be productive whenever I wanted.

The lack of hunger was probably from being able to quickly get into a deep state of nutritional ketosis. I eat a mildly ketotic diet 90% of the time anyway. By skipping cheat day and going straight into a fast I was able to quickly begin producing ketones and metabolizing fat stores.

Why Bullion Cubes?

On one of the Youtube video updates, Lee from Zulu Survival mentioned that part of the reason for the lack of hunger was the once a day bullion cube. He cited Mors Kowaski for saying bullion cubes will put you directly in ketosis. Mors being the world’s greatest bushcrafter obviously does not have a huge web presence. There are a few web mentions of Mors advocating ketosis for survival but not much.

A bouillon cube is not a magic bullet to get into ketosis, however. There are exogenous ketone products that will give you many of the benefits of being in nutritional ketosis. With them, you are taking in ketones and using them directly. You will use the exogenous ones before breaking down fat and converting it to ketones. You will not truly switch from a glucose burning metabolism to a fat burning one. After the exogenous ketones are burned off you will come out of ketosis especially if you are continuing to eat carbohydrates and sugars.

Bullion is very important in this 3 day fast and all ketogenic diets. When on a low carb or ketogenic diet insulin levels go down and the body starts shedding excess sodium and water along with it. This is often cited by detractors as the main reason for weight loss on a low-carb diet. Not Replenishing Sodium is a big mistake when in ketosis. Getting in enough sodium will help with the fatigue, lightheadedness, and headaches some get when in ketosis.

Mental Clarity

This was by far the biggest surprise for me. I expected to have a hard time concentrating. Everyone has had brain fog due to being hungry. I expected to be mentally useless for the weekend. The opposite was true, though. The second day I awoke rested and firing on all cylinders. The mental focus on the 3 day fast was amazing. I felt like Brian from Limitless on CBS.

I decided to work on the Ebook I started writing back in 2014. In six hours of straight writing, I finished DIY 2 Survive. I was in the zone.

Cons

It was not all positive on my 3 day fast. I had a few drawbacks. None of the negatives outweighed the positives. Also, it is only for three days. You can pretty much do anything for 3 days with no lasting consequences. I remember watching I Caveman with Robb Wolf and they starved for several days before finally having a successful hunt. In order to be thorough, I have to point all the good with the bad.

Sleep

I had moments of fatigue during the 3 day fast. Times where I just wanted to lay down and go to sleep. These moments usually didn’t last long. Since I do shift work I am familiar with excessive sleepiness. Working nights you have a tendency to never feel awake. For this 3 day fast I had much less caffeine than I usually do.

I started sleeping less both during and a few days after the fast. The first day I woke up at 3am. Wide awake with no hope of falling back to sleep. After I ended the 3 day fast I woke up a few hours before my alarm went off daily. This went on for about a week. I would just come awake and be fully awake. I wasn’t tired or grumpy either.

Social Interaction

During the 3 day fast I had a tendency to being quiet. Hanging out with Mike and his wife where normally I am verbose. But there were times where I was more talkative. I decided I wanted to Play Super Mario World on Mikes Wii and needed a controller. So I called the local Game Stop. Mike commented that I never call on the phone. And that +is true. I hate talking on the phone.

Gas

I had some unusual gas both during and after the 3 day fast. Normally during noncheat days I don’t have any. Luckily it was orderless.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, I am very happy I tried this 3 day fast experiment. I learned a lot of lessons from it. The nagging fear i the back of my head that I can’t do it is gone. At times your own mind can be your worst enemy and needs to be subdued. I finally finished my first ebook. More to follow even if I have to repeat another fast.

I’m sure I dropped a few pounds. Not that I care and didn’t weigh myself. Since I was told by several people at work that I looked like I had lost weight.

The main takeaway is that food is not your main priority in a survival situation. In fact going without food for a short time will improve your chances of survival. Focus on your other priorities in a disaster. You won’t die without haveing a meal every two hours.

What is the longest you have been without food? Do you do fasts regularly? Does the thought of going without food scare you? Let me know in the comments!

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