This time I did some measurements on my blood glucose, ketones, and blood pressure throughout and here is what I noticed.
This summers drinking really made this harder than when I was doing these sort of fasting runs in the late winter/early spring. I still ate very clean and keto throughout but I think the booze (and I did a lot of it the past 5-6 months) had an impact.
1. Blood pressure was normal to start 120/80 typically, resting heart rate in the high 60s/low 70s. Throughout this progressively lowered and got to what I would consider low, around 105/65 with resting heart rate in the high 50s.
2. The first few days my blood sugar levels went up over 100 which I found odd, at least in the morning before going down into the low 80s throughout the day. Did some research on this and I found this isn't as unusual as I thought, part of it is what is referred to as the dawn phenomenon where your body releases cortisol to help wake your body up for the day. Couple that with insulin levels being very low (bc I have not been eating) and it keeps that level a bit higher initially. The switch came about day 3 as my body (more so my liver) was out of sugar reserves and that is when my morning levels started to lower into the low mid 70s upon waking. Today I was at 71 when I woke up but yesterday late afternoon I had a reading of 59. If this got too low a cup of coffee with a splash of heavy cream seemed to bring me up 10 points so I leaned on that from time to time. I think it was mostly the caffeine that helped raise it up a bit and not the cream, I just like coffee with cream and HWC has zero carbs so it wouldn't induce any sugar/insulin response. It is cheating but only a little and it was seriously just a splash, I wasn't doing this to kill myself.
3. Ketone readings started around .5 and yesterday afternoon, they gradually worked their way up. By day 2 my readings were around 1.5, day 3 they were in the mid/high 3s and yesterday afternoon they peaked at 4.7. The last day my glucose to keytone ratio (GKI) went below 1.0 which is considered to therapeutic level which is more and more being used for cancer patients to help slow/regress their tumors/spread of cancer. Getting to around these GKI levels has also been shown to help clean out old broken cells (a process called autophagy), which is suggested could help be preventative from developing cancers and is good for both metabolic and cardiovascular health among other things.
The crazy thing is around day 3 my hunger subsided and energy levels went though the roof, this happened at the same time my ketone readings when over 1.5 while my blood glucose levels were leveling out into the low 80s to mid 70s, all of my sugar reserves must have finally been spent. My weight was down around 8 pounds but I am sure to gain 3 of that back, from yesterday to this morning it went down another 3 pounds and I was staying plenty but not overly hydrated. What sucks is breaking this fast as I am now starting to feel really awesome but I want to drink this weekend and I am not in any way doing that 5 days fasted, I would be a wreck.
I think next time I am going to go for 7 days and maybe a 10 day, the hard part is how do I do this when I like to have a few glasses of wine on the weekends. Going to have to just carve out a no booze weekend some time, which for me seems to be a difficult task.
Any of you other guys do something like this and measure these types of readings, I find it all very interesting. Also to the guys that say you will lose muscle mass, it has been shown that HGH levels increase the first 5-7 days of a fast so while you won't be feeding your muscles with sugars you certainly will not lose lean body tissues if you continue to be active throughout, hell it could even make you functionally stronger.
This summers drinking really made this harder than when I was doing these sort of fasting runs in the late winter/early spring. I still ate very clean and keto throughout but I think the booze (and I did a lot of it the past 5-6 months) had an impact.
1. Blood pressure was normal to start 120/80 typically, resting heart rate in the high 60s/low 70s. Throughout this progressively lowered and got to what I would consider low, around 105/65 with resting heart rate in the high 50s.
2. The first few days my blood sugar levels went up over 100 which I found odd, at least in the morning before going down into the low 80s throughout the day. Did some research on this and I found this isn't as unusual as I thought, part of it is what is referred to as the dawn phenomenon where your body releases cortisol to help wake your body up for the day. Couple that with insulin levels being very low (bc I have not been eating) and it keeps that level a bit higher initially. The switch came about day 3 as my body (more so my liver) was out of sugar reserves and that is when my morning levels started to lower into the low mid 70s upon waking. Today I was at 71 when I woke up but yesterday late afternoon I had a reading of 59. If this got too low a cup of coffee with a splash of heavy cream seemed to bring me up 10 points so I leaned on that from time to time. I think it was mostly the caffeine that helped raise it up a bit and not the cream, I just like coffee with cream and HWC has zero carbs so it wouldn't induce any sugar/insulin response. It is cheating but only a little and it was seriously just a splash, I wasn't doing this to kill myself.
3. Ketone readings started around .5 and yesterday afternoon, they gradually worked their way up. By day 2 my readings were around 1.5, day 3 they were in the mid/high 3s and yesterday afternoon they peaked at 4.7. The last day my glucose to keytone ratio (GKI) went below 1.0 which is considered to therapeutic level which is more and more being used for cancer patients to help slow/regress their tumors/spread of cancer. Getting to around these GKI levels has also been shown to help clean out old broken cells (a process called autophagy), which is suggested could help be preventative from developing cancers and is good for both metabolic and cardiovascular health among other things.
The crazy thing is around day 3 my hunger subsided and energy levels went though the roof, this happened at the same time my ketone readings when over 1.5 while my blood glucose levels were leveling out into the low 80s to mid 70s, all of my sugar reserves must have finally been spent. My weight was down around 8 pounds but I am sure to gain 3 of that back, from yesterday to this morning it went down another 3 pounds and I was staying plenty but not overly hydrated. What sucks is breaking this fast as I am now starting to feel really awesome but I want to drink this weekend and I am not in any way doing that 5 days fasted, I would be a wreck.
I think next time I am going to go for 7 days and maybe a 10 day, the hard part is how do I do this when I like to have a few glasses of wine on the weekends. Going to have to just carve out a no booze weekend some time, which for me seems to be a difficult task.
Any of you other guys do something like this and measure these types of readings, I find it all very interesting. Also to the guys that say you will lose muscle mass, it has been shown that HGH levels increase the first 5-7 days of a fast so while you won't be feeding your muscles with sugars you certainly will not lose lean body tissues if you continue to be active throughout, hell it could even make you functionally stronger.
