"Are You Still Fasting?"

I must admit I have not been doing the level of fasting I had been doing before my stroke last February. While in the hospital, a rehab center, and an anti-Catholic homeless shelter (while my plumbing was being fixed) I did a lot of fasting because I was served institutional meals with high-carb elements in them. I ate what little I could and did without.

When I came home my appetite came back and I felt deprived because of the long stint of mostly do-not-eat institutional food. And when I tried morning fasting I tended to have afternoon carb binges. 

I am trying to get back into fasting today, it being a Friday in Lent after all. I am allowing myself 2 coffees-with-MCT oil today and hoping to go for nothing else. If I feel massive temptation for a carb binge, though, I will eat a little something like some canned tuna. 

The problem with fasting is that a lot of people think it is all about skipping ‘calories’ and that we all should be counting and reducing our ‘calories.’ But we on Keto * Low-Carb should know better than that. Studies have shown that a 1000 calorie diet has radically different effects when the calories are from fat or protein mostly instead of from carbohydrates. Calories don’t count. Deprivation and hunger are not good things. 

On Keto * Low-Carb fasting ideally happens because we aren’t experiencing hunger when we are in ketosis. If you are an older person or have long-term insulin resistance problems, lowering carbs alone won’t give you ‘fast weight loss’ or even any weight loss. But ketosis makes it easy to do some fasting and adding a bit of hunger-free fasting to your eating plan can help you lose a few pounds even if you have plateaued on your Keto * Low-Carb eating plan.

I think it was Dr. Jason Fung who said ‘when you fast, fast, when you feast, feast.’ A little fasting in a ketogenic life means that you can feast on your allowed foods without worry. You become in control, not the food. 

But learn to listen to your body. I’ve found that ‘white-knuckle’ fasting-with-hunger just leads me to give in to the temptation of a carb-binge. So if I start feeling hunger, I eat something. Even when I was planning on fasting. Eating a bit of low-or-zero carb food can derail a carb binge before it starts. Many of us make a point of not getting hungry so we are less tempted. Less tempted is good!

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