Opinion: My 7-Day Journey Without Food: Completing a 7-Day Fast and Why It Is Beneficial to Health

Article By: Zach Bentley, Student Intern | BCS Chronicle

What You Need To Know:

• Voodoo Brewing was founded in 2005 in Meadville, PA and has grown steadily across the northeastern United States with over 20 new locations planned throughout the country.

• College Station’s Voodoo Brewing location is a family business owned and operated by Rona Bomkamp, a local restauranteur with a passion for good beer, good food, and good times.

• Despite having the word “brewing” in their name, Voodoo Brewing specializes in offering a top quality culinary experience with unique dishes such as their famous tacos, Voodoo pulled pork, and “Voo-Dill” Pickle Pizza.

• Voodoo also features many tempting brews such as their “Hazy Vibes” New England IPA, their top-selling “Lacto-Kooler” Berliner Weisse, and their “Where Our Secrets Go” stout.

• Voodoo Brewing keeps racking up numerous accolades in the BCS area, including five nominations for the “Best Of” awards in Brazos Life’s the “Best of the Brazos Valley” contest.

Fasting has long been associated with religious piety, but it has many benefits to our overall health as well. There is a reason our ancestors practiced it throughout history. Yes, it can bring us closer to God and help us focus on him, but it also helps to cleanse and reset our internal systems.

I have done a couple of 3-day fasts in the past as well as I have done intermittent fasting, but I had never completed a 7-day fast until the writing of this article. I was somewhat plateauing in my fat loss and wanted to jump start my system and as with anything I went down the YouTube rabbit hole. This landed me on a couple videos on people completing 7-day fasts and talking about the experience and the results from completing it. So, the next day I decided to start a 7-day fast for myself.

Health Benefits and Side Effects

Before I begin discussing my experience with the fast, I want to briefly discuss the health benefits and side effects one might experience while fasting as well as some risks.

The videos I watched extensively on the subject were from Dr. Eric Berg’s YouTube channel. Dr. Berg is a board-certified chiropractor and well-known health educator known for his work in nutritional science, natural health, and weight management with keto and intermittent fasting. He has been in the business for over thirty years and many of his health tips have helped me in numerous ways.

One recognizable benefit of fasting is weight loss. When someone is not eating or taking in calories, their body will begin switching to alternative sources of energy. During the initial phase of the fast, the body will enter a process called ketosis (keto) where ketones are released into the body which causes the body to begin using stored fat as fuel. On a 7-day fast someone can expect to lose both water weight, body fat, as well as some visceral fat.

One thing to keep in mind here is that because you are eliminating carbs, your body will undergo what is called the “Keto Flu,” which is common. The symptoms experienced here can be headaches, fatigue, dizziness, or muscle cramps. This can be alleviated by supplementing with electrolytes. If doing a fast and not just the keto diet, make sure they are calorie free.

Around 24-48 hours into the fast, a process called autophagy begins. Autophagy comes from Greek and means “self devouring” and it is by this process that the body begins to clean and heal itself. Old, damaged, or dead cells will begin being recycled by the body into reusable parts such as amino acids and fatty acids. It is basically the body’s built in disk cleanup and defragmentation programs found on your computer.

For those concerned with muscle loss, human growth hormone is stimulated during a fast by up to five times the normal amount in the body which aids in fat burning, muscle preservation, and anti-aging processes. As long as you continue working out, maybe not to the same effort you were before the workout, someone on a fast should not experience any severe muscle loss.

The last benefit I will mention is the increased mental clarity. Think of ketones as premium-grade fuel for the brain. Ketones, fuel the brain more efficiently than glucose does and can lead to enhanced cognition, better memory, and faster mental processing.

Before anyone jumps into the fast, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it is not recommended for people who have diabetes, eating disorders, heart or kidney conditions, underweight, pregnant, or on medications to do a 7-day fast.

My Story

As mentioned before, completing a 7-day fast was not something that had crossed my mind before. I did it because I was experiencing a plateau in fat loss and needed a jump. I had already started the keto diet and was several weeks into that. So I had already experienced the keto flu before the fast which made starting the fast easier.

Before I started the fast, I made a quick trip to the grocery store to get some supplies for the fast. I got some carbonated water, some bottled water, and some calorie-free electrolytes. I already had coffee and the creatine I was taking for my workouts so I was set in that regard.

It is worth noting here that some people count their fast starting the next morning and some start the clock after their last meal. Since this was my first attempt I opted for the latter and began my fast after my last meal Wednesday evening.

The first two days of the fast, Thursday and Friday, were relatively easy for me. I had busy days of class and working out so my mind was kept from thinking about food for the most part. I experienced some hunger but nothing that wasn’t manageable. I just consumed a lot of water to offset the hunger hormone “ghrelin,” that causes you to feel hunger.

Days three and four, Saturday and Sunday, were a different story. On these two days I was mostly stuck at home working on homework so keeping my mind off of hunger was not particularly easy. Sunday was the worst. I was hit with every imaginable craving my mind could think of. All of the slop that I had been without for a while began to creep into my mind. Things like chips and salsa, pizza, pasta, and many other carb heavy foods were screaming at me to consume them. But I was already over the hump and pressed on.

On days five and six, Monday and Tuesday, the hunger desire had subsided for the most part as I was busy again and away from home for working out and class. On Monday specifically, the mental clarity really began to hit. For me it almost felt like a runner’s high while I was working out. I felt sharper and quicker. The evenings were a different story though. Since I was getting closer to the day of breaking the fast, my mind constantly thought about food as I was trying to go to sleep. But I pressed on knowing it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

Day seven, Wednesday, was finally here. I was on the last leg of the race and needed to make it to 6:00pm to break my fast. I went about my normal day of class and working out and at the end of the day, I made a trip to the grocery store to pick up some chicken bone broth to break the fast.

One thing to remember here is that when breaking a fast, it is wise to ease back into food as your body’s digestive system has essentially shut down. Rushing food back into the system can lead to stomach irritability and the undoing of all the weight loss you just achieved during the fast. Stories from many people I read online doing this said that it was not a good decision on their part.

So, when 6:00pm came around, I heated up some bone broth, put it into a mug, and enjoyed the victory of having completed my first 7-day fast.

Conclusion

For me completing the fast was not just about fat loss, it was about achieving something I hadn’t ever done before. I was able to prove to myself that it is possible and that I had power over my hunger and could control whether or not I would give into the cravings of eating, whether they be healthy or not.

On the physical side, I lost close to ten pounds of fat, muscle, and water-weight. I started the fast at 183 pounds and about 24.4% body fat. At the end of it, I was 173 pounds and reduced my body fat percentage to 22.1%. I felt less bloated, mentally sharper, and overall very happy at the end of the fast.

If you would like to attempt a fast like this, I would recommend doing some research on it to see if it is right for you. Dr. Berg’s YouTube has been a great resource for me in breaking down the concepts and helping me understand what goes on in the body as the fast is being performed.

If you do, make sure you consume lots of water and electrolytes as it will make the journey better and easier.

Source

Dr. Eric Berg’s YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@Drberg