How To Pull Off Your First 24-Hour Fast

What would happen to you if you didn’t eat straight for the next 24-hour i.e. if you were to perform a 24-hour fast ?

I’m ready to bet $100 of my money that if you’re a reasonably healthy person i.e. you’re not currently suffering from any disease or sickness, then you’re not going to starve to death and might even come out feeling amazing after a full 24-h fast.

But why would you do a 24-hour fast anyway?

Well… scientific studies are showing proven health benefits of fasting like –

• Increasing autophagy ^* which has been shown to reduce tumor growth and promote anti-cancer activities ^[1]
• Reducing oxidative damage and inflammation, optimize energy metabolism, and bolster cellular protection ^[2]
• Helping reduce obesity, hypertension, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis ^[2]
• Increasing basal metabolism ^[3]

But even if we were to put science aside for a minute, I do 24-hour fast at least once a month because of the awesome health benefits I’ve encountered myself.

To give you an example — here’s a body shot from May 23rd, 2017 on the left and about 4 weeks later (June 26th).

Now I don’t follow any crazy diet but whole foods and clock in about 30-40 min of HIIT per week.

And then, I include two 24-hour fast in this period along with a few 16h intermittent fasting.

But this habit of periodically doing a 24-hour fast has helped me to get some amazing results. I’ve —

• Stayed away from the doctor and pharma drugs since Jan 2016 and counting,
• Reversed my chronic low back pain, and
• Also trained my body to burn stored fat to derive energy. Normally, our body derives energy from glucose which we take in the form of food.

I thought that’s actually a neat habit to develop that many of you may be interested in practicing in your own lives.

So I sat down and reverse engineered. Broke down the systems that enabled me to be able to pull a 24-hour fast with ease these days. And I’m sharing those systems with you below.

I’m sharing those systems with you below.

How To Pull Off Your First Ever 24-Hour Fast

These are the 5 systems aka micro-habits that will help you to build up to be able to successfully do your first 24-hour fast while keeping your calm —

System #1 – Replace any refined carbs from your breakfast to whole carbs (Preferably more proteins and fats)

Basically, ditch that bread. Most of the ones you get in the store are cleverly disguised as whole wheat bread but they have refined flour in some proportion in the ingredient list. The refined carbs (which also includes sugar) screw up with your insulin sensitivity by causing severe insulin spikes which the pancreas releases to channel the gushing glucose in the blood stream.

And if you’ve trained your stomach to get a high insulin rush in the morning i.e. you start your day on donuts, muffins, pastries, etc, then you’ll get pissed when you try system #2.

So if you’re thinking of doing your first 24-hour fast, the first step is to replace any refined carbs from your breakfast. Depending on how much refined carbs you’ve been having in your breakfast for ages, it could take anywhere from 4 – 12 weeks to reset your body.

Some breakfasts options you could try –

• Old fashioned oats cooked with water or milk (almond, coconut, cow’s milk) topped with berries and some nuts (walnut or almond) and seeds (sunflower or pumpkin). You can also sprinkle some cinnamon powder to get its anti-inflammatory benefits.
• Whole food smoothie. Use any combination of greens (spinach, kale, steamed broccoli, etc), fruits (berries, banana, apple, etc), liquid base (water, milk), and toppings like ground flax seed, seeds, nuts, and spices (ground cinnamon, cardamon, clove, turmeric, black pepper, etc).
• Stir-fried black beans, eggs, and spinach topped with sriracha.

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System #2 – Skip breakfast and don’t eat until noon

Once you’ve mastered system #1 i.e. you now eat whole foods as your first meal of the day, you can implement the next system which is – just skip breakfast and don’t eat until noon.

I promise you won’t die and once you overcome the first few days of mental hunger pangs, you’ll start to enjoy the morning hours in your work day.

What works for me is to replace the breakfast with green tea or black coffee. I love this system because when you decide that you’re going to skip breakfast, it saves up the decision-making energy you’d have otherwise spent on deciding what to eat.

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System #3 – Practice intermittent fasting for a quarter

Skipping breakfast and not eating until noon is basically what intermittent fasting is. Considering you eat your last meal at 8pm, if your next meal is at noon, then you’re fasting a good 16-hour. You could get into semantics and say that intermittent fasting is a 20-h fast where you eat only in the 4-h window.

Now you could get into semantics and say that intermittent fasting is a 20-h fast where you eat only in the 4-h window. That’s true. But I’m trying to help you build up to that and so if you’ve never fasted 15+ hours before, then 16-h is a great window which you can automatically clock by eating dinner at 8p.

I did intermittent fasting for over a year because I noticed that this also helped reverse any inflammation induced pain that was a common thing for my body.

Practice intermittent fasting for 3 months or if you also realize some other benefits, just keep going on.

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Once you’ve practiced intermittent fasting for a good quarter, you should be ready for a full 24-h fast.

Now, this is where things get a bit tricky.

1. To successfully do your first 24-hour fast, you need to give your brain a good reason on why do you want to fast? ^[4]
2. Once you’ve answered your why, pick a day, preferably on the weekend or on a day when you don’t have to make too many decisions and can keep calm and fast on.
3. Avoid any processed refined carbs for the last meal before your 24-hour fast. Note the time of the last meal.
4. Then wake up next morning and get going with your day and don’t think about food .

On the day of fasting, you can increase your success rate by —

• Designing your environment: Try not to be around food as visual imagery of foods can trigger carving in your brain. So working at the coffee shop is not a smart idea. Also, try to stay away from the kitchen or the refrigerator at your place.
• Stay hydrated and get your beverage game on: If it’s your first time, your stomach and brain will try to mess up with you. Put you can pacify them by sipping water. My go to is a herbal tea. Black coffee is also cool. Just keep sipping on to your favorite beverage.
• Stick to low to moderate physical activity: Go for reading books or an activity where you can focus with minimal physical exertion. If it’s your first time, I’d definitely not try to lift weights or do long cardio sessions as it may lead to headaches.

And that’s it.

Practice the above systems and you’ll be doing your first 24-hour fast in no time.

Also, if you already have done 24-hour fast in the past, then I’d love to learn from you any systems that you use that I didn’t include above. Mind sharing it below on the comments?

P.S. As I write this, I’m planning to do my first 48-hour fast. If you’re interested in pulling off your first 24-hour fast, message me on Whatsapp @ 513-223-1217 and if we have around 5 folks, I’ll create a group and guide you throughout the process.

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*Autophagy is a natural process of the body’s internal cleaning system. Basically, your cells create membranes that hunt out scraps of dead, diseased, or worn-out cells; gobble them up; strip ’em for parts; and use the resulting molecules for energy or to make new cell parts. ^[5]

References

1. Federico Pietrocola et al . Fasting improves anticancer immunosurveillance via autophagy induction in malignant cells . 2016 Cell Cycle, Vol. 15 (24)

2. Valter D. Longo et al. Fasting: Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Applications . 2014 Cell Metabolism, Vol. 19 (2)

3. The Difference Between Fasting and Caloric Restriction
4. Based on your health & fitness habits personality type , your why will differ. For example, as a questioner you’re more likely to do it for the scientific benefits of fasting whereas if you’re an obliger, you would not do it for the sake of science but you could pull your 24-hour fast if you’re doing it in a group and have people keeping you accountable. As for a rebel, your why is best around the fact that you can go without food for 24-hour and still feel awesome.
5. Autophagy: The Real Way to Cleanse Your Body