This past week I went up north to my boyfriend’s chalet. We decided to have a  little get away, disconnect from our hectic schedules, focus on our work and take time for ourselves. It was his idea to attempt a 72 hour fast and give our bodies a total reset. He had done it 2 other times but this time we figured that we could try it together and see what would happen.

Here are the 2  rules we set out for ourselves:

1. We would take 2 daily walks 
2. Drink water with salt to replenish our electrolytes and wait for the side effects to kick in. 

Didn’t seem too tough, but let me tell you as the hours went by this became quite the challenge…

Before I go on to explain my journey over the course of  the next 72 days let’s discuss fasting…

INTERMITTENT FASTING:

A term that some of you might have heard of is intermittent fasting. This is when you give yourself certain hours of the day where you can eat. Let’s say you eat between the hours of 12 am-9 pm. In that case, you have a 9 hour eating window and a 15 hour fasting window. Essentially the 15 hour fasting window creates a calorie deficit timeframe since we are spending more time not eating than eating. Intermittent fasting is something that I’m very familiar with as I have practiced this in the past. When I’ve done this over a couple of weeks, I’ve woken up feeling less tired, more energized, looking and feeling less bloated. The reason why this happens is because during the fasting stage our body relies on the fat we have stored in our body for energy. 

Other things that can start to happen is that our cells will begin to  repair and we  enter a stage called autophagy. The term “auto” means self and “phagy” means eating”. Essentially it means self eating or cleansing. The way I see it is that autophagy is responsible for the cleansing of your cells. What I mean by this is that during this stage all of your damaged cells get cleansed away. Our cells are in constant growth and repair cycle as we go about our day. When we fast, autophagy takes over and helps to repair our damaged cells more efficiently. This will lead to optimal cell function, reduced oxidative stress in our body, it allows for disease prevention and better immune performance. Fasting actually helps our bodies do a total detox on its own, forcing it to work. This is why it helps prevent so much oxidative stress and it can promote overall better health and longevity in the long run. During this repair cycle, we can also experience reduced inflammation throughout our body which is a key marker to reducing the risk of developing a disease. It also plays a key role in bettering our brain and heart health. Fasting helps to regulate our blood glucose level and reduce our blood pressure if practiced repeatedly. 

Why would I explain intermittent fasting ? Well if you understand the basics of intermittent fasting you will see that a 72 hour fast is essentially the same thing just with stronger effects on the body since it’s for an extended period of time. 

What happens during a 72 hour fast? 

I’ll break down what should happen each day then give you a little anecdote about what I was feeling on each day…

DAY 1:

During day one, people usually experience periods of hunger, slight fatigue and discomfort. It is also extremely common to experience some irritability. When we begin to feel hungry during a fast the first thing to occur is that we have a depletion of glycogen stores in the liver. It is during this stage that our bodies turn to our liver to release stored fat cells that can be used as energy. This is because our bodies have nothing to use as energy since we aren’t eating.

In simpler terms, when we eat food, typically in the form of glucose (aka carbs), our body has 2 pathways for it to go. It can either get released in the bloodstream and travel to a muscle that needs it  for energy or if we don’t need it our body takes that glucose and stores it in the liver as glycogen. When glycogen is stored it only gets used up when there is no available glucose. Hence when we fast our body turns to stored glucose since we are not putting anything in our body to give us energy. 

So what happened to me during day one?

Overall day one was not too bad. We decided to start at 11: 27 am. That morning I made us breakfast. I served up some scrambled eggs, toast with peanut butter, some healthy pancakes ( that I made with minimal ingredients), some apple and tangerines and water. After we ate we went on our first walk of the day. Feeling pretty confident my boyfriend and I were feeling pretty good and ready to start our fast. During the afternoon I began to feel a little hungry, nothing too crazy but I could have eaten a small snack and been satisfied. It eventually went away and I was totally fine. Both of our energy levels seemed to be fine as we continued about our day doing our work.

When it was time for our second walk we actually went snowmobiling. This was a nice distraction, we had a great time and we were feeling totally fine. Once we returned we continued about our day, we both started having some moments of slight fatigue and hunger. Throughout the entire day we kept drinking water and adding some salt from time to time. 

I would say this, the moments of fatigue were slightly better than the moment of hunger. When you’re tired you can take a nap and feel better afterwards. When you’re hungry, that’s a whole other story. You can try all you want to distract yourself but the hunger remains. Both would happen sporadically throughout the late afternoon and into the evening. The only moments that felt somewhat intense were when both occurred at the same time. It wouldn’t last too long but it wasn’t very pleasant.  At night we both got tired super early, we tried to stay up as much as we could but the fatigue had definitely hit hard so we headed off to bed.

DAY 2:

After 24 hours, our bodies enter what’s called a ketosis. Since our body is heavily reliant on our fat stores at this point,  we have an accumulation of ketones in the liver. Our liver is responsible for the breakdown of fat cells. This process is called ketogenesis. The word  “keto” stands for ketone bodies and the word  “genesis”  is for   synthesis. Thus, ketogenesis is the formation of ketone bodies.  Ketone bodies are a byproduct of fat breakdown before the fat cells can be converted into energy. Ketone bodies can also be used as energy but that’s another metabolic pathway. During this stage people have experienced increased mental clarity, enhanced ability to focus as well as some moments of intense fatigue, mood swings and some muscle weakness.

Here’s what happened to me during day 2:

Waking up I was feeling a little tired but I  had slept pretty well. I did wake up feeling a little hungry, like I could go for a light breakfast. After having been awake for a little while, the fatigue had kicked in. We still took our daily morning walk. This walk felt much slower as I felt myself having very low energy reserves.  When we returned from our walk we took a break and took a nap. We were both feeling pretty tired and didn’t have too much energy to do much. After we woke up I was feeling a little better, I was able to do some work. The weather up north was pretty warm and sunny and I decided to take some fresh air and soak in some vitamin D. This did me good! It gave me some energy but that went away rather quickly. The afternoon was rough for me and I kept having those moments of hunger and with each time it would feel more and more intense. I would often drink water when I felt hungry, but let me tell you, water is not the same thing as actual food!

As the afternoon went by, I felt more and more tired. Despite this we still went on our second walk which really felt like a challenge for the both of us compared to the one we took in the morning. Immediately after our walk I was extremely tired and needed to relax. Overall the feeling of fatigue just made me feel really relaxed and a little bit weak due to the lack of food.  At this point any food sounded absolutely delicious !

Trying to do work later in the evening was challenging. I found myself getting easily distracted. I was able to do some reading and took some time to relax.  A couple of times it was extremely difficult for me to get up quickly. It felt like a challenge and if I would get up I would feel my head spin for a brief moment. At the end of the day we were both extremely tired and went to bed even earlier than the night before.  My limbs felt really heavy and I was extremely low on energy. Time seemed to be going by extremely slowly so we gave in and called it a night early. Overall I would say this day was the most difficult due to the waves of energy followed by extremely low energy and extreme hunger. 

DAY 3:

During the last 24 hours our bodies are still in ketosis and the process continues. As this process continues the signs and symptoms also process. Eventually we enter the autophagy process. As this occurs, people begin to experience enhanced mental clarity, improved mood, reduced puffiness and or bloating. 

What did I experience on day 3?

Waking up for our final day was a struggle, I woke up feeling extremely tired, my body was a little bit sore and getting out of bed was a struggle. I ended up falling back asleep for a couple more hours and I felt better afterwards. Laying in bed I felt a little noxious, I suspect this is because of the lack of sleep and the exhaustion taking over my body.  I continued to drink it with salt as I had been doing the other 2 days. We took another walk in the morning. This one was the most difficult because there was some ice outside so we had to be extra careful but also because it was extremely difficult to move our bodies. They just felt weak but I would say that there wasn’t a whole lot of mental fatigue, just body fatigue. In the afternoon I was able to do more work than I was the day prior. I just had to force myself and it was honestly more doable. We ended up taking another nap and felt much more productive and  better afterwards. We once again got extremely tired really early and it took us a while to fall asleep. The eagerness of waking up in the morning and being able to eat was definitely on our minds. We kept naming foods that we would eat when our 72 hours were over which was really cruel to be doing to yourself when you are feeling extremely hungry which we both were at that time. As I layed in bed I did experience some muscle cramps in my calves which went away after a brief massage. 

The next morning we were up really early. As we waited for the clock to strike 11:27, the time felt to be moving at a turtle speed. I did some reading and work as I waited for the time to go by. At this point I was so eager to eat, there was nothing else on my mind. Our first food post fast was going to be something light to get our body going and to make it easier on our stomach. We choose an apple. Let me tell you there’s no better feeling than chomping into a crunchy gala apple. The taste was magnificent and my boyfriend and I both looked at each other as we both completed the 72 hour fast!

Here are my final thoughts:

We were very proud for having challenged ourselves to complete the task. The 3 days were not always easy but we knew that our body was doing what it needed to do to repair itself. Not eating when hungry also made me realize how conditioned we are to eating when we are used to eating. In its own way we have programmed our bodies to eat. Of course it is extremely important to listen to our body and feed it good food but sometimes a good rest can do just the trick to guide our system. 

The past 3 days also made me realize how powerful the mind is. It would have been so easy to just eat something at the first feeling of hunger. The challenge was also to allow our body enough time to go through each stage and put it to work.