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Comment by sridca | Hacker News Reader

Fasting is the ultimate weight loss tool. It also facilitates (muscle) growth and healing.

It also can put a strain on your organs if you are not too healthy. Consult a Doctor before trying it.

Any references for that claim (assuming 5 days water fast or less)?

My labs started deviating from normal in the wrong diection during 36 hr fasting in the hospital. Granted, I am very sick.

I hope you get better mate. If there's anything that might help and is doable by a stranger on HN, lmk.

"[I]ntermittent fasting diets may actually damage the pancreas and affect insulin function in normal healthy individuals, which could lead to diabetes and serious health issues." (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/20/fasting-diet...)

The National Council Against Health Fraud "strongly advises against the use of prolonged fasting for health purposes, and believes that requiring children to fast is a form of child abuse." https://www.ncahf.org/articles/e-i/fasting.html

Your first link talks specifically of fasting every other day, and is about rats. That is completely irrelevant to 5 day fasting in humans, whereas [0] is.

Your second link is from 1995; A lot has happened since. Yes, children should probably not fast. Other than that, more recent data (as well as old, but ignored, data) show that water fasting is good for you. And Valter Lango's research (see [0], and google for more) shows that it's actually extremely beneficial in many cases, especially during chemotherapy.

[0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/five-day-fasting-die...

I agree. One normal meal a day for a long period. It quickly becomes a habit and you no longer feel hunger. No requirement on the meal as long as it is reasonable (life is too short to eat things that taste bad!). And some exercise (45min cardio daily, doesn’t need to be high intensity), though I suspect losing weight is 80% food intake, 20% exercise. Worth taking some vitamin complements though.

I agree. Fasting is good and simple for weight loss. My first step was removing snacks. Now I am skipping breakfast. I see results. Take a look at this blog: https://simplelifeweightloss.blogspot.com/ Author has been on intermittent fasting for 12 years. It's quite inspiring.

I've read that fasting can increase GH levels. Do you know of any studies that directly link fasting to muscle growth? Intuitively I would guess that increased GH in the absence of a calorie surplus might lead to good muscle maintenance but poor muscle growth, particularly in people who already have a decent amount of muscle.

I do not know of studies, other than anecdotes such as this one:

> So, during the FMD I lost approximately 4.2 lbs of body fat, while GAINING nearly a pound of muscle! There was also a nice muscle building “rebound” effect once my fast ended and I began to exercise again.

https://www.quantifiedbob.com/fasting-mimicking-diet/

That seems extremely dubious, given:

> during my fast I refrained from any physical activity – no workouts or sports

and:

> for this experiment my Omron scale had to do since I didn’t have access to more accurate body composition tools

As someone who regularly fasts for a variety of reasons, I would agree -- it's nearly impossible to gain muscle while fasting anyway, and without working out in any way I can't imagine how that could happen at all.

But most likely the tool is measuring inaccurately.

> it's nearly impossible to gain muscle while fasting anyway

Fasting may not affect muscle gain during the fast, but it may during the following refeed.

I'm sure that's possible -- I've never experienced it. Perhaps if I were more disciplined about recovery.

I did a water fast for 2 weeks. It was...kind of amazing actually, recommend to try it at least once if you can. One tip: when you are done and are ready to break it, introduce food very slowly, I didn't and it was unpleasant to say the least.

> One tip: when you are done and are ready to break it, introduce food very slowly

Is that relevant even when doing a 3-5 days fast?

After 3 days I was OK with just eating normally (or even excessively TBH)

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