Exercise, fasting shown to help cells shed defective proteins
news.harvard.edu
news.harvard.edu
Do you make any other alterations to your diet?
It made me think I was doing something wrong but then the more I thought about it, maybe I just don't need more than those 4hrs of sleep when I'm fasting.
There's a phase, but it passes. It's fairly well known that operating in fat-burning mode puts one in a different head space. It's one of the features commonly touted by advocates of the ketogenic diet, which experientially is very similar. There's a mental alertness and clarity, in my experience it's accompanied by elevated energy levels as well.
It seems to me that it arguably benefits the species to fire on all cylinders in periods of scarcity, as it improves chances of locating food before starvation. In periods of plenty, there's no urgent need, so a more conservative baseline mode of operating is advantageous as it saves fuel as fat for the scarcity periods. Humans didn't evolve with grocery stores and refrigeration, scarcity was a regular and mortal issue, our bodies evolved to address it.
Whenever I fast it feels like I'm on a sustained upper of sorts, once the hunger phase passes. It's kind of like being permanently wired, keyed up, sometimes a little over eager. And yeah it can interfere with going to sleep, similar to drinking coffee late in the day. It's not a problem in my experience if the day is spent being physically active though. Which I think makes perfect sense if we accept that this is an evolutionary trait improving odds of finding/killing a meal. We're supposed to be actively locating next meals when awake in this mode, not sedentary.
I've found it to be a valuable life hack and would argue everyone should at least be familiar with the experience enough to know the initial hunger phase is short-lived and what follows afterwards isn't unpleasant at all, and actually advantageous in some aspects. There are many activities where not having to bother with food/cooking/eating for a few days is game-changing, this combined with elevated energy levels and alertness as well? It's like magic. I never take food on day hikes anymore for instance. Instead I don't eat for the 24-hours prior and just bring water. I'm well clear of the hangry phase, and feel like running the entire thing (and if I'm alone, often do), it's unreal. There's plenty of fat on my person to last weeks of fasting.
I was about to add that I've never tried fasting, but I just realised that a lot of people do this "intermittent fasting" stuff where you don't eat for sixteen hours. I normally eat dinner at 5:30 pm and breakfast around 9 am, so I guess I'm almost there? I've never noticed any real benefits though.
When I fast I'm fucking hungry, and that doesn't go away, though it becomes a bit more manageable; the intensity of the hunger waxes and wanes.
>It's fairly well known that operating in fat-burning mode puts one in a different head space... There's a mental alertness and clarity, in my experience it's accompanied by elevated energy levels as well
Definitely never experienced anything like this. Quite the opposite really.
Though I do enjoy the sheer uncomfortableness I feel when fasting in a weird sort of way, almost like feeling it makes the feed state feel so much better.
Maybe when people who are naturally aloof and easy-going are fasting, they get alertness and clarity. I'm already a somewhat aggressive person maybe it pushes me a bit too far.
My coworker and I are very good friends. When went on a restrictive diet for a month, we both were hangry all the time and eventually she stop talking to me (even though I'm her boss). When we look back at that month, we can laugh, but at the time we had no idea we acting like that. A third coworker just rolled her eyes at us because she knew what was going on.
Maybe there's a significant diet/lifestyle component? For example I don't derive much of my happiness from the food I eat when not fasting. I have known multiple people over the years who eat almost exclusively comfort foods and it's the only thing keeping them out of depression. They would probably be very agitated by a multi-day fast.
My diet is pretty restricted in general, there's not a whole lot missing after the transition into fasting in terms of my daily life experiences and rewards. It's mostly a small burden has been removed.
I wonder if that is what happens to cause wakefulness?
Has anyone here tried 2 full weeks of water fasting? Any extra precautions to take?
How do people make it past this?
If everybody around you feels as miserable, but they are not worried, it's way reassuring :) Bonus if you are in an isolated place making temptations hard.
Another thing is that you should avoid hard things in your first fast, such as working, reading complex material, filling administrative papers, etc. Take the time to rest, watch movies, listen to music, etc. The first two fasts I kept my job, and I didn't benefit as much as the next where I decided to take it easy.
Surprisingly, walking 2 to 3h a day helps a lot to feel less shitty, although you should not do it alone the first time you fast.
Once you are used to it, it does not necessarily because less shitty the next time. But you know what's up, and so it's easier.
One thing though, is that fat people and people with bad food habits will have a harder time.
When you fast, your ghrelin levels peak in the first 24 hours, but after that, they steadily decline. A lot of people don't even feel hungry anymore after about day three.
I have done 3-4 days water fast a few times out of curiosity. In my case, the hunger cravings diminshed after 48 hours or so.
However, I've never feel better, worse, or different from the experience. No extra energy, no extra ability to focus, no changes in sleep, no excessive fatigue, etc. Other than the hunger, I felt normal.
I am convinced that fasting is a fad and may have placebo effect if you think it will.
Addition: I have used a 48-72 hour fast as a precursor to a longer-term low carb/keto diet (for weight loss). The fast will get the excess sugar out of your system and you'll be able to get into ketosis quickly.
or... different people respond differently to it.
... most of the effects can be verified with blood tests...
If you can't handle a keto diet you might have issues.
I'll crave things like pickle juice. Clearly the body wants its salts. It's amazing how good it is as signaling the things it needs, when it needs them.
My wife will make some really appalling beverage for me, containing pickle juice, apple cider vinegar, lite salt, and I think lemon juice. It terrifies me to think about. On a fast, though? I'll literally drink it by the quart and want more.
Medically one probably ought to get advice prior to trying it.
This is just the latest of many studies that provides clinical evidence for what people have anecdotally reported for millennia: occasional fasting makes people feel healthier and seems to make their bodies work better.
I used to get routine blood work done every 7 days while water fasting, but I don't do it anymore.
The "healing crisis" typically begin around the 12-16 day marks, so just expect them and embrace the healing :)
Are there specific soups typically used? Or just any soup will do?
> Any patient with negligible food intake for more than five days is at risk of developing refeeding problems.
In Jung's book, I think I can remember the 'safe' fasting period was about five days at most, when you go over that you should take precautions.
Do you expect that a longer fasting can bring more rewarda than multiple, shorter fasts?
What healthy changes have been observed? Has your doctor noted changes? Do you couple this with exercise?
Try taking 200mg-400mg of L-theanine with each cup of coffee. It'll temper the anxiety feeling you're having.
Also important to quit coffee, I find it improves a lot of things (after a week of withdrawal symptoms).
Btw, I don't use coffee as a sleep substitute. I wake up every morning without an alarm. I drink coffee for the taste. I simply love it.
Better mood and feeling more energized through the day. Better vision. The latest is quite strange, but I can really see better, probably a side effect of improved concentration and calmness.
The thing that clicked for me with IF, was instead of thinking about fasting for X hours, I think about having a 9 hour window each day when I can eat. While not perfect, I slide this window around if I have stuff going in the morning or at night.
Whatever hunger I would feel in the mornings stopped pretty quickly. I workout first thing, so I was already doing most of my workouts on an empty stomach. I had figured out awhile ago I had much more energy before that first meal.
The hardest part for me was skipping milk in my coffee in the mornings since that would break my fast. It's still the place I trip up, but if I can go 4/7 mornings that's a win.
As an aside, initially I also used hunger as a mental exercise. I would think that there are people who are truly starving, and I can't go 15 hours without food? Toughen up. I don't really notice hunger much anymore so that exercise didn't last.
I started with the 'skip breakfast' style of fasting, which was good, but then I did my homework on the different 'types':
16:8 16 hours no food: 8 hour 'feeding window' (generally normal dinner, no breakfast, later lunch)
18:6 - this is where I believe most Intermittent fasters go.
20:4 - I've done this a bit, and it works for me, but I can't do it more than once or twice(!) a week.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are other functions and processes in the body benefit (maybe kidneys and the liver benefit from some more 'downtime'). I am not a huge fan of the 'evolution' argument, but I assume our distant ancestors ate meals in somewhat sporadic schedules, so it would kinda make sense that our bodies are tuned to that cadence, as opposed to the constant supply of processed foods that we currently subsist on.
It looks like you can lost a fair amount of muscle mass, and that you lose the most muscle mass early, so 1 21 day fast would be better for you than 3 7 day.
I know that they do IF, but do we have examples of bodybuilders that do 3+ day regular fasts? I'm not aware of any. IF can simply be a neat way to calorically reduce, but legitimate multi-day fasting is another beast entirely.
Regarding the fasting time, I think there's a big difference between the IF you are doing and eg the multi-day fasts people here are talking about. They don't sound helpful for strength sports.
Longer fasts are something different entirely. They have their place, but are more of an event that must be planned. Personally, I like things I can do for life and turn into habits. I don't see how I could make 3-7 day fasts a habit.
Oh, and I'm not the person you asked, but my best DL was conventional 525lb weighing 199 :)
I would agree that multi-day fasts would not be good for strength sports. There doesn't seem to be a authoritative source but LeanGains states you won't lose muscle if you're fasting less than 24 hours. (https://leangains.com/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked-major-u...)
That being said you call it a health tool, and then say it produces stress, which has been documented as being extremely detrimental to health. You also mention, being unable to focus, and being wired.
I'm glad it's helped you, but this endorsement makes me question the health benefits more actually, and makes me less interested in trying it.
Now, consider that fasting (and, really, consistent exercise as well) is correlated with high self-control and an internal belief that you're doing this to improve your physical health. The worst kind of Stress is stress from sources you can't control, but you have complete control over what you eat.
The dose makes the poison. Not enough stress has been shown to be extremely detrimental to health too (Fitness training produces stress. Take your pick of studies showing that you should still do it).
1. Accept you will seemingly need less sleep and go to bed later, use any sleepless time in bed as an opportunity to read and meditate.
2. Be extra careful with sleep hygiene.
3. Use hot then ice cold showers before bed, and possibly sleep aids spanning from 1 mg melatonin to 7.5 mg doxylamine (very safe, but gives you a hangover due to long half-life, maybe not so bad if you feel too wired) to benzodiazepines or hypnotics like ambien (shorter half-lifes, more effective, ideally with assistance from a doctor).
Some argue that sleeping less is a good stress during a fast, but I haven't seen any good evidence to support that.
My feeling is it gives off a certain "body hacking" vibe that HNers are attracted to.
Well, have you tried it? Unlike many fad diets there's nothing to buy, no long-term commitment, just one or a few days where you don't eat. You can do some reading to find tricks to make it easier, but all it really takes is willpower. Maybe it will do something for you, maybe not.
> a handful of flawed or limited studies
As much as we worship high quality, large-population, peer-reviewed studies, ultimately the only study that matters is the n=1, yourself - only you can find out what works for you.
I understand what you're trying to say but found it funny you tried to conflate real vetted science with "worship" and then said to throw all that out in favor of a personal opinion.
You just aren't allowed to take the n=1 experiment you just ran and claim it applies to everybody equally.
But if you want to know what works for you, and do not particularly care to publish a scientific paper, you can do experiments freely, and the results are as valid as your experimental methodology and the resulting statistical power justify.
You are also further entitled at that point to trust your n=1 experiment for yourself over any future n=50 experiment in the future, because it doesn't matter whether 35 of 50 people slept better when taking Vitamin C before bed or whatever; what you personally care about is whether you do, and no amount of reading that paper will tell you whether you're going to be in the 35 or the 15.
I've had to experiment on myself like crazy for various reasons. My results are (most likely) utterly inapplicable to you. And I don't care very much about that. You can do your own experiments on you. In the meantime, while I don't know exactly what the parallel universe looks like in which I didn't do these experiments, I am very confident (95%+) parallel Jerf is in pretty bad shape and almost certainly on some rather powerful and nasty meds that he does not in fact need to be on that are actually making things worse in the long term.
My experiments have been informed by various papers related to my condition, so it's not like that science is useless; far from it! But, again, no amount of reading papers about Celiac disease and how taking more Taurine helped 80% of people's hearts work better will tell me whether I'm in the 80% or the 20%.
Re my comment about science still being useful, there are certainly papers about taurine supplementation being useful for people suffering from atrial fibrellation. IIRC, I did not find any references on that for Celiac specifically, but since Celiac is basically "generalized failure to properly absorb nutrients" it's not much of a leap to assume it's related.
For heart purposes, it should be matched with 1/2-1/3rd (from the looks of it; it's about as well tested as most dosages, which if you dig into them, are often a lot more guess-and-check than you might like) as much L-Arginine by mass, i.e., I take about 3g Taurine and 1g L-Arginine about three times a day. (I'm a big guy, but the papers often tested twice that, too, so it shouldn't be a dosage issue.)
It was ultimately only a part of the nutrient cocktail I ultimately ended up needing, but it was/is a very important part of it. On those occasions I run out of it, I can tell less than 24 hours later.
There are worse things than Celiac; at least I can supplement my way out of the worst aspects of it, and that's not a thing you can say about all chronic conditions. But it still sorta blows; I'm constantly playing nutrient catch-up with my body.
For general gut health there's a bunch of interesting stuff about diet resistant starch as a probiotic -- not sure if that's on your radar.
How do you know one specific thing worked, and it wasn't something else? Or just mere coincidence? As someone who has Crohn's disease I have lost track of the times someone has said "oh, blah worked for this person" etc etc.... all anecdotes, with no way of deciding whether there are side-effects that need to be weighed-up. No thanks.
At the end of the day, it's just you doing what works for you. When you do find something that works for you, it's just another anecdote that won't work for everyone else, but it's hard to argue with what makes you happier.
Also, it's not like eating less is exotic or risky. It's one of the many things I'd try if I was suffering.
Keep a journal.
Try to have an established routine, then try one and only one new thing at a time.
Do a lot of reading to try to develop a mental model to fit it into.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this.
If you have never fasted before, you need to read up on fasting. If you want to make dietary changes, you read up on lots of dietary stuff. Etc.
If you have a specific diagnosis, you can read up on the latest research into that, plus related stuff. For example, I read stuff about genetics and the gut biome because that helps me put things into context.
You do a thing and something happens. You note it and try to figure out what the process is. Was it random? Was it coincidence? Was it causative? If so, how? You build from there.
This is the point, a sample n=1 is only valid for that one person. You can only make educated guesses on what to test on yourself, but probably you need something slightly different from everyone else.
I do not know much about your disease, but for a diet is it pretty harmless to experiment if you are not doing anything extreme and keep yourself informed on current science
We should be (and there are people who do) encouraging people to learn how their diets, their behaviors affect them emotionally, physiologically and psychologically. Scientific studies really aren't as applicable to the general population as one would like to believe. So the only way to learn is to experiment on themselves.
Isn't this flawed reasoning? You can try a diet, feel good but still be unhealthy in a way that will kill you earlier that your life expectancy.
Pragmatically speaking, would you prefer a shorter life where you feel great, or a longer one where you just feel "OK"? What if we're talking one month? One year?
A problem would be if you do too many experiments too often, but this you also need to control in n=50.
There is a huge difference between subjectivity and n=1
Those who do are rare, as they would need to last at least a few decades. IIRC to publish actual research on diet effect on lifespan you need 80 years.
What you do is develop metrics useful to predict lifespan and quality of life and then see the impact of a diet of those metrics. There is nothing you cannot do privately here (using some laboratory for analysis obviously)
I am not saying it is easy and for sure it is error prone, but so is science itself.
You are not a good observer of yourself. You have biases and subjectivity when "measuring" yourself, so that makes your own "measurements" of yourself unreliable. Furthermore, there are certain observations you cannot even make. For obvious reasons, you cannot even do something so simple as estimating the effect on life expectancy :).
As do the nurse who draws your blood, the tech who tests it, and the doctor who interprets the results. By all means recruit them to assist in your study, but don't do it in blind faith.
> that makes your own "measurements" of yourself unreliable
Perhaps in some ways and for some metrics, but conversely you are the best at knowing where you experience pain, how you "feel," and how today differs from yesterday.
> you cannot even do something so simple as estimating the effect on life expectancy :)
Well, no more than anyone else can :)
I've had luck reading primary research and doing my own self-experiments. For what it's worth, fasting gives me substantially more energy and clarity of mind. Maybe it does for you too? Or maybe not. Probably worth the experiment.
True. I tried, got spectacularly confused and gave up. So now I just eat lots of fruit, vegetables and some meat.
I don't eat candy, crisps, fat food of any sort, and nothing processed. No alcohol.
I eat when I'm hungry, and I drink when I'm thirsty (couple coffees in the morning, then only water).
Nobody has been able to convince me there's a better way to eat and drink.
Dr. Jason Fung - 'Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk
Dr. Georgia Ede - 'Our Descent into Madness: Modern Diets and the Global Mental Health Crisis' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlVfwJ6RQU
I do hope that you will try it. It costs nothing, takes a negative amount of time since you gain at least a meal of free time out of it, and further, many people (like myself) find that it enhances athletic output.
I have never been on a "diet" in my life and have no affinity toward them (or that line of thinking at all).
You'll note that "diets" all focus on new and interesting things to eat ... fasting is the opposite of that (IMO, flawed) line of thinking.
It is removing something whereas most of the other diets simply want to replace something.
A buddy of mine was wondering when flagellation will be touted as a self-improvement technique in Silicon Valley circles, and it looks like that day is coming sooner rather than later.
Here enters the remark about being commonly predicted in the millennia is weakly relevant as it might suggest that we somehow evolved to accommodate this type of diet (obviously this is not a sound argument in general eg anti-vaxxers), self flagellation does not match this criteria as it was not that common and only for very little time.
For example maybe the skin repairing process produce proteins that also lower stress.
Then, most important phase, you should check whether it can be dangerous.
I would guess that there are 0 scientific papers affirming positive effects of self flagellation.
On the other hand, fasting has been practiced for at least 1000 years (Ramadan) so at least it's not harmful...
The research on caloric restriction and fasting is wide and deep. I'm curious where you got the impression the research was only a handful of flawed or limited studies?
"caloric restriction" 8089 studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22caloric+restric...
fast mimicking diet 80 studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=fasting+mimicking+...
I would hardly call fasting a fad. It has been around through the ages.
Here's some legitimate information on a fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PyyatqJSE
We know enough about some of the mechanisms involved and how it can promote healing the body by offering it a "reset" so-to-speak via autophagy.
Compared to the studies which have been done to support the current eating guidelines the studies on fasting have been wide and deep. Most current eating guidelines are based on a mix of "we though it sounds good", "everyone knows that fat is bad", "my friend from coca-cola told me that and he knows things" or "someone paid me to do the study and made it pretty clear that my future funding depends on the results".
I've been trying myself recently and so far no big changes, although I have lost a couple of pounds. But I think that's just because I had to cut out late night snacking!
> Study co-investigators included Jinghui Zhao and Sudarsanareddy Lokireddy, who is no longer at Harvard.
It turns out that “no longer at Harvard” in this case means stripped of his PhD due to fabricating data, and implicated in 6 other retractions for falsified data.
So...perhaps take this study with a grain of salt?
Made me chuckle because I actually remember periods of time in college/early career where I was probably IFing unintentionally just because I was terrible at feeding myself. I especially remember periods of time where I was so addicted to video games, I would forget to eat. Obviously there are other issues with such a lifestyle, but I wonder how often we sometimes slip into positive diet and exercise habits just as a consequence of external things in our lives.
I rarely eat breakfast and often skip lunch. I find that when instead of doing that I focus on eating more meals but also driving up my vegetable and fruit intake to as high a % of my calories as I can stand, I feel healthier and have an easier time keeping weight in check.
This actually has implications for genetic disorders.
I inadvertently discovered the value of semi fasting. It's called poverty. I sometimes am too poor to afford good quality food and learned while homeless that eating little or nothing for short periods was better for my health than exposing myself to germs and smoke etc to acquire usually low quality meals at soup kitchens.
I have a genetic disorder. Semi-fasting has really helped my condition to an unexpected degree. (I'm not recommending it for my condition. You first need fat reserves.)
I'm very interested in this research. I hope to eventually have a better understanding of the mechanism whereby this is beneficial.
[0] "...the researchers analyzed the effects of exercise on cells obtained from the thigh muscles of four human volunteers before and after vigorous biking. Following exercise, the proteasomes of these cells showed dramatically more molecular marks of enhanced protein degradation, including greater levels of cAMP."
Yesterday I broke a 40-hour fast at lunch, then exercised around 6 hours later.
I definitely didn't feel strong/energetic - but my numbers didn't actually suffer.
That being said, it was a relatively short fast that started when I was glycogen-saturated. A longer fast that starts in ketosis might be different - which is what I'm planning to do next week (60 hours after 5 days of < 20g carbs).
The first 24 hours breezed by, but it started getting tough around hour 42. Note this wasn't hunger - I actually wasn't hungry at all. The problem was overall lethargy and feeling foggy/light-headed. I did bounce back after a few hours though, and although I felt very weak around hour 58, mentally I felt fine. Constantly felt very cold, too.
I don't think the lethargy/weakness was due to dehydration (though drinking a lot of water on the second morning helped) or lack of sodium (was ingesting salt regularly). It could be lack of other minerals (potassium/magnesium).
The worst is that it really interferes with my sleep. It takes me hours to get to sleep and then I wake up every couple of hours.
I actually think I'm going to stop fasting for this very reason - it's not like I was doing this for weight loss, I was just experimenting to see how it felt. OMAD/IF will probably give me most of the health benefits of fasting without any of the drawbacks.
I'm trying to figure out why calling it intermittent fasting versus skipping breakfast all of sudden makes it almost controversial and a hot topic.
Because scientific data suggests it may have health benefits.
Doing intermittent fasting isn't simply skipping breakfast, you have to avoid any calorific consumption during the cycle (e.g. sugar/cream in drinks, snacks, etc). The length of the cycle is also starting to seem important with longer intermittent fasts (or full fasts) being more beneficial to health.
The whole topic remains me of high-intensity interval training (HIIT)[0] in a good way. Both HIIT and IF offer improved health outcomes with minimal investment (both time and effort). They're also scientifically backed. They aren't as effective as their full effort counterparts (e.g. healthy eating, longer exercise), but people seem more willing to try them and they become habits.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...
1) Skip breakfast completely
2) Zero coffein intake
3) Sunlight exposure: run topless if possible, go outside at noon for about an hour every day. Although it is not an issue for California as for the Northern Europe.
4) No milk (but cheese rarely)
5) No red meat (but fish and poultry sometimes)
I follow the Russian Sheiko powerlifting training plan, eating around 4500 calories a day. Not sure how my body would react to skipping entire days without eating. If I miss my second late night snack I wake-up famished.
My lifting weights go down by at least 10-15% if I haven't eaten anything that day. Tried lifting in the morning before breakfast - didn't go too well either, just put me in a bad mood because I felt too weak.
Also, I wasn't really proper fasting, just hungry because of skipping 1 meal.
Lots of people are exercising while fasted. Body builders, power lifters, and athletes across the strength/endurance spectrum. For things like camping or distance jogging, being able to start at 6:00 and go until 16:00 without food is a game changer.
And, no: people who are training fasted aren't training hungry... Their hunger chemicals dissipate after 20-30 min because they're fasted ;)
You should try it. I predict you will be very surprised.
Not only am I able to complete a power lifting regimen (1.5 hours, squats, deadlifts, basic stuff) in a 16+ hour fasted state but I sometimes find myself having more energy to do the lifts than in a non-fasted state.[1]
In two years I have never needed to stop short a resistance workout due to lack of energy (or whatever I used to worry about before I tried it).
Yes, you will need to more carefully budget those 4500 calories over the non-fasted blocks of time - you'll still need those calorie inputs. I suggest nut butters and avocados but whatever works ...
YMMV.[2]
[1] This is also true for my aerobic running workouts, but to be fair, I cannot do my full blown wrestling workout (60 mins of training followed by 4-6 5min rounds) in a fasted state.
[2] Something I found very surprising as I aged into my forties is that I used to think my exercise regimen(s) were the significant factor in my metabolism and calorie usage. In reality, if you add up how many calories you use lifting weights for 1.5 hours or running 5 miles, etc., it's quite modest ... the major contributor to my very high metabolic rate was just background metabolism. I mention this anecdotally because if you have difficulty without meals it's instructive to really consider how much of that is due to the workouts (which burn a (relatively) small amount of calories) vs. your actual background metabolism. It also suggests that if you have a negative response to IF now, it's worth trying again in five years as your background rate will naturally drop - even if you maintain the same (or higher) athletic output.
What benefits are there beside increased energy? I don't have a problem with my energy levels on my current regiment, I could do more exercise to burn more off.
I'll bet it's not optimal for significant strength gains.
I think it's possible, however, and it's really just a calorie math problem: if you require X calories per day to acquire whatever strength or weight gains you just need to be sure to hit that within 8 or 6 hours.
Which might be challenging, from a digestive standpoint.
I think I use about 3000 calories per day and can get that in two meals (implying a 16 hour fast) without any trouble, but when I do a 24 hour fast (implying one meal) I need to be careful and selective about that one meal ... and I probably go into a net calorie deficit over a 48 hour period as a result...
I'm not sure how heavy you are but those are already advanced (elite?) level lifts assuming you mean a 1300lb B/S/DL total. Since you must have been training for a number of years now you're probably going to struggle to get stronger if you're not on a caloric surplus. I'm not an expert though.
I water fast about 90 days out of the year (~25 consecutive days each time) and dry fast for about 30 (8 to 10 consecutive days each time).
People eat too much (and not even "bad" foods, just anything really) and more importantly - too often. Digesting food matter is a great way to get sick and maintain sickness.
How can a human possibly go "8 to 10 consecutive days" with no water?
In fact, there is also "soft" dry fast and "hard" dry fast. With the latter you also avoid any contact with water, such as washing hands, showers, etc.
I wouldn't recommend anyone should have a 8-10 day dry fast as their first fast, that's for sure.
But your body is capable of doing far more than you give it credit for. The concept of no one surviving 10 days without food or water is simply false. In fact, I have more energy on the 7th or 8th days of a dry fast than I did when I used to have a conventional diet.
Also, still wondering if you're in a dry or humid climate. And come to think of it, whether you're in a hot or mild climate.
Because I know of people who've been drinking water, but still reached a point of dehydration requiring medical attention, in hot or dry environments after moderate-to-extreme exertion. So my hunch would be that an 8-10 day "dry fast" might require minimizing activity in a cool, humid place.
And also still wondering: how much weight do you personally lose on each of the 8-10 day dry fasts you practice 3-4 times a year? (I find it strange such a simple question hasn't been answered.)
Hot. Arizona hot.
I don't track the weight anymore, about a pound a day, maybe a bit more. Early on it was nearly 2 pounds a day. Regain 75% of it on the scale rather quickly because I eat mostly fruits due to their water content. The weight loss is not what I'm after, as I said before, any weight loss during a dry fast is normal and expected. Those who need to put on weight generally do shortly after a fast is completed
Medical researchers would never jump at a chance to prove that fasting, something no one can patent and turn into a recurring revenue profit center, is the cure for many diseases they currently sell maintenance drugs and "treatment" for what they tell people is incurable.
University medical researchers in particular would chomp at the bit to get a study like this, with the potential to get into Nature and boost their reputation. Trust me, I've been an academic.
With regards to your scurvy comment: https://chestofbooks.com/health/natural-cure/The-Hygienic-Sy...
So our bodies doing what they have evolved to do is a way to 'get sick'?
So yes, most of what you eat is getting you sick whether you realize it or not.