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Comment by hyperdunc | Hacker News Reader

I did a nine day fast and the first three days were difficult. From day four I was not hungry at all but also felt noticeably weaker and couldn't do anything strenuous. After nine days I lost 10kg and six months later had only gained back 3kg. But the best thing about the whole experience was redefining my relationship with food. I appreciate and enjoy it a lot more now.

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Your last comment really resonated with me. This year I started thinking about how we relate ourselves to food, and I've come to think that we live in a very food-centric society. We have TV shows, instagram accounts, magazines and influencers all dedicated to sharing the best meals, recipes and restaurants. It is also very hedonistic. If you eat, it must be something delicious and picture-perfect, otherwise it's a missed opportunity. Don't bother cooking if you're not a MasterChef-level cook, it's better to just Deliveroo.

It's okay to sometimes cook bland food, or food that doesn't look that great. It's just food after all. And honestly we cook and eat so much. We don't need to consume as much as we do.

After gaining a few kilos last year I decided to stop following so many cooks and recipe channels. Suddenly my obsession with food was gone. Before, if I wasn't cooking, or eating a meal or a snack, or thinking about going to a restaurant, I was watching cooking videos or reactions to meals. After cutting it off, I only thought about food when I was hungry, and I could spend the rest of the day with more important things. After that I started counting calories and I was surprised how little food we actually need to survive, especially with a sedentary lifestyle.

There's a part of a Louie CK special in which he talks about what would happen if God came back to Earth and talked to Man about what he'd done to his creation. "Why do you need money for?" "I need money to buy food" "What do you mean buy food? Just eat the shit on the floor!" "Yeah, but it doesn't have bacon in it". And honestly we place so much importance on what the food is. It's just sustenance, eat some leaves and you'll be OK.

When I got sick, I became mentally allergic to fat and sugar. I thus spent monthes eating only raw vegetables. There are so many subtleties in taste and texture you can finally 'see' when they're not coated (or drowned even) in sauces.

The pleasure you get is also different in that it doesn't create much of a crave feeling. And you rarely binge on salad or carrots.. your brain will naturally give up and say enough. When anything is sweetened you see yourself in a never ending loop.

Plus vegetables help digestion.

Anyways, raw is actually finer than it appears.

Agree. Your stomach will tell you that you’re full when it’s volume is expanded to where it thinks it’s full. Could be all water, carrots, or fried chicken for all it cares. The effects on your health though depend on what it actually was.

More than volume there id also a taste factor. Non sweetened produce have nice flavours and less nice ones, after a while something between your tongue and brain says 'no more'

Also don’t typically need salt for them to be palatable.

Oh man, I couldn’t disagree more about not needing to cook or make sure things taste good. That’s just knowing how to properly use spices, textures/temperature contrasts, and healthy ingredients. But I do agree that probably not many people know the sort of cooking I’m referring to here. Healthy food for me is nutritious, low to moderate in salt, and Whole Foods plant based. Portions matter too of course.

I think our relationship with food is profoundly linked to the culture we come from.

For me, food is first and foremost a social experience and something you share : everyday lunch with coworkers, dinners with my family, having two hours lunch with my extended family on the weekends. It would be kind of sad to eat bland food together while we could be enjoying something pleasant.

You cant lose 10kg in 9 days.. a normal person barely consume 300g fat a day.

Moste likely water lost? As is common afaik when going low-carb, at least to start with.

Yes

Insulin causes our body to retain water. In the first 3 days or so of a long fast like that you pee water like a firehose as your insulin levels plummet to nearly zero. Also fat burning becomes less efficient in the absence of glycogen stores due to ketone creation. In addition human growth hormone levels will increase.

10kg in 9 days is likely about 3-4kg fat/protein and 6-7kg water roughly speaking.

Exactly

Are you saying you didn't eat or drink anything during 9 days? What was your initial and final weight?

The fasting discussion in this thread seems to be about caloric fasting, rather than religious fasting. The latter tending to prohibit drinking, while the former doesn’t.

They said nothing about drinking. It is pretty common parlance to use "fast" to mean "without food/calories" (i.e. water is completely kosher, and some argue "black" tea/coffee/diet soda is too as it is 0 calories/negative calories).

One warning - tea isn't necessarily kosher, because some artificial flavors are made from non-kosher ingredients.

I don't think he's referring to kosher as confirming to kashrut. I think he's using it more literally as hebrew for "fit".

Most medical fasts recommend avoiding artificial sweeteners during extended fasts as they cause the release of insulin through the incretin effect.

I can’t speak for OP, but most fasts of this kinds allow drinking water at the very least, and sometimes even light broths like chicken broth. Religious fasts, on the other hand, often don’t even allow drinking water.

However it turns out some religious fasts allow you to eat whatever you want after dark, or something like that. The discovery of which tempered my awe somewhat.

Yeah, a lot of Muslims gain weight during Ramadan.[1] And I think they'd point out that the intent is spiritual.

[1]: https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/07/cairo-the...

FWIW this depends on the religion, traditional Christian fasts usually did allow water even in their strictest forms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Fast

Although as others pointed out, Ramadan in Islam does not.

The terms set tasting and dry fasting are sometimes used to distinguish between fasting from food and fasting from eating and drinking. For weight loss fasting, it's usually wet fasting if not specified.

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