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Comment by arunix | Hacker News Reader

Same here. My hunger plateaued after two days, but didn't go away, just became a bit more bearable. 12 days was the longest fast I've done.

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12 days with no food? Like just water and electrolytes etc.?

This is some spartan discipline.

Definitely doable and very common in many old cultures, have a look at the film "The science of fasting" (original German), might be eye opening: https://youtu.be/WgLJ_dfKy1E

> Video unavailable. This video contains content from LDS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds

I hope LDS burns in hell, whoever they are.

Same here. Guess they don’t like Ecuador.

Apparently the only whitelisted regions are DE and FR, so they don't like a lots of people.

Latter Day Saints??? The Mormons? (I get the copyright block message here in the USA)

I looked it up, and it's "content management company" Little Dot Studios, who seem to make money by claiming things on youtube to steal ad money and extort people.

Ugh. I hope the Mormons hit them with a trademark violation!

https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=WgLJ_dfKy1E

Why would you do this to yourself?

Last week I fasted for 5 days. Today I ate sugar again. I cannot speak for OP but my primary reasons were curiosity and becoming more aware of my body and energy levels. The last days I was super active, productive and in a crazy good mood. Today I feel like a slump. I probably will do it again and 5 days was much easier than expected. You probably need some experience to do it for 12 days, but I am very confident that it is manageable after the second or third time. It‘s like sport. People say „why would you do it“, but when you experience it by yourself you know intrinsically that it isn’t actually that bad.

Is it discipline? Or a medical condition? For example, I wouldn’t say someone with anorexia has impressive discipline. I can’t think of any reason rooted in reality why someone would fast for almost 2 weeks straight.

Same. 12 days. Was training like a machine I felt almost high. Very clear mentally. Lots of extra time. Wasn't particularly hungry.

I'm confused. You say "same", so you agree with arunix and jraby3? For them their level of hunger increased the longer they fasted. But then you wrote "wasn't particularly hungry", so you agree with franciscop?

Impressive if you did training while fasting btw!

I should have been more clear. For me at least, the peak hunger point was approximately 48hrs. It subsided substantially from there. I am fit and train often. But I've had a life long unhealthy relationship with sugar, which I managed to solve some months after I started fasting.

This reminds me of how some people argue they actually drive better when drunk.

Many studies have proven that:

1. Driving ability is impaired by alcohol consumption (or lack of sleep, incidentally)

2. People are very bad at estimating how severely impaired they are (wrt being drunk or kust tired)

Are there any similar studies around ability to mentally focus / perform physical activities while fasting?

Perhaps it depends on the intellectual load, and only doable if watching TV.

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