Fasting & COVID-19

How it can help

Let me start off by saying fasting isn’t for everyone. In fact, the experts point out that if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, prone to disordered eating or a child, you should not fast. But if you are an otherwise healthy adult (consult with your doctor if you have underlying health conditions), it’s something you might want to consider.

There have been a lot of articles published here on Medium about fasting. But in case you aren’t familiar with the different types I offer this summary:

Intermittent Fasting (IF): Time restricted eating. There are several established protocols for IF — probably the most popular is the 16:8 protocol. With the 16:8, you fast for 16 hours, then you at your meals within an 8-hour feeding window. I do this daily — I fast from the end of dinner until lunch the next day — so I’m sleeping for much of my 16-hour fasting period. Then I eat lunch (usually at 1:00PM) and then dinner at 8:00. Outside of meals, I drink water and coffee (black).

Other IF protocols include 18:6, 20:4 and alternate day fasting (for example, eat on Monday; fast all day Tuesday; eat on Wednesday, etc.).

Extended Fasting (EF): These take the concept of IF further. Two days, three days — I’ve done a couple of EFs for 5 days. Some people do even longer fasts. But the experts don’t recommend EFs longer than 7 days without medical supervision.

Fasting is easier than it sounds. If you are currently eating a high-carb diet, you might find it a little difficult at first. You will get hunger pangs at typical mealtimes and/or snack times if you snack a lot. Drinking water can get you through these pangs — I use sparkling water — as can a cup of black coffee. After a few days of even 16:8 fasting, you will likely stop feeling hungry out of habit.

If you are eating a low-carb diet — and your body has adapted to using body fat for energy — it should be pretty easy. I get a kick out of “how to” guides for fasting because it’s really just that you don’t eat. But for more info on what to expect and how to prepare for fasting, I recommend googling “Jason Fung fasting.” He has a ton of resources online that will help.

The interesting thing about fasting is how your metabolism changes relative to a diet where you are just reducing calories 10 or 20%. After a while on a calorie restrictive diet, your metabolism will slow down to compensate for the lower calorie intake. But when your calorie intake is zero, your metabolism will speed up! So you will likely feel more energetic or, if you wear a fitness tracker, you might notice your resting heart rate is higher than usual.

One of the benefits of Extended Fasting is improved immune system response. These improvements take time, so how they might help with the current crisis is unclear. But there are a couple of other benefits that do apply to some of the fears people have with the threat of lockdown.

For one, if you only eat every other day (for example), your food supply will last twice as long. Here in Italy, we are on lockdown — but we are allowed to go shopping for groceries. But should supplies run short, we aren’t too worried. We have probably 8 meals in the house — if we cleaned out all the food in the refrigerator and freezer. But that could last us 4 weeks.

For those who fear starving to death, consider that even elite athletes are about 10% body fat. Most non-athletes are anywhere from 25–30% body fat or more if you are obese. But let’s say you weight 150 pounds and are 20% body fat. That means you have about 30 pounds of fat you can use for energy. A pound of body fat is about the equivalent of 3,500 calories. So 30 pounds of fat represents about 105,000 calories. Even if you use 2,500 calories a day, that 30 pounds of fat will keep you going for 42 days without eating anything.

And this brings us to a related product that people seem to be going insane over — toilet paper. When you are on an extended fast, you really don’t need it so much. With nothing going in, there is nothing to come out. Some people say they get constipated when they fast. But they are just not used to not needing to poop on a daily basis.

My first fast was a 5-day fast. The first day I had a lot of hunger pangs. But with coffee and water, I made it through. Then it was a lot easier. Day 2 I had a little hunger but could easily just not think about it. Days 3–5 were easy. The only difficult thing was figuring out what to do with all the extra time I had. You get an extra few hours a day when you aren’t shopping, cooking, eating and cleaning up for three meals a day. By the end of day 5, I was ready to eat again. I did use a fair amount of TP at that point — and this is typical of what can happen after your first EF. I ended up downing some Imodium that did the trick. I never had this post-fast issue again.

For me, knowing how long I can go without eating and toilet paper is comforting!

Thank you for reading this article — hopefully it contained something you found useful.

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