Beginners Guide to Prolonged Fasting | 24-72 Hour Fasting Instructions

this is going to be a basic overview on how to do a longer term fast you see a longer term fast is defined as something that's a little bit more than 24 hours 48 hours or 72 hours it's not to be confused with intermittent fasting where you're focusing on more like a 16-hour fasting window so with prolonged fasting or long term fasting we're pushing the envelope a little bit more we're going a little bit more for a longevity effect versus just a metabolic or fat loss effect like with intermittent fasting now it may seem like it's very very simple it may seem like there's nothing to it it's just a matter of not eating and in some senses that's very true but what I want to do is break down some of the things that you can do to really have a successful longer term fast so we're gonna cover things like of course the benefits we're gonna cover what you can do leading up to a longer term fast we're gonna cover how often you should do a longer term fast we're gonna talk about exercise during a longer term fast we're gonna talk about how you should break your longer term fast we're gonna talk about supplements that you should take during or after your longer term fast I want to talk about a number of other things we're just gonna give you a general breakdown now full disclaimer this video is designed for people that are getting started with longer term fasting if you want to see a lot more in-depth science and a lot more in the way of the research in the clinical studies I have plenty of other videos that explain those but this video is designed to get you started you are tuned into the internet and leading performance nutrition and fat loss channel there's new videos every single Tuesday Friday and Sunday at 7 a.m. Pacific time and a bunch of other videos throughout the week as well so if you are watching this channel you want to make sure you hit that little Bell button that's gonna allow you to turn on notifications that way you know whenever I post a new video which is quite frequently and you'll also know whenever I go alive so without further ado let's go ahead and let's dive into how prolonged fasting actually works and how you can get started with it today so this wouldn't be a long-term fasting instructional video if I didn't at least lay out some of the benefits first okay so longer-term fasting of course is phenomenal when it comes down to fat loss that's a given okay your body shifts into a high degree of lipolysis where it's essentially mobilizing free fatty acids from the store tissue for energy that's a given ok but let's go ahead let's talk about some of the other interesting things because when you look at the health side and the longevity side it acts as a catalyst for you to essentially burn more fat long-term as well so if take care of our health and we get our cells operating more efficiently through fasting than every other thing that we do in our life can be more efficient especially when it comes down to body composition and fat loss okay so I usually say that a longer term fast should be considered 24 to 72 hours after 48 hours a lot of the effects of a fast actually start to diminish so people often think that the longer the fasts the better that's not necessarily true I mean sure you can burn some more fat you can get a large effect from it but at 48 hours you start to see a little bit of a diminishing return now when it comes down to stem cells which we're gonna talk a little bit about in this video you have until about 72 hours until things start to diminish a little bit so I'm not saying don't go for the five-day fast but the reality is for most bang for the buck a two to three day fast is exactly what we really want to aim for so the first thing we want to touch on is something known as stem cells okay so stem cells are really really powerful stem cells basically allow us to recover so you've heard of people doing stem cell therapy like when they actually have an injury and they inject stem cells into the body to stimulate recovery well the whole idea with stem cells is literally to bring a new cell a new cellular activity to life in a given area that may not have a lot of it so the cool thing is is fasting actually stimulates stem cell production so there was a study that was done at USC University Southern California that found that during a fasting period white blood cells are broken down in a unique way to actually trigger stem cell production so through longer-term fasting we were able to get a pretty significant increase in stem cells now what ends up happening is these stem cells form what are called daughter cells so these stem cells have new cells that are formed and these new cells are stronger and stronger each and every time so each time that we fast we develop stem cells that heal the body and they're stronger than the last batch so it's sort of an evolution and survival of the fittest the stronger stem cells end up producing more and it ends up becoming a really great thing we end up with a stronger body overall now these other thing these stem cell daughter cells do is they Express something known as telomerase now when we look at fasting again one of the main reasons we want to fast is to help maintain the length of what are called telomeres now before I lose you on this promise I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of detail I'm not gonna make this video boring I just have to get this off on the table so that you know exactly why you're fasting so telomeres are sort of like they're kind of like the ends of your shoelaces right like you have those little plastic caps on the ends of your shoelaces and they protect a cell so it ends up happening is eventually the little cap of the end of the shoelace wears down and the shoelace phrase well in essence for simple analogy sake this kind of happens with your cells too so as the telomeres shorten the cell becomes exposed to a lot more free radicals and eventually dies so what ends up happening is the telomerase actually protects the telomeres and what's interesting is that when we have more stem cells we have more telomerase and the telomerase protects the telomeres which therefore keeps the cell alive longer that's exactly why when it comes down to longevity fasting is second to none simply because the telomeres and simply because of the stem cells okay so let's talk really quick about our G for a second because this is a buzzword right now and unfortunately it's getting thrown around a little bit too much and it's getting a little bit misconstrued you see autop adji is where you have cellular recycling it's where the components of a cell are essentially recycling themselves and what's happening when they recycle themselves is they're recycling old kind of decrepit components of the cell so it's kind of like they cannibalize they almost eat themselves in order to become stronger so wasteful components of a cell are no longer because they end up consumed by the cell in a period of stress so you have to remember with intermittent fasting or prolonged fasting the whole idea is you're putting your body up to a lot of stress and this stress is a good thing because it's helping your body get stronger so what happens is your cells get stronger and more efficient so while Tophet G is always happening to some degree but during a fast it heightens a lot and there's certain things that you can do during your fast to help out Thapa G out even more but it's important to note that oesophageal o depending on the individual depending on your stress load depending on a lot of things so I don't want you to think about Tov G as the main benefit of longer-term fasting because that's always occurring it's just sort of an added bonus now the other thing I want to talk about is the high level of ketones that are produced see ketones as we know with the ketosis fad being very very popular are something that are very important when it comes down to helping the body produce energy okay so we fast and our body creates ketones because we don't have food coming in well the cool thing is these ketones actually modulate inflammation they go through a lot of different mechanisms to reduce what is called nuclear factor Kappa B they reduce what's called tumor necrosis factor one alpha and they do a lot of things when it comes down to modulating inflammation that's why you drop so much water that's why you feel so good and clean and fresh when you're on a fasting protocol so with this longer term fasting you have a high degree of ketones that are produced especially after 24 or 48 hours so it's a huge huge benefit it's not just the energy source it's actually a benefit now the other reason you're gonna be doing these long term fast is because there's huge huge cognitive benefits so there's a study that was published in the journal Applied physiology that found that when you are fasting for a prolonged period like over 48 hours you had a 3 to 5 X increase in what's called brain-derived neurotropic factor BDNF is like fertilizer for your brain if we have more BDNF we have more nerve growth factor which means that we are actually creating more neurites we're creating more neurons we're having this activity that's increasing so literally our brain is getting more active and we're getting smarter so this is the main reason why people like to fast when it comes down to getting more focus we have an increase in this BDNF so without any more nonsense let's go ahead and let's talk about how you actually do this whole thing and I'm sorry that I had to go through and give the benefits but it's just the way the cookie crumbles the first part is how to start your prolonged fast so when it comes down to doing your prolonged fast there is a specific protocol that I think will make it a lot easier especially if you're first starting out on this you see what can happen for a lot of people when they start it fast is they're so accustomed to eating regularly and consuming a lot of carbohydrates that it takes them a good 24 to 36 hours before they ever drop into a state of legitimate ketosis to where they're actually getting the benefits of the fast so what I usually recommend is even if you're not following a ketogenic protocol otherwise try to go anywhere from three to five days of low carbohydrate or ketogenic prior to starting your longer-term fast this is for two reasons for one you're going to be significantly less hungry and I'm significantly and I promise okay you're gonna be way less hungry because you're already gonna have ketones produced and your body's already gonna be somewhat fat adapted we want the body to Arnie know that it can use fats as a fuel source so therefore when you drop into your fast and you're not eating it's not searching for glucose your body already knows fats or fuel so it starts pulling it from your adipose tissue this will make your life a lot easier the other reason is it allows the process of ketone production to occur earlier so it means that rather than having the benefits of the fast kicking in at 36 hours you really have the benefits of the fast kicking in almost immediately because you've already started the autofit the effect you've already started the ketone production and then you're jumping right into the fast so it allows you to get sort of the effect of a longer fast but in a shorter amount of time so if you lead into a fast with a ketogenic protocol for three four five days then you can get away with fasting for 36 or 48 hours rather than having to push it to 72 or even 96 or longer okay so this is a very big thing the other thing that you want to do prior to starting your fast is hyper hydrate and sodium load okay so what happens is as soon as you stop eating food your insulin levels drop lower and the lower levels of insulin communicate to the kidneys to expel water so what ends up happening is you end up dropping a lot of water weight which is great because you feel good you feel lean but you end up dropping a lot of very important minerals and if you don't hyper hydrate and sodium load a little bit beforehand you put yourself into a bit of a situation where you could be really dehydrated but not just dehydrated but mineral deficient too and that's gonna cause some problems with your body's electrical system which is gonna make you not feel so optimal the other thing is that we have these things called NST receptors and if we're sodium sufficient those NST receptors communicate to us to eat they communicate with us to eat salt but the fact that the wires get crossed and we end up craving sugar a lot of times so super super super important that you sodium load and hyper hydrate even if you're not doing the ketogenic protocol leading up to it I promise this will make life easier so now it's easy to talk about what to consume during a fast you see when it comes down to what you can eat during a longer term fast it's a lot more clear and defined than it is with intermittent fasting you see the primary benefit with intermittent fasting but you're just going like 16 hours and just kind of skipping breakfast primary benefit there is actually coming from a restricted calorie window like you're restricting your feeding window so you're not going to consume as many calories and you're basically getting this majorly cool effect where you're dropping body fat but with prolonged fasting we're really going for the longevity effect here remember that so because we're going for that longevity effect and because we're going for the stem-cell effect which by the way is going to help you burn fat too so don't think it's just about living forever and and you know meditating forever it's not that's not the goal we're trying to get our bodies healthy so we can burn more fat so it's really simple black coffee is okay water is okay tea is okay and then apple cider vinegar is okay so when it comes down to the tea that you should be consuming during a fast you have to be pretty particular about it you don't want to just consume any kind of unhealthy inorganic tea because it can really have a big effect on your body and when it comes down to what I consume I'm usually a fan of consuming you heat o green tea the cool thing is is they come in these simple little packets so I just add them to my water and it's perfect during a longer term fast now the reason that green tea is far superior specifically matcha is because you have a high high high level of epic ala catechin three gay late so EGCG which has a huge huge fat-burning effect it is somewhat of an antioxidant but more so it activates specific enzymes and genetic processes within our body that can actually improve a fast if you look at literature about just fasting in history you'll see that tea was a big part of fasting okay they would still consume tea because they believed that it had so many benefits that far superseded just the effect of a fast so I'm big on consuming tea and a little bit of black coffee now the other thing is green tea has what's called beaning in it theanine helps your body produce more gamma amino butyric acid so what that means is you're going to be more calm but it also satiates you a lot of times when people fast they get anxious and it makes them hungry you want to have that calm cool collected feeling that's coming from the gaba this is very very important and because I'm doing this video and because I use you heat all the time they've offered up a special discount to anyone that's watching this video so whether you're doing a long-term fast your intermittent fasting or you're just wanting to enjoy some green tea I definitely recommend you check them out so there's a special link down in the description that's gonna get you a special discount on you hito green tea matcha again ceremonial grade stuff company's been around for 185 years a really good quality stuff this isn't just something like a random product that's out there this is legit legit tea so I highly recommend it if you are embarking on any kind of fasting regimen okay so now let's go ahead and talk about one more thing you can consume during your fast some people will want to do this some people won't and that's gonna be salt I'm a big fan of consuming salt during a fast okay it does provide your body with the electrical system that you really need to keep functioning I know I said that you want a hyper sodium load and hyper hydrate before the fast but you can continue to consume a little bit of salt throughout the fast - you don't need much maybe a half a teaspoon throughout the course of the day for each day that you're fasting all right the next thing that we want to talk about is your activity during a fast this is a very big thing so when you're intermittent fasting versus prolonged fasting I usually say go ahead and work out as usual do a higher intensity workout get the most out of it because with intermittent fasting when it's like short fasts all you're doing is just trying to shift your eating window okay that's all you're doing you're just shifting the period of time which you eat so you don't really want to change your daily routine a whole lot I don't want you to change how you would work out simply because your intermittent fasting but with prolonged fasting it's very very different okay because you are trying to go for a different effect on the body here's the thing if you work out to a high degree like you work out a very high intensity you have what is called mTOR activation mammalian target of rapamycin mTOR is good because it helps you build muscle and it turns on sort of the anabolic switch where your body can actually assemble proteins and that's great but that's the opposite of what we're trying to do when we're on a longer-term fast we're actually encouraging our bodies to not turn on that anabolic switch we're trying to be completely in well for lack of a better term somewhat of a catabolic mode where you're allowing your body to consume its own energy substrates that are already has stored and becoming more efficient so what I do recommend is very low intensity weight training what's going to happen with very low intensity weight train you're not gonna trigger a high him tore response what's gonna happen is you're gonna allow glycogen out of the muscles to get taken into the bloodstream and into the liver and in the liver that glycogen those stored carbohydrates get burned very fast in a fasted state like extremely fast so when you're fasting you're not pulling carbohydrate energy stores from your muscles you're pulling it from your liver but we have to mobilize the carbohydrates that are in the muscles by moving lightly so low intensity cardio low intensity weight training I do not recommend being sedentary when you're on a prolonged fasting regimen okay being sedentary does not mobilize things it doesn't get the process going when our ancestors would do any kind of prolonged fasting I bet you they were not just laying down the whole time okay you're up and moving you want to go through your daily motions as much as you possibly can because it's very very important you just don't want to be pushing the intensity what about some things that you might expect there might be some alarming things things that just throw you a loof a little bit then you just weren't quite expecting the first one is you may very well find that your blood glucose goes up when you're fasting what if the heck how does that even happen okay if you're diabetic or you know someone that's diabetic you know that maintaining your blood sugar is very important and one of the benefits of a longer-term vest is bringing that blood sugar down to a nice low stable level however that doesn't tend to happen for a few days now why would your blood sugar potentially go up well you see it has to do with something known as peripheral insulin resistance and it sounds scary but it's actually a very good thing what ends up happening is the cells inside your body inside your muscles and everything like that they end up getting so accustomed to using fat for fuel that they basically just shunt the glucose they're just they don't need it so what ends up happening is the glucose that would be around in your body ends up sitting in your bloodstream a little bit higher until it can get used by the brain the brain always needs some glucose runs on about thirty to forty percent glucose so you're gonna have the glucose get used it's just not going to get used at the rate that it used to it takes a little while for the body to get accustomed to that so if you test your blood sugar anything like that don't be alarmed this is totally normal and it does nothing to do with the level of ketones that are in your blood okay the other thing we have to remember is you might feel some folder extremities you might feel it your hands your feet get cold maybe your arms get cold but your core usually stays decently warm well the reason that's happening is pretty interesting you see when you fast you actually have a migration from the adipose tissue the store belly fat over to brown adipose tissue in sort of the visceral fat now it sounds bad but it's actually really good basically all it means is white fat that is just being dormant and not doing anything other than insulating you he's getting activated and turned in to brown fat where it actually has more of a thermogenic effect so brown fat the visceral fat that actually covers our organs and things like that that emits heat the reason it emits heat is because it protects our organs so when we're cold or anything like that we get more blood flow to that visceral fat to actually generate heat so literally if we allow that brown fat to generate heat it's burning calories so what ends up happening is as the blood moves away from the adipose tissue in our extremities and goes into that brown adipose tissue to actually generate heat we get cold because we're getting less blood flow you'll also find that you just have less overall blood volume in your extremities like if you were to fast and like for 72 hours and then go and try to get blood drawn you'd probably find that they can't even find a vein very well so you have to remember that and that's why you generally get cold now you'll also find the first 24 hours you'll feel a little bit fatigued you won't feel amazing and that's normal okay day two you start to feel the effects that ketones are kicking in things are starting to work you feel really really good at day two day three usually start to feel really really good because you have a high degree of ketones so it's just something to keep in mind let's talk really quick about supplements let's talk about like what you should be consuming or not consuming while you are doing a longer term fast okay so fat soluble vitamins are a big No okay so soft gels so like fish oil pills or vitamin E pills things like that we don't want to be consuming those during a longer term fast that is going to mess you up there are calories there's like 10 to 20 calories in one soft gel definitely clearly breaks a fast the other thing do not take any specific antioxidant pills so no vitamin C stay away from a lot of the B vitamins too that could have antioxidant effects again green tea is an exception because it's less on the antioxidant side of specialist ceremonial great more on the catechin side I can explain more about that in another video but essentially we don't consume tea for the antioxidants we consume tea for the theanine and for the catechins that have different effects in our body so the thing is rejuvenation research which is a journal published a study that found that when you consumed vitamin C an antioxidant during a fast it actually killed the effect the genetic positive effect of the fast because again fasting is all about being stressed you want your body stressed and if you give yourself an antioxidant it gives yourself a crutch okay so you're helping your body out you're taking it easier you may not feel it but at the cellular level you're making it easier and you don't want to do that you actually want to make it harder because that's how your body adapts you're training your body you have to think about putting your cells through a workout right now you're putting your cells through survival training and that's exactly what we're accomplishing here ok one thing that you can take though is again gonna be the green tea again you hito is great for that which is high in feeding so you can also take Athenian capsule so theanine is really good in terms of helping you out with that gaba and helping you feel a little bit more calm but it's honestly easier just to get it through green tea so honestly your medications are okay I'm not a doctor I can't tell you to consume or not consume your medications on a daily basis you know if you're taking thyroid anything like that my recommendation would be a consult your doctor which I know isn't what you want to hear because doctors don't understand this stuff but I have to say it but reality is you should always just take your medication I don't want to be the one that tells you not to do that ok basically when you break a fast you can resume your normal fat your normal supplement regimen you don't have to do anything crazy I don't recommend doing anything wild if you're gonna consume a bunch of carbs and you break your fast you might want to consume some B vitamins or some chromium but we'll talk about that stuff in just a second so let's go ahead and move into that how do you break your fast and when it's a longer term fast here's the thing when I'm talking about intermittent fasting I have a very specific protocol ok intermittent fasting again the shorter fasting not what we're talking about here very specific protocol where I have people eat a smaller meal and then move in to a larger meal after that well with prolonged fasting it's way different ok so what I want you to do now this is gonna be different if you're vegan or not vegan but if you're not vegan you to break your fast with a lean protein not much four to eight ounces depending on how big of a person you are and that's it like try to even limit the seasonings try to just keep it simple with salt and pepper yeah I know that's boring okay but what you'd want to do is you want to break your fast with that in the evening time and then do everything you can to not eat anything else other than that wake up in the morning and then resume your normal diet okay I know that this in a way extends the extends your fast and makes it harder but I promise you it changes everything because what's gonna happen is meat in and of itself we're a lean protein doesn't elicit a lot of an immune response after a fast your body's very sensitive so what's gonna happen is if you were to God and you were to consume let's just hypothetically say nightshades okay like tomatoes or something like that you would have a hyper sensitivity to it if you had an issue with nitrogen you may not even know it that's what's interesting when you abstain from certain foods all your intolerance is come to the surface and the second you eat something you're intolerant to boom it hits you bad and it causes a massive surge of inflammation which quite frankly nullifies the effect of your prolonged fast so if you eat just a lean piece of meat if you're good if you're not vegan I have a vegan solution for you that's going to be very net neutral when it comes down to this process okay people like if you go on autoimmune Paleo where you're sort of resetting your gut biome and resetting the immune response that's about all you can eat you eat lean meats and very net neutral foods so eat the protein then go to bed and it's gonna at least get the digestive system going it's gonna at least get the immune system rocking in a normal function again so that you can consume your normal foods the next day plus it's also going to allow the fat burning process to continue more you're not giving yourself exogenous fats you're not giving yourself any carbs stepping in the way you're giving yourself a little bit of protein but then your body by far is gonna still continue to rev that ketone rent engine and you're gonna end up burning a lot more fat over the course of the night too so you get a huge metabolic benefit if you are vegan or you just don't want to consume meat straight P protein is going to be the way to go simple clean P protein nothing fancy no flavors you're going to same thing pea protein with some water not almond milk isn't your gonna be sensitive to nuts too it's boring I know it's not fun but you've just went through a fast I know you can handle at least an ugly boring protein shake for a minute okay so now we need to talk about how often you should prolong fast if you do a 24-hour fast one day per week you're on the fence of it being a prolonged fast because 24 hours is like the minimum but if you don't do any other fasting other than a prolonged fast once per week you're gonna end up in a really great situation in fact at the end of the year you're gonna end up somewhere between like 15 and 20 percent net calorie loss so meaning you're gonna stay nice and lean just by skipping food one day per week plus you get the huge longevity effect but what I would recommend is rather than doing a 24-hour fast once a week I would recommend doing a 48 to 72 hour fast once per month okay you're gonna get more effect because after 24 hours the effects the fast compound so you're gonna get this nice powerful effect all the way up to 48 hours where it starts to diminish a little bit with the exception of the stem cell activation so that's my plan for you if you do that but you want to go ahead and do 48 hours 72 hours one time per month and then sprinkle intermittent fasting in however you please but don't fall victim to doing frequent frequent 48 72 hour fast in my opinion in today's society it's just too difficult to do and it's really hard on the body in a different way from the natural stress that we're trying to expose our bodies to so this was the breakdown now if you have ideas for anything else that you want me to touch on I'm happy to go into detail on it but the nice thing is prolonged fasting is pretty straightforward you just have to have a little bit of a lesson on how it works and why we're doing exactly what we're doing again I also want to give a big thank you to you hito matcha for making this video possible but also offering anyone that's watching this video a special discount on that product so thank you again for watching and make sure you keep it locked in to my channel and hit that subscribe button so you never miss a beat see you soon

Channel: Thomas DeLauer

Views: 1,162,135

Rating: 4.9215555 out of 5

Keywords: prolonged fasting, benefits of prolonged fasting, how to start a fast, prolonged fasting weight loss, prolonged fasting thomas delauer, long term fasting, long term fasting weight loss, long term fasting benefits, long term fasting and exercise, how to do a long term fast, prolonged fasting vs intermittent, prolonged fasting muscle loss, long term fasting tips, thomas delauer, intermittent fasting, keto, 72 hour fast, 24 hour fast, 48 hour fast, 3 day water fast

Id: S5W1XBf8d-I

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/thispostgavemeptsd]

This guy pops up every so often in my recommended feed and I've got to say that his claim that "drink apple cider vinegar it'll be good 4 you" is pretty dumb, it does break the fast and it does nothing beneficial but to leave you with a bad taste. He claims that the acid reflux side effect of fasting >48-72h it's caused because the stomach lacks acidity not by an excess of it. So therefore if you drink vinegar (acetic acid), it goes away.

Excuse me, wtf. Reflux is caused by the cardiac sphincter failing to keep itself shut, and pH of the stomach as long as it's acidic has little to nothing to do with how well it shuts close (so basically that 2 pH acid and 2.5 pH doesn't impact heartburn and the chances of it happening), at least in a fast of 48-72h.

The stomach regulates itself pretty darn well and its secretions are at the very least 3 pH which it's still very acid, will cause heartburn and making it more acid won't make it better.

Dunno if he claims that in this video, but regardless, he spews that broscience very often. That's some woo related to the alkaline nuts and the like. He also pushes other nonsense.

Intermittent fasting itself is considered broscience by some, which claim that woomeisters misinterpret the Minnesota starvation experiment. You'd have to be prediabetic to notice an improvement from the "it lowers basal levels of insulin", and regardless in GGX sized people as fat goes down resting insulin goes down so it's not exclusively the magic of fasting.

But this stuff is interesting as a experiment at least. I'd like to see more research papers.

Hasan would also lose his shit as soon as he catches a glimpse at this guys hinted political and economical views which is very Harkdanian bootstrappy (ffs he's a business coach).