Day 6 of 11 for my Fast

hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado always warm always sunny sometimes colorado today is june 27 2021 and i am feeling great feeling fine have not eaten anything in six days so i figured i'd make a video real quickly tell you guys what the next week holds for me so originally when i started this whole endeavor i said be a lot of fun to do a 15 day fast because the longest was about 13 and a half days about two weeks and then i realized that if i did that i'd be right on the edge of fourth of july and that's a big holiday for me for most americans so i said all right well i'll clip it at 11 days but there's a slight problem with re-feeding so when you go past 10 days the recommended guidelines are about five to seven days of gradual re-feeding and you have to be really careful with how you take care of things metabolically so usually you go into a caloric restriction so you go a few hundred calories then more than more than more then you break a thousand then you go keep going until you get to some ratio of your body weight and you have to be really really careful to avoid refeeding syndrome and they say after 10 days the guidelines say that you're at a higher risk of that a five-day fast it's about two days is usually what it takes for people but everybody's different and some people can take less some people can take more just where you're at metabolically and also how you consume things during the fast so many of you guys ask what do i consume and really it's just water stuff like this so i got some alkaline water here it's got some electrolytes in it and nothing special and as you get deeper into the fast at some point you have to start adding this to it this is bone broth i like kettle and fire if you're vegetarian i assume they have some options got plenty of sodium a little bit of potassium a little bit of protein but only 15 calories for the entire thing actually about 60 calories for the entire thing still pretty minuscule there's four servings in there and drink the whole bowl so if you do that during the time the fast with snake juice or basically fasting salts it's a combination of potassium nitrate potassium sodium and magnesium things are probably pretty good and b1 so then as you start breaking the fast you have to gradually begin re-feeding yourself and now that i'm in an extended fast zone there's a question when to do that if my target is july 4th then the refeeding has to actually begin the process of re-feeding has to begin about five days earlier so you have to start with rebuilding your microbiome if you've done things more than a week so things like this this is a fermented gut shot it's one of the most foul nasty stuff you can drink you take it with some probiotics and prebiotics and it's basically like fermented cabbage and some vinegar and and some caraway it's it's not good stuff but it's good to rebuild the microbiome and there's a whole cacophony of stuff i'm taking to do that where i'll begin taking i should say to to do that starting tuesday and then tomorrow will be the fir last basically zero-ish calorie day and then each day the calories will slightly increase but no solid foods so tuesday calories will go up a little bit wednesday calories go up a little bit and you just keep adding layers of things that get you back to where you go and then friday will be the first solid food day day 11 of the fast and exiting that day if i've done everything right should be feeling pretty good pretty normal and so forth but anyway i'm pretty sad that i didn't go a little longer and july 4th was here because i actually feel really good and with the current regimen i'm following i probably could do this for more than two more weeks if i wanted to it was a real brutal bruiser of a time getting to the state day three was horrible day four was pretty bad too day five was okay and today i a little irritable because i had work on sunday and do some stuff but all things consider actually feel really fine and really good and heartburn has gone down tremendously skin feels a lot better a lot of you guys have asked about weight loss i've lost about 10 and a half pounds the majority of that's water weight so when you you get back off the fast comes back about three pounds of fat one pound of muscle pretty good ratio so all things considered mission accomplished metabolically i feel great feel happy have more energy that i've had in a long time inflammation is way down i'll redo my entire set of labs that i i took when i entered the fast right at the end of the fast on friday i have someone coming in about 7 30 in the morning go take nine miles out of me with all kinds of crazy things that i'm running and we'll we'll see where everything's at the other thing i've got to get it under control is gout i don't take my allopuranol as much as i should so i'll do that and that certainly shows in the labs but all things considered it was a great experience now i'm not a doctor and i don't recommend you take medical advice from me and this is not medical advice reality is every single person is fundamentally different your genes are different your epigenome is different your metabolism is different your lifestyle is different your age and circumstances and conditions are different so while fasting is universally a pretty amazing tool how you use that tool is based on you and to do that properly you have to do a lot of research a lot of experimentation and there's a lot of professionals who actually specialize in these things so a really good book to consult is written by a doctor a nephrologist named dr jason fung and that really started the basis of of me starting to care about fast and there are certainly a lot of really good information and actually some great scientific papers that have done deep dives and meta-analysis on the efficacy of fasting the safety of fasting and so forth extended fasts are dangerous things and they're really not for a lighthearted effort you have to do a lot to get into it and it's kind of brutal to get through the first week and most people can't not because they lack willpower but because they set themselves up for failure they don't prepare for keto flu because they've maybe never really been in ketosis before they don't take the right stuff with the fast and then metabolically everything goes to hell i and by day five six it's just so bad they say i can't do this anymore and make matters worse they re-feed themselves in the worst possible way they go eat a hamburger or pizza i remember the very first fast i did it was about five days and i happened to be in chicago at the time and i i just said it i'm done i can't do this anymore and i went i got one of those thick deep dish pizzas that had two layers of pepperoni and cheese cheese in the crust garlic sausage god it was amazing and lots of wings with it that were hot wings and so forth it was a terrible day and a half afterwards pizza was probably good enough to justify that but relatively terrible day and a half so don't do that and consult a physician and consult a nutritionist before you go down this road your goal is weight loss extended fasting is really not a good mechanism for that because you would like to exercise you'd like to do things and a lot of your weight loss is water a lot of fat but you'll also burn muscle at the same time if you want to minimize muscle burn and get most of the benefits intermittent fasting or a 2-5 program there's a lot of studies that show that that's pretty effective and you can maintain an exercise regimen pretty regularly with that so don't view this as a weight loss more of it is it's a cleansing a mental reset helps your microbiome rest a little bit your intestines and guts rest a little bit so if you're having digestive problems or linear other conditions as i have then that's probably something to consider but again it's not for the light-hearted it's quite hard and boy this was a really tough one i had several business meetings i had to go to where i sat in a restaurant i went to the cork up in boulder i had my water and everybody else was eating they had prime rib and that beautiful mud pie at the cork they had the the charcuterie boards and pre-crested almonds almond crusted breeze excuse me lobster ravioli amazing size like eight different damn types of potatoes and when you're fasting for a long period of time you can smell every nuance in those dishes and that's a very good restaurant so i was just sitting there drinking my water and i've had several meals like that where i was the guy just kind of watching and being an observer and having to smell all of it so that's another thing to mention about an extended fast if you're crazy enough to go down this road and medically you think you can do it you've gotten good advice about it then please do put yourself in the right setting i have a ranch up in wyoming at some time in the future if i do this again i'm probably going to take a week or two off and just go hang out on my ranch away from people i live a very ascetic life for those two weeks and i'm sure it'll be a lot easier that said is what it is and not complaining about it it's actually been a great experience and i've had so much fun with it it's nice to know that a person has the willpower to go do something great and i think it's a lesson for anybody the reality is no one is born special and capable you can achieve anything if you want to you just have to have the will to do it and you have to set the right accountability i and you have to put yourself in the right setting to succeed and i've been surrounded by great people been incredibly supportive and i was always one phone call away from getting advice if something came up and i had a chance to go back through and do a proper literature review on the latest and greatest guidelines for things and there's turns out a lot of good science on how to handle the fast and the post fast and the refeeding but i consider myself to be very fortunate and it's nice to have gone through this and i noticed that many of you have decided i've got emails about this tweets about this telegram messages about this to start sympathy fast where you two are fasting and again i always say if you're going to do that get some advice for professional advice before you go down that road but it really does mean the world to me that encourage a lot of people to look at the world a little differently and think a little differently and do something a little uncomfortable outside of your bounds david bowie used to say don't play to the crowd you ha when you do your best work when you're not comfortable your feet are a little off the ground you're you can't quite see the coast anymore and i very firmly believe that's true so just a little update all guys i'll give you an update at day number 11 the first day of solid food i'll probably get a steak but that'll be the second meal the first meal probably something green and leafy but slow carbs you don't want to spike your insulin levels that's a really bad thing to do as you're re-feeding but if you re-feed properly by the time you get to the solid foods you're already past that window and your sodium potassium and magnesium are pretty balanced and your system is working really well all right thank you all for listening and until next time i'll see you again and happy fourth of july cheers