swoodsong's Journal, 28 January 2019

Can you give me an idea of what the water fast is? 

A water fast is only taking in water (or other no cal/carb drinks) for the span of the fast. It puts you in ketosis quickly, which is where your body uses your stored fat for all its energy. You can find some good YouTube videos. People are using it for health recovery, detoxing, weight loss and cancer. A long term fast can be anywhere from a week or more up, to months. I tried intermittent fasting, then 5/2 diet, then went to doing a 3-day fast. My husband and I found that we actually weren't ready to start eating again after only 3 days, so we decided to try a full week. I developed a bad headache on day 6 (honestly, I was doing too much) so, we ended our fast halfway through day 6. We are taking a full week back on our regular/keto, 1800-2000 cal/low carb - then we plan to go for another 7 day stretch. We try to be active each day, working out, weight lifting, swimming or working on the farm. I believe that a water fast is much easier if you start from a keto state. You body is already adapted to use fat for energy, so you don't have the challenges carb'ish folk have. I lost 16 pounds in January, I expect to gain back 2-4 pounds. So, I can plan to lose about 10 pounds a month. My earlier posts mention that we added liquid vitamins each day, we have 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar in 8 oz of water each night, and you need salt - so we put a tsp of Himalayan pink salt in warm water each fasting day in the am. The best thing is that after the first day you aren't really hungry, after the second day - hunger is just not an issue. When you begin eating again, you need to start up slowly - since your intestines are empty and your stomach hasn't had to work in a while. We start with org chicken bone broth with added seasonings ('cuz plain broth is boring), next meal we add veggies and maybe fish to the broth. All that digests pretty easily. After that we are back to normal. Hope that helps!