I too have no blood sugar problem with a 24 hour fast. It is my understanding that at some point in a fast your body has depleted all of its glycogen reserves.
After that balancing your basal insulin will depend on your body’s ability to produce glucose from fat. With my messed up metabolism who knows how well that signaling will work. Since Treshiba has a 48 hour activity level, and I still make some insulin, I may have a built in cushion if I skip a basal dose.
I noticed you mentioned Dr. Fung in another post. I saw somewhere that he recommends a longer fast of 5 or more days, initially for T2’s. Don’t know if I’m ready for that, but 36 hours seems doable, and might be beneficial.
I think at this point you would be well served to just give it a go and see what happens. A few days without too many other demands should keep your BGs safe. I find fasting interesting and beneficial. I’m nearing the end of a 24-hour fast right now. My BG is 72 (4.0) and trending sideways. I always feel more alert and cognitively stimulated when I fast.
I heard Jason Fung speak at a low carb conference last weekend. He likes the benefits of fasting and talked a lot about how fasting can often put into remission polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Young women with PCOS-related fertility problems seek him out and his fasting advice helps them lower their insulin levels and often become pregnant.
Yeah I’m going to try it soon and see what happens. I’ve been doing OMAD for 3 or 4 days in a row and It is definitely having a positive effect on my insulin resistance.
As mentioned above, OMAD (24 hr fast) doesn’t require much in the way of basal adjustments. However …
I’ve done quite a few 72hr fasts (I’m a T1D on a pump) and I found that in the period 24-48 hrs your body depletes much of your glycogen (primarily from liver). During the 2nd night of a 72hr fast I cut my basal pump dose by 10-20%. Keep in mind your body continues to produce glucose (glycogen) via gluconeogenesis, but your stores of glycogen are depleted.
Between 48-72hrs I need to cut basal even more, often by 30-50% (of original dose).
I’m not sure how easy this would be if you’re taking MDI (basal). With a pump it’s easy, however I can constantly monitor and adjust my rates (Dexcom CGM as well).
I’d be more than happy to share more with you if interested.
@Jimi63
Thanks for sharing your experience. It confirms my guess that once my glycogen is depleted, I will need to make adjustments to my basal insulin.
Since I’m using finger sticks and injections I have much less ability to fine tune. I’m just going to take it slow perhaps just delaying eating an hour or 2 past 24 and observing what my blood sugar does, and adjusting from there.
Ditto what Terry has said. Dr. Fung is great, very engaging and super user friendly. He has two books you can read: The Obesity Code and the Diabetes Code. His posts on Medium are great too. I do two meals a day (plus a small snack of nuts) and usually eat between either 11am-7pm or 12am-6pm. I wrote a piece for NYT/Well about it, but it hasn’t come out yet. I’m T1D. I’m much more alert when I eat in a restricted window, I lose weight or keep weight off and my blood sugar is easier to maintain. I only drink black coffee in the morning (or tea) and I don’t add any cream.
I’d love to read your piece when it appears. I’ll keep my eyes open. It’d be nice to get a heads up from you when it’s published. There are a growing number of people who have discovered intermittent fasting. I’m also running across more one meal a day (OMAD) practitioners.
If I use IF 4-5 days a week I see a slow weight loss of about a pound a week. IF to me is not eating breakfast, lunch around 1 and dinner around 7. I still eat the same amount of food calorically speaking. For me it is low carb/keto and it works pretty well.
That may be true about the marketing of breakfast. But if I don’t eat something before any kind of morning activity, after said activity, I’m wiped out. Many of us need to have something to go on before we go out.
@Larissa3 would you mind sharing a typical day of meals? I’m just curious what you eat in only two meals + a small snack of nuts. I want to embrace this lifestyle so much, because when I’ve tried it I have such great numbers. I am trying to like black coffee with stevia and slowly ween myself off of the stevia.
Not “breakfast” in and of itself. The article questions the purported importance of breakfast as the most important meal of the day. As the article says, people have always eaten something in the morning:
People simply ate whatever they had around for breakfast, which was often leftovers from the night before.
Hi Jenni_bean,
Typically my first meal is at 11 or 12pm and it’s a big kale salad of some sort with maybe hummus, carrots and olives. Snack is nuts or maybe a small protein bar. Dinner is roasted veggies and/or a salad or sauteed mushrooms, maybe some cheese. I eat a lot of veg, only sometimes animal protein. (Meat takes forever to process and then it converts to carbs, which drives me a little bonkers.) I also love pork rinds because they are zero carb. And I always drink black coffee or matcha.
I am new to this concept of intermittent fasting. Thanks to the replies here, got some idea about it. Sounds good so far and I and will check out the resources you have mentioned.
Black coffee should not raise your BG by itself, unless you’re adding dairy with lactose or sugar. Are you sure your BG spikes aren’t due to early morning dawn or feet-on-floor phenomenon?
In practice, most people practicing intermittent or extended fasting do drink coffee (often with heavy cream that contains no carbs). Even the king of IF - Dr Jason Fung - drinks coffee with heavy cream while doing EF’s.
I eat two meals, lunch at 11:45 and dinner by 5:30. This leaves the remaining hours of the day to coast without worrying about dramatic swings. I do suffer a little “feet in the floor” phenomenon. That’s the original reason I started opting out of breakfast. It’s just to much glucose to the system all at once, coming from both internal and external sources.
Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to eat at all. I’d have great numbers then. I like food too much though.
@Jimi63 That’s the thing, black coffee - and … the caveat, not all coffees are created equal, even if they are drunk without any added cream or sugar. My husband and I were walking through Sam’s and they were sampling coffee. We both drink our coffee black, so we had some. Wow, did it taste great. We grabbed a box and put it in the cart. Then I thought, what’s in it? Sure enough, the way it was manufactured, it was sweetened. We put it back on the shelf. This is what the box says now on Google, “This coffee boasts a full-bodied flavor of red fruits, sweet caramel, and toasted almonds.”
That said, I do believe that normal, unflavored, unsweetened, coffee can and does raise blood sugar, for some people. The degree is different for everyone, but if the coffee is processed the way the one at Sam’s is, it’s much more likely it will have an effect on blood sugar!
