FASTING AND FEASTING. SCHEDULING A 48 FAST. Q & A 22.

How to schedule a 48 hour fast if you have a planned weekly feast with friends.

What is better doing the fast before or after the feast?

Well, both of them make sense, but I believe not eating before the feast is the better option and there are two main reasons for it.

Reason 1: Improved insulin sensitivity

There is no better way to improve your insulin levels than doing prolonged fasts. As a general guideline: the more insulin sensitive you are the better your body will handle and utilize all of the food you consume when eating. Fasting and exercise make the perfect combination.

Reason 2: Glycogen depletion

Because you won’t eat for 48 hours your body will burn all of the stored muscle and liver glycogen. This will allow you to store more of the carbohydrates you consume on your feast in form of new glycogen and not fat. Even though our bodies are able to store are limited of sugar, this will give you room to store some. On the next day you will get back to your one meal per day plan, of course you’ll train fasted, so you’ll burn the newly ingested carbs with your training. In order to make sure your muscles and liver are depleted when starting the feast, you have to exercises.

48 or not 48 hours of fasting, I often prefer to exercise twice a day. I simply love it so much. So, that gives me give me the total of 3 to 4 fasted workouts before I start eating again. There is no need for you to do the same, just make sure to exercise every single day. Training accelerates the fat burning processes and speeds up your metabolism.

Do not rely too much on doing cardio nor aerobic training. Make volume training with large variety of exercises the bulk of your workouts. Use mostly free weights but also incorporate some cables and machines.

How to minimize the damage of the feast?

Well, I believe there is a lot you can do. An epic feast not necessarily means stuffing your face with junk. As long as you ingest the right foods, eating a lot on one sitting is not damaging. In fact you can feast on some excellent food product such as grass fed meats, wild caught fishes and different sorts of vegetables. I believe things like barbecue with lots of veggies or even sushi (if you don’t eat too much of the rice) might be a great option. On the other hand you can hack the rice with some MCT oil and minimize the blood sugar spike it produces.

You can’t go wrong if you mostly stick to meats and vegetables. Just make sure they are not processed with chemicals or somehow packed with sugar. Avoid sausages, salami and other similar products. Do not add sauces or dressings made with sugar or artificial sweeteners. Stick to the whole foods and avoid cooking with trans fats. You can also enjoy good some starch in form sweet potatoes or yams. Your body converts alcohol to sugar, so keep that in mind.

If you want to take things further, you can do another prolonged fast after your feast. This will allow your system to detox from all of the ingested calories. You can go with another 48 or if you prefer 36 hour fast. If I had to decide between both I would do the first one, simply because I always like to have my meal around the same time. That means as dinner.

Blood glucose levels.

Remember the foods you consume while feasting will always make difference. Feast or not, the processed and refined stuff is definitely not your friend. Consuming lots of carbohydrates or sugary foods will raise your blood glucose levels and that will spike insulin.

When I eat I always have multiple servings, so it is kind of a feasting type of thing. But all of the food combinations I use keep my blood sugar levels stable. There are no fluctuations, nor drops or spikes. After my meal or on the next day.

If you want to get the most out of that whole thing, I would suggest you to take a blood glucose measurement on 1 and 2 hour marks after you’re done with the feasting. That is the way of finding out how your body responds to the foods you ingest. You can also do it multiple test during the fasts in order to see if there are any fluctuations. That will help you make the right adjustments for you next feast. The best times to take a blood glucose measurement would be on the 1 and 2 hour marks after your feast and of course on the next day during fasting

I hope that makes sense.
Have a great time and enjoy your feast!

Yours truly:

Peteonthebeat