Day 5 on Water Fasting for Weight Loss: What Happen To Your Body When You Fast?

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It's my day 5 on water fasting for weight loss today.

I woke up dizzy this morning. I feel shaky and like I'm going to pass out. I thought a glass of warm water could help. But when it didn't, I reach for a glass of hot chocolate drink. Opps! I just breach the rules of water fasting. I'm so grateful for my wonderful and supportive husband. He took me less seriously in the early days of fasting, but now he shows me some sympathy. When I complaint for being weak, he suggested me to eat a little. But he didn't mock like everybody else would response when they knew about it. I remember during high school, my mother would give me a long lecture when I skip a meal.

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Maybe many people thought that water fasting is a self-torture, like serve you right!, in a very unsporting manner when they saw a friend on water fasting looks weak physically.

Though I feel a bit weak, I am not going to give up yet. I am not even halfway towards reaching my water fasting goal.

I decided to try water fasting to cleanse out my body and change my relationship with food. I am an emotional eater. I eat when I get bored and I feed my happiness with food too.

Apart from weight loss purpose, I did water fasting to gain spiritual benefit and discipline. What I want to achieve spiritually? That one I will kept to myself.

 Fasting simply is a rest from food. So water happen to our body when we fast? Dr. Ben Kim explains:

During water fasting, your glycogen stores are depleted within about 24 hours, give or take a few hours. After your glycogen stores are used up, most of your cells begin burning fatty acids for energy - these fatty acids come from your fat reserves, including fatty tissue that surrounds your organs.Two groups of cells - your red blood cells and your brain cells - cannot use fatty acids to fuel their energy needs.
Your red blood cells and brain require glucose, and once glycogen/glucose from your muscles and liver are used up, your brain and your red blood cells get their glucose from two sources:

• From glycerol, which is a component of your fat tissues.

• From your muscles - some of your muscle tissues get broken down, and the amino acids from your muscle tissues are used to produce glucose for your brain and red blood cells. 

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Clearly, it's not in your best interest to rapidly eat up your muscles to meet the energy requirements of your brain and red blood cells during a water fasting. Your body knows this, and somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd day of water fasting, your liver begins churning out ketones, which during a water fasting, come primarily from the breakdown of fatty acids from your fat reserves.
Once your liver generates large numbers of ketones, your brain is able to use ketones to fuel itself. At this point, only your red blood cells require glucose that must still be derived from breakdown of your muscles, but with your brain no longer dependent on breakdown of your muscles for energy, the rate at which your muscles are catabolized will be such that your muscles are spared as much as possible - this state is called "protein sparing" - it's a survival mechanism that is built into human physiology to deal with times of famine.
Getting back to the big picture, it should be clear that from about the 2nd or 3rd day of a water fasting, your body meets it energy requirements by burning through your fat reserves. Since the bulk of the toxins in your body are stored in your fat reserves, the longer you fast on water only, the more fat you'll burn and the more toxins you'll eliminate from your system. This is why we see elimination of lipomas, atheromas (accumulated waste in your blood vessels), and other conditions related to toxin accumulation during a prolonged water fast.

These are some interesting books on fasting. Check it out!
1. Toxic Relief: Restore health and energy through fasting and detoxification by Donald Colbert, MD
2. Juicing, Fasting, and Detoxing for Life: by Cherie Calbom, MS
3. Fasting-The Ultimate Diet by Alan Cott, MD
4. Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman, MD
5. Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough: A Guide to Nine Biblical Fasts by Elmer L. Towns
6. How To Do A Water Fast: Coconut Water, Oil Pulling, Neti Pot and Moreby Peter Abundant
7. Fasting Made Easy: Easy-to-understand instruction manualby Donald Colbert, MD
8. The Everything Juicing Book by Carole Jacobs
9. The Green Smoothie Bible: 300 Delicious Recipesby Kristine Miles
10. A Commonsense Guide To Fastingby Kenneth E. Hagin

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