The fasting journal · matched to fast day 22
Day 22. The Smell of Fried Chicken
Day 22. Saturday. Past the 30 pound line and the day I learned exactly what fried chicken smells like when you have not eaten in three weeks.
197.9
The scale said 197.9 this morning. Started at 228.6, so that is 30.7 pounds gone in 22 days, 13.4 percent of my starting weight. Another 1.1 pounds since yesterday. Awesome.
How do I feel? I feel good. No problems, no issues. Everything is going well.
The chicken place
Yesterday, as I do on other occasions, I took one of my clients out for lunch. I still have a business to run and lunch is where a lot of that business happens. We went to a chicken place.
And when I am sitting there, the smell of fried chicken just came right over me. I was like, oh my God, I want some fried chicken.
Three weeks with no food and I thought I was past this. I was not past this. The smell did not ask my permission. It just walked over to the table and sat down.
The rest of the day
We finished up our meeting and everything. We went on our way. And could you believe, for the rest of the day, all I could think about was chicken.
Not hungry. That is the part I want to be clear about. My stomach was quiet, same as it has been since the first week. This was my head. Every hour or so, chicken. Driving, chicken. Sitting at my desk, chicken. It is a strange thing to have your body completely calm and your brain running one word on a loop.
Gotta be strong. Gotta be strong. I said it out loud more than once. I drank my water. I went to bed. And this morning the scale said 197.9 and the chicken was gone.
By the numbers
The ketone strip came back at the top of the chart again, the same reading it has held since day 8. So the body was burning fat the entire time my head was ordering a three piece.
Body fat percent on the home scale is down from 42.3 to 33.9 since day 1. Muscle percent is up from 34.5 to 36.6. BMI reads 30.0 today, which is the obesity line exactly. One more tenth and it flips.
Day 22 done
Twenty two down, sixty eight to go. The chicken place is still there. So am I.
That being said, I am going to let you guys go. You guys have a beautiful Saturday and I will see you next time. Cheers.
Quick answers
Can you sit in a restaurant while water fasting?
John did on day 21, a client lunch at a fried chicken place and the honest report is that the smell hit him hard and the craving lasted the rest of the day. So the answer is yes, you can and it is the hardest version of the fast you will do that week. Smell is the sense most tightly wired to appetite and fried food is built to exploit it. He kept the meeting, drank his water and left. Three weeks in, the body is not hungry in the way it was on day 2. The mind is the one that gets loud.
Why do cravings come back after three weeks of fasting?
Because they never really went anywhere. Hunger, the physical signal, flattens out once ketones show up, for John around day 3 to day 5. Cravings are a different system. They run on cues, a smell, a time of day, a place you always eat and a cue can fire no matter how long it has been since you ate. John's day 22 craving was a cue craving, start to finish. It started with a smell at lunch, it did not come from an empty stomach and it faded once the cue was gone and he went to sleep.
How much weight has John lost in 22 days of water fasting?
30.7 pounds, from 228.6 down to 197.9, which is 13.4 percent of his starting body weight. Day 22 is the first morning past the 30 pound mark. The first week was the fastest at 16.1 pounds, mostly stored water. The pace since has been roughly 0.6 to 1.8 pounds a day and day 22 came in at 1.1. Every morning reading is logged on the bloodwork page and this is one supervised result, not a promise about anyone else's body.
What does a BMI of 30.0 mean on day 22?
The home scale read 34.6 on day 1 and reads exactly 30.0 today. The standard obesity line sits at 30, so John is standing on the line itself. One more tenth and the category flips to overweight for the first time in this fast. A home scale BMI is an estimate from height and weight, not a clinical measurement, which is why the fast also runs on lab work drawn at the start and again about every 30 days. The next draw lands around day 33.