The fasting journal · matched to fast day 37
Day 37. Turning On Fat Burning
Day 37. A quiet Sunday under the gazebo, the American flag gnome riding one arm like always. The weather report said rain was coming. It never showed. John opens with a number that made him do a double take at the scale.
187.3 pounds. Down 2.9 from yesterday and 41.3 pounds below the 228.6 he weighed on August 1. That is the biggest single morning drop since day 3, five weeks ago. BMI is 28.4, body fat 30.9 percent, muscle 37.5 percent and the day burned 1970 calories.
How do I feel? I feel good. I feel fine. Short health report again and that is two calm days in a row.
The water finally let go
A 2.9 pound morning needed explaining and John got right to it.
For some reason my body was holding on to a massive amount of water. Maybe it thought I was going to get more food. Maybe it was preparing for that. Not sure. But I dumped a whole bunch of water.
Look at the week and his theory holds together. After the avocado incident on day 30 the daily drops shrank to almost nothing, 0.4 one morning, 0.7 the next. Something was sitting on the scale. Overnight it cleared. He is not calling it 2.9 pounds of fat. He is calling it a backlog finally moving. He expects the steadier day to day decrease now, just like the weeks before the deviation.
The strip agrees
The second witness is the strip. Yesterday it showed its first faint tint in five mornings, a barely there 0.5. Today it jumped to 1.5, the third square on the chart, clear pink and no squinting required.
So it is working its way up there. I am turning on fat burning, so that is where I want to be, losing all kinds of fat.
Water leaving and ketones climbing on the same morning is exactly the combination he wanted to see. The avocado detour took seven days to fully unwind. Now both numbers point the right way again.
He also said the quiet part that keeps him going. Importantly for me anyway is autophagy. Autophagy I feel is kicking in. Whether anyone can actually feel that is a fair question. The honest answer lives in our autophagy guide. What can be measured is measured every morning and reviewed with his doctor monthly.
Day 37 of 90
Upward and onward, I say. That was the mood. A wish for a good rest of your Sunday, the glass raised to the camera and the gnome got to stay for the whole taping again. Till next time, cheers.
Fifty three days to go. The scale gave back almost three pounds overnight, the strip is climbing the chart again and the fast is back on the clean trend line he spent a week waiting for.
Quick answers
Why did John drop 2.9 pounds overnight on day 37?
His own explanation is water. After the day 30 avocado and broth his daily losses shrank to fractions of a pound, 0.4 on day 35 and 0.7 on day 36. He believes his body was holding on to fluid while it expected more food. Overnight it finally let go. A shift in water balance can move the scale far faster than fat loss can, which is why single day numbers on this site swing so much. The 2.9 pound morning was his biggest drop since day 3. He is not treating it as 2.9 pounds of fat. He is treating it as the backlog clearing.
What does a 1.5 mmol/L urine ketone strip reading mean?
It is the third colored square on the chart that comes with his strips, which run 0, 0.5, 1.5, 4.0, 8.0 and 16 mmol/L. A 1.5 reading is a clear pink, well past the faint tint of 0.5 that showed on day 36. For John it marks the climb back into measurable ketosis after the avocado incident dropped his strips from 16 to 4 and then to zero for four straight mornings. Urine strips are a rough tool and hydration changes how concentrated they read, so he logs the square it matches and watches the direction rather than the exact number.
Can you feel autophagy happening during a fast?
No. There is no sensation that science ties to autophagy and no home test that measures it. It is a cellular recycling process studied mostly in labs. When John says autophagy feels like it is kicking in, that is his personal impression on day 37 of a long fast, not a measurement. What he actually tracks is what can be seen, the scale, the strip color and his monthly bloodwork with his doctor. The honest answer is that nobody can feel autophagy directly and anyone claiming a precise schedule for it is guessing.
Why would the body hold on to water during a long fast?
Fluid balance shifts constantly during fasting and it does not follow the fat. Sodium and other electrolytes, stress hormones and any deviation from the routine can all change how much water the body keeps. John's guess on camera was that after the avocado his body was preparing for more food that never came. That is his theory, not a lab result. What the record shows is a week of small losses after day 30 followed by a 2.9 pound release on day 37 while the ketone strip climbed. The pattern fits water coming off, whatever the trigger was.