The fasting journal · matched to fast day 38
Day 38. Same Weight in Half the Time
Day 38. Labor Day under the gazebo, the American flag gnome riding one arm the way it has all week. John slept in for the holiday and he sounds like a man who enjoyed every minute of it. Then he does some math out loud and it turns into the best story of the week.
186.0 pounds. Down 1.3 from yesterday and 42.6 pounds below the 228.6 he weighed on August 1. BMI is 28.2, body fat 30.6 percent, muscle 37.6 percent and the day burned 1961 calories.
How do I feel? I feel good. I feel fine. Three calm days in a row now.
The strip keeps climbing
Yesterday the strip reached 1.5 and John called it turning on fat burning. This morning it went up another square.
You can see by my keto readings that the ketones have gone up, which is great because now I am burning fat. That is at 4.0 today.
The chart on his bottle runs 0, 0.5, 1.5, 4.0, 8.0 and 16 mmol/L. Four mornings ago that pad was blank. The climb back from the day 30 deviation took a week of patience and it is finished.
Eighty three days last time
Then he brought up something he had clearly been sitting on for a while.
The last time I got to around this weight, 186, it took me like 83 days to get to it.
Same man, same scale, same number on the display. Less than half the calendar. He gave two reasons for the gap and neither one is a supplement.
One, I started at a higher weight, which makes sense. It is going to take longer.
That is the plain one. A heavier starting point puts the same goal weight further down the road even when the scale is cooperating. The second reason is the one that costs people weeks without them noticing.
But I guess the big thing that really impacted me was the avocado incident. I really got to understand what a broth actually does and how it slows everything down.
He is talking about the night he ate an avocado and drank vegetable broth on day 30. His strips fell from 16 to 4 and then to zero for four straight mornings. The scale handed him fractions of a pound for the better part of a week. He did not read that in an article. He watched it happen on his own numbers, which is why he says he saw it and tested for it.
So when you fast you want to keep that in mind.
That is the whole lesson of day 38 in one line. The fasting was never the slow part.
Still just water
I am just sticking to water. I have not had electrolytes for some time. I did not need it.
He has moved around on this. Plain water for 11 days. A daily glass with salt and electrolytes from day 12 when his sleep broke up. An adjustment around day 25 when the daily dose stopped agreeing with him. Now nothing but water. He is not telling anyone else to do that. He says listen to your body. His own body is being checked by a doctor with bloodwork every month.
Day 38 of 90
Since we are in the holiday I slept in. Good sleep. I love sleeping. A holiday, a long sleep, a gnome in a stars and stripes hat and the best comparison he has made since he started. He wished everyone a good Labor Day, raised the glass and let us go.
Fifty two days to go. August is crossed off end to end and September is crossed through the seventh. The strip is at 4.0, the scale is moving every morning again and the number that once took him 83 days took him 38 this time.
Quick answers
What does a 4.0 mmol/L urine ketone strip mean?
It is the fourth colored square on the chart that ships with John's strips, which run 0, 0.5, 1.5, 4.0, 8.0 and 16 mmol/L. It reads as a deep rose against the pale tints lower down the scale. For John on day 38 it is the top of a three morning climb. Zero for four days after the avocado, next 0.5, next 1.5 and now 4.0. Urine strips measure what the body is dumping rather than what it is using and hydration changes how concentrated the sample reads, so the honest way to use them is to watch the direction across mornings instead of treating one square as a precise measurement.
Why did John reach 186 pounds in 38 days this time and 83 days on his earlier fast?
He gave two reasons on camera and neither is a product. The first is arithmetic. He started that earlier fast at a higher weight, so the same target number sat further away. The second is the one he thinks mattered more. That fast included food deviations of the kind he repeated on day 30 here, an avocado and a vegetable broth. He has now watched on his own strips and scale what that does. His ketones fell from 16 to zero and his daily losses shrank to fractions of a pound for about a week. His point is that the deviations, not the fasting, are what stretch a timeline.
Does starting a fast at a higher weight make the scale move faster?
Early losses do tend to be larger for people who start heavier, which is partly water and partly the simple fact that a bigger body burns more calories at rest. That is also why John's own daily drops have shrunk from the four and five pound mornings of week one to the one pound mornings of week six. What his day 38 comparison shows is the other half of the picture. Starting heavier also means more distance to cover, so the same goal weight arrives later on the calendar even when the scale is moving well. Anyone planning an extended fast should be setting these expectations with a doctor rather than from someone else's chart.
Can you stop taking electrolytes partway through a long water fast?
John has. He said so plainly on day 38. He went the first 11 days on plain water, added a daily glass with salt and electrolytes on day 12 when broken sleep pushed him to it, adjusted the dose again around day 25 when his body pushed back. He has now gone some time without them because he did not feel he needed them. That is his read on his own body inside a fast his doctor is watching with monthly bloodwork. Electrolyte needs on an extended fast are individual and the consequences of getting them wrong are not minor, which is why this is a conversation to have with a doctor rather than a setting to copy.