The fasting journal · matched to fast day 43
Day 43. Not for Religion, Not for Weight
Day 43 is a Saturday and John is in a good mood, holding the flag gnome, wearing a shirt that has a story of its own. The numbers take twenty seconds. The rest of the video answers the question he gets asked the most.
180.7 pounds. Down 0.9 from yesterday and 47.9 pounds below the 228.6 he weighed on August 1. BMI is 27.4, body fat 29.1 percent, muscle 38.1 percent and the day burned 1923 calories.
How do I feel? I feel good. I feel fine.
One day after firing his electrolytes, the stomach has nothing to complain about. Then he holds up the shirt.
The extra large shirt
In case you are wondering, this is a large shirt. This is an extra large shirt. I just like wearing it around the house.
He is a man 47.9 pounds lighter wearing clothes bought for a man who no longer exists. He knows it. Pretty soon I will have to get rid of it. But that is another story. Six weeks of fasting shows up in the mirror before it shows up in the closet. Then one day the closet catches up all at once.
The question from the DMs
My DMs are asking, am I doing this for religious reasons? And the answer is no.
He does not dodge the faith part. Although I am religious, religion is not the reason why I am doing this. Then he closes the other door people assume. I am not doing it to lose weight either, although that is a good benefit.
Read that again. A man who has lost 47.9 pounds in 43 days calls the weight loss a side benefit. So what is the reason?
Quiet time for the cells
I am trying to give my body and my cells some quiet time so they can rejuvenate themselves.
That is the whole thesis of this fast in one sentence. It is the same answer he gave back on day 16 when he first explained himself. The word for it is autophagy, the cellular cleanup process Cleveland Clinic describes as the body clearing out damaged cell parts and recycling them for repair. The research that mapped it won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
The rejuvenation process, or what we call autophagy, is where it is at. Your cells are gonna get stronger. They are gonna get rid of all the stuff that is not working.
That is John’s belief about his own body, stated in his own words. He has held it since at least day 27. What science can actually promise about fasting and autophagy in humans is still an open question, which is why this site links the sources and lets you read them.
The strip still reads 16 at the top of the chart. Whatever else is happening in there, the fat burning engine has not blinked in over a week.
The doctors part
Doctors. I like doctors. Doctors are very smart. Unfortunately, they are not really trained in fasting. That is why they shy away from it.
He is mostly right about the training and it is worth being precise about the rest. Medical school barely covers prolonged fasting, so most physicians have no playbook for a patient who wants to do what John is doing. Their hesitation is not a flaw. The honest research on long water fasts, including the 2023 Nutrition Reviews paper this site cites often, says the trials are small and the follow ups short. Caution is what medicine is supposed to do with thin evidence.
Which is exactly why the interesting thing about John’s take is what he did with it. He did not use it as a reason to go alone. His fast runs under a physician who ordered a baseline panel, read his day 31 bloodwork and holds the authority to stop the whole thing. He likes doctors enough to put one in charge of his safety net while doing the thing most of them would not prescribe.
Day 43 of 90
August is crossed off end to end and September keeps filling in. Six weeks and a day.
47 days left. Have a nice Saturday. Cheers.
Quick answers
Is John doing his 90 day water fast for religious reasons?
No. He answered it directly on camera because people kept asking. He is a religious man and said so in the same breath. Still, the fast is not a religious practice for him. Fasting shows up in many faith traditions, which is probably why the question keeps landing in his DMs. A 90 day water fast pattern matches a spiritual discipline more than a health project to a lot of people. His reason is biological. He wants the cellular cleanup of a long fast, the process called autophagy. He treats the weight loss as a side benefit. Same answer for that one. Losing 47.9 pounds was never the goal either.
What does giving your cells quiet time mean on a water fast?
It is John's plain language for autophagy. Cleveland Clinic describes autophagy as the body's way of cleaning out damaged cell parts and recycling them. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to the research that mapped how that machinery works. John's version is that when no food is coming in, the body stops spending energy on digestion and gets a stretch of quiet to do maintenance instead. Repair what works, clear what does not. The science on how much fasting amplifies this in humans is still being worked out, so his phrasing is a belief about his own body, not a promise about yours.
Are doctors trained in fasting?
Mostly no. John said it while also saying he likes doctors and calls them very smart. Medical school teaches nutrition thinly and prolonged therapeutic fasting barely at all, so most physicians have no protocol for a patient who wants to stop eating for weeks. Their caution is not ignorance though. It is what responsible medicine looks like when the evidence base is thin. The 2023 Nutrition Reviews paper on prolonged water fasting says exactly that, small trials and short follow ups. The answer John actually lives is the middle path. He did not skip doctors. He found one who would order monthly bloodwork, read the results and hold the power to stop the fast.
How fast do clothing sizes change on a long water fast?
Faster than most people expect once the loss stacks up. John held up the shirt he was filming in on day 43 and pointed out it is an extra large he now wears loose around the house. He knows it is on the way out. That is 47.9 pounds in six weeks doing its work. Around day 34 he measured four inches gone off his waist. By day 39 he was describing his upper body shrinking ahead of his lower body. Sizes do not drop evenly. Shirts go baggy before pants fall off, rings and shoes loosen in between. He jokes about it because replacing a wardrobe is a happy problem to have.