You only eat on the weekend? Seriously?
Socially, how does that work for you? I get a lot of enjoyment cooking and eating with my family every night.
Do you do any strenuous exercise during the week?
Socially, how does that work for you? I get a lot of enjoyment cooking and eating with my family every night.
Do you do any strenuous exercise during the week?
With the years, I actually don't need it that much/that hard because it seems to have helped quite a bit with the amount of food I eat /anyway/ but I can still eat my way into a 32 ounce steak and not feel bad about it :-)
As far as family goes, when I fast, I go to my mancave during meals and do some tinkering so 1) they don't feel bad and 2) I don't smell anything!
Seriously, with just a little bit of preparation, it's surprisingly easy...
My pet theory is that we evolved it, as hunter gatherers we probably had to develop a way to sharpen the senses in case the family/group was running out of food. Ie the Next Hunt can't fail. I think it's a cute idea. Very likely completely baseless :-)
Exercise... workouts... you haven't mentioned these at all, other than sport shooting which certainly requires some exertion but is not a workout workout. No workouts during fasts? No regular workouts at all?
Also, fruit juice is not exactly zero calories. You should figure out how many calories you're consuming. There's a big difference between "I'm not eating solid food but I drink juice and coffee to keep myself functional" and "I drink water for 5 days."
So, I'd say I'd do one every two months. I don't /workout/ these days, not as a workout might be seen anyway, I do some weights and so on, but more for tone than 'work'. And I don't do heavy cardio or anything like that. I do a lot of walking, and yeah -- shooting is surprisingly exerting: Lifting/shifting a ~4Kg gun around about 200 times with enough speed and precision is a bit of a workout! On a 'training day' I'll do that more like ~450 times. Thats a few repetitions :-)
I /used/ to workout a lot, and for a little while I did fast AND workout, but ultimately the workout seemed a little bit pointless, especially if you work out for controlling weight. It's a LOT harder to burn energy than to take it in, so my conclusion was to fast, instead.
The workout regime over the years has lead to quite a few injuries as well, and as I get older, I'm now paying for that. I'm built more like a rugbyman than a ballet dancer, so all the years of squash, running, weighted abs and so on leads to weak kneejoints, hips starting to play up a bit etc.
Still, even once a year, I think there are great health benefits to long fasts. If you can go 10 or more days without food, surely that gives the body the chance to break down and absorb a lot of damaged cells that otherwise might be kept around?