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Comment by fbdab103 | Hacker News Reader

I have done several fasts (longest 9 days), and low calorie dieting sounds more challenging than not eating. Once you get into the groove, it feels like you can continue not eating for a long time. Having to be perpetually hungry, but allowed to eat only the right things seems a recipe for failure.

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I wonder how the people who have good experiences with fasting do it. For me, I get brutal headaches, walk around in a flu-like daze and can't think straight, oh any my ADHD turns up to 11. I think work would start wondering why I can't accomplish anything way before the 9 day mark.

Your body is switching to ketosis. You can read about it a lot and it's literally called keto-flu by the keto diet community :) If you want to ease the transition, you should first get into ketosis, but not fasting yet(so still eating but not carbs), and after ket-flu is gone then try fasting. From my experience all that comes from shock to the body. You are simply not used to it. It gets better over repeated attempts. Also for the headache - do you still drink caffeine? Brutal headaches usually come from caffeine withdrawal(if you normally drink it but stop during fasting). If that is the case you need first to drop caffeine slowly lowering your daily dosage so the headaches won't happen.

This kind of has me wondering if this is actually good for the body. Ketosis is not without downsides. Alcohol actually acts much the same way in someone completely not used to it. Interesting to hear that it's not just me, and the people who do this all the time also suffer.

So the idea is to ignore the body's defense mechanism in order to... what? Lose weight? Feel good about having suffered through this? I guess I'm trying to figure out the upside. Like lowered social inhibition with alcohol :)

Frequent MCT oil servings starting pre-fast (continuing through the fast until post-fast) shortens the time spent in "keto flu" by a lot (works for me).

Personally if I start eating less, my appetite also goes down.

But ngl, it’s real hard at first but if I can hold it together for a day or two, my body starts vibing with it or sumthin’ and I stop feeling hungry. It’s then real easy to eat less.

Funny thing is that I’m the opposite. I can’t do fasts. Impossible shit

Traditional religious fasts like Lent are an extended period (40 days not counting Sundays in the case of Lent) of calorie restriction and yes being perpetually hungry. It's super doable, just not fun. Definitely causes a perspective shift though!

The proposed diet - veg and fat - sounds like a form of keto. My experience with keto is that once your body is in ketosis, you also don't crave food; similar to fasting.

I played around with intermittent fasting in the early stages of covid lockdown because I was gaining weight being inside all the time.

I would frequently be in ketosis before breaking fast per the urine strips - despite not intentionally limiting carbs at all.

It was an interesting experiment but after having a kid I found it tough to keep the routine. I was in amazing shape for a little while though

When adhering to if+keto well lines up with a period where social pressures don't compel me to eat, it's not terribly hard to go 2 or 3 days without eating just by not eating until I feel hungry.

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