Health Benefits of Fasting
Lynn, who struggles with her weight, has done multi-day fasts in the past. I fast for Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, but I’ve never done a fast that lasted more than a day and a half. Still, I’ve read about the health benefits of fasting for years.Since my husband and daughter were traveling, I didn’t have to cook for anyone. So I was excited to try it. I talked to Lynn on Oct. 29, and I ate my last meal on Oct. 30 at 2 p.m.
To do a three-day water-only fast, I would have to eat nothing and drink only water until the afternoon of Nov. 1.

The 1st Day
Skipping dinner on Oct. 30 was easy. The first 24 hours, which were so hard on Lynn that she caved and ate dinner, were a piece of cake (if you’ll permit me the expression). Probably because I’ve done my own version of intermittent fasting-lite for several years. I don’t usually eat breakfast. When I feel like I’m over-eating or eating too many unhealthy foods, I'll sometimes skip dinner, breakfast, or both.Monday Misery
But I’m sorry to report that the feeling of ease and heightened energy that I woke up with early on Oct. 31 changed abruptly after I had done three hours of writing.“I’m hungry,” I texted Lynn at 8:35 a.m.
She wrote back, “Good grief, it’s been five minutes.”
I wrote, “Starving, wasting away.”
She replied, “I’ll call the coroner.”
Inspiration From Dr. Jason Fung
I spent the morning at the office but started to feel very grouchy at about 11 a.m., 19 hours into the fast. I submitted my articles at roughly 1 p.m.Feeling good again, I bicycled 10 miles to Lynn’s house, which took me about an hour. Lynn (whose husband was also out of town) and I spent the rest of the day watching lectures by Dr. Jason Fung, a Canadian nephrologist who champions fasting (both intermittent and long-term) for weight loss and diabetes. We binge-watched, chugged filtered water with fasting salts in them, and rested. I’m not a napper, but I dozed off a couple of times.
Benefits to Fasting
Fung has written several books about fasting, including the bestselling “The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternative Day, and Extended Fasting.”- It’s free
- It’s convenient
- It adds time to your day (because you aren’t cooking, eating, or cleaning up after meals)
- It’s not predicated on making dietary changes
- It helps you lose weight
- It lowers your blood glucose levels
- It reduces your dependence on medication
- It has positive cognitive benefits, making you feel more aware and clearer-headed
Tuesday Feels Worse
All this theory sounded great, but after I heaved my bicycle into the back of Lynn’s car and she drove me home, I realized that my legs were aching and that I was exhausted.“I’m so flicking hungry,” I text Lynn at 10:58 a.m. on Nov. 1.
Despite another productive and energetic early morning, I finally have the caffeine-withdrawal headache I thought I had dodged, and honestly, I hurt all over.
“Why is today harder?” I wrote.
Lynn texted back, “Because it’s not tomorrow yet.”
I responded, “When will it be tomorrow?”
Lynn called me.
“Focus on the autophagy,” she scolded. “Your body is currently busy doing a miracle. It’s taking apart old broken things, like the rusty components of a car, and building it back shiny and new. It’s magic.”
Autophagy is how cells deal with broken parts or a lack of food. Each cell contains organelles, which are like a cell’s organs. When a cell runs out of food or when one of these organelles stops functioning properly, the cell breaks it down and turns it into essential nutrients to build new organelles or to create energy for the cell to keep living. When we eat food, cells need to process it and do various other jobs, so they can only engage in autophagy properly when we don’t eat. If cells are little factories, autophagy is how they keep all the machinery in top shape and running smoothly.
Unfortunately, thinking of autophagy didn’t make me feel better.
Even though I still had work that was incomplete, I was really and truly miserable. I gave up trying to write, and instead, I sat outside on a wicker chair in a patch of sunlight. It felt healing and restorative, like my body was eating the sun’s rays. I stayed outside until the sun dropped below the roofline.
Things went from miserable to disconsolate. I started feeling nauseous. I went to the bathroom a thousand times, I had been sweating on and off, and my head still ached. It was so bad that I could no longer drink water because even a small sip made me feel sick. By then, all I could do was lie on the couch. I was too miserable even to check Facebook.
I video-called Rick Kirschner, a naturopathic doctor based in Sandpoint, Idaho, who has done many fasts in his life, to ask him if I was going to die. He and his wife are both in their 70s, hale, thin, and energetic.
If the proof of good health is in pudding, Ricky and Lindea are walking talking testaments to the benefits of fasting and healthy eating. Lindea even once did a fast for 20 days, Ricky told me, something he doesn’t recommend.
Ricky scolded me for biking, popping a dried pear in his mouth. Watching him eat made my stomach roar.
Tuesday Night
As soon as it was dark, I headed upstairs to bed. I fell asleep right away but woke up to stumble to the bathroom. My head was still pounding, and I had new aches to add to my list of woes: a tooth that was once cracked but healed itself in my lower jaw was throbbing, and my psoas muscle in my left hip was also killing me—a basketball injury from ages ago.Day 3
When you tell people that you’re water fasting, you find out that many others do it, too. My friend Dan, who owns a construction company in the East Bay, California, texted me that he has been fasting a few times each year for two to three days each time. And Dan’s even done a seven-day fast a couple of times.“Hunger goes away, and you develop superhuman senses,” Dan said. “Sight, smell just get super intense. You don’t sleep, and you have more energy than you’ve ever had.”
But, he noted, “Day 3 is the worst. By a lot.”
Everyone’s experience is different. Although my biking legs were still aching and I wasn’t getting any of the promised benefits of mental clarity or extra energy, there was something empowering about knowing that I was in the home stretch. Day 3, with its reward of food in the afternoon, proved to be a thousand times easier than Day 2.
I made a big pot of organic vegetable broth, and the house was filled with the cozy tangy smell of onions, carrots, garlic, and scallion tips simmering on the stove. I fantasized about drinking a cup of broth—which Ricky suggested I do when I was feeling so sick the day before. All I could think about was eating the potato I had cooked in it, along with an organic salad. I kept looking at my watch and counting how many hours were left on my fingers.
A friend once told me that she wasn’t afraid of the pain of natural childbirth. She knew it was finite, and she knew she could withstand it because it would end. But even though I was fantasizing about food, the hunger was miraculously gone. I felt obnoxiously proud of myself. A small part of me was grateful to be alive. When I first heard about long-term fasting, I thought it sounded deadly and potentially lethal.
Lynn checked in to confess that she had broken her fast again—she also ate dinner on Day 2. But, she said, she didn’t have any sugar, which is something she struggles with. The inflammation in one of her legs had gone down so much that it no longer hurt her, and she was starting to feel good.
Lessons Learned
Later I learned that I made several mistakes with this fast. One metabolic specialist told me that I should’ve had water with fasting salts all three days, not just at Lynn’s.Another medical doctor who’s a proponent of fasting said I should’ve taken activated charcoal when I started to feel really sick. The theory there is that toxins are being released and the charcoal helps absorb them and flush them out of your system.
I also shouldn’t have been so physically active right at the beginning. And I probably should’ve taken Ricky’s advice and had some bone broth instead of suffering so stubbornly.
The fast was miserable. A day later, I felt like a million bucks. It’s too soon to know if I reaped any long-term health benefits. Still, I can’t wait to do it again.