I'm doing an intermittent fasting experiment for the month of May. I will do a daily fast for ten separate days. I marked ten random "F's" on the calendar on ten different days to fast on.
My first day was yesterday and went quite well. It was a little stressful and experienced a bit of brain fog by the night time but overall it was good. I also had trouble sleeping but that could have been because I drank way too much coffee, even for me.
My main reason for doing this is to increase growth hormone levels in my body. Fasting can release growth hormone very significantly in someone that is fasting. There is about 10 times serum growth hormone in a fasting individual than a non-fasting individual. The evolutionary reasons for this can be speculated on.
During a time with no food, pre-agriculture man certainly would have had some kind of adaptation to get him through the slump. Growth hormone would be released to maintain much needed muscle mass during a time of caloric scarcity, and fat would be burned to provide him with energy to look for food. Growth hormone preserves lean tissue and burns fat. Lean tissue is much more important in times of scarcity. Your body needs some kind of trigger to make sure you don't wither away during a fast.
Obviously, I have some body composition goals in mind here. I want to be as lean and muscular as possible. But I also want to see what effect this has on my mind. Mystics have been known through out history to use fasting for spiritual realization. I don't think I'll get enlightened during my vain attempt to look good nekkid but it wouldn't hurt if I got some peace of mind in the next few weeks. Fasting has a very calming effect on the mind once you get used to it. I'm not sure why but it might have something to do with utilizing ketone bodies as a main envergy source in lieu of glucose for the brain.
I'm no stranger to fasting but this is the first time I will be fasting for whole days. Yesterday was quite a challenge but it wasn't immensely difficult. But I did have a lot of dreams about food that night.
