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What is the difference between fasting and starving yourself?

bluecurlylegend

Well-Known Member
Messages
91
Location
France
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Dislikes
Films with Nicholas Cage !
Could you tell me the difference between fasting and starving yourself ? I'm having a bit of difficulty getting my head round this. As always your opinion is much appreciated.
 
Hi @RiskyFrank , my DN got over excited with my HbA1c of 37, if I got down to 29 I don't know what she would do. (I can dream!).
I found that although I continued with exactly the same low carb diet, after the initial weight loss, my weight stabilised give or take a lb or two. This goes against the calories in minus calories out theory so maybe there is an ideal weight your metabolism is happy with. You may not have to adjust your diet to stay as you are.
 
bluecurlylegend said:
Yes, that would be great, thank you. I'm kind of confused when I read about people extolling the values of fasting and then I read references to one's body reacting negatively to starvation ??
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Starvation ( or more likely calorie restriction) means you are still eating as often as you were before but eating a lot less.. the body is fooled into thinking that there is a dearth of food so starts to store provisions for future use. This includes slowing the metabolism
When you fast you don't take in anything (depending on the fast type) your body thinks "bloody hell we need to get going and find some food" so the metabolism gets a small boost to get you up and out searching for food.
Also fasting does not trigger a insulin reaction whereas eating does so it helps to reduce insulin levels and access stored fat for energy which is more difficult on a calorie restricted diet as insulin is still triggered when you eat.
That's my understanding (probably very badly put) from my fairly extensive reading. Mainly from the videos and writings of Dr Jason Fung who explains it much better than me.. so why didn't I just link to one of his videos.... duh!
 
Flippant answer: fasting voluntary, starving isn't.

Starving is generally eating little or nothing over a long period so that your body starts to take desperate measures to keep you alive. Survival reactions.

Fasting is refraining from eating (or drinking) something for a shortish period. People may eat an evening meal at 18:00 and not eat again until 12:00 the next day. That would be a fast of 18 hours.

With fasting, you usually break your fast (breakfast?) and eat normally until the next fasting period.
 
Fasting means taking longer between meals. This could be just skipping breakfast and eating between 12:00 and 18:00, or just eating once a day. You still need to keep hydrated whilst fasting and I take multi-vitamins to keep mineral levels up.

When you fast you can feel a bit hungry, but that soon passes. Once you start eating, then you tend to want to eat more. When you use up the glucose in your body, then you start to use the fat stored in your body, starting with the fat in the liver. This fat gets converted to ketones which the body uses as an alternative to glucose. During ketosis the body repairs itself via a process called autophagy. There are lots of benefits from fasting including lower blood sugars, reduced obesity and longer life expectancy due to improved health.
 
bluecurlylegend said:
Could you tell me the difference between fasting and starving yourself ? I'm having a bit of difficulty getting my head round this. As always your opinion is much appreciated.
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Fasting is a period of abstaining from food to allow the digestive processes to rest and allow the body to adjust. Starvation pushes the body into defensive measures to maintain itself.
 
Once again, thanks everyone for your replies.
So Starvation is involuntary and meals are calorie restricted. Fasting however means no meals at all which promotes hormonal changes in the body to allow stored fat to be used to survive. Starvation is like a drip feed stopping the hormonal reaction and preventing the use of fat as a fuel.
OK, I get that.....and thanks bulkbiker for directing me to Dr. Jason Fung.....but I'm still a bit puzzled about cases of anorexia and the survival of concentration camp victims. Is there also a strong psychological element in Fasting for health benefits ?
However, I've got the necessary equipment to carry out some experimentation, namely a fat body and a kitchen that can be placed out of bounds.....
I'll keep you posted.
 
I Think it would never be recomended to a very underweight person to fast in a calorie restrickted way , that would be iresponsible anyways
 
What way of eating are you following at the moment?.. if you have already cut carbs down a lot you will find fasting a lot easier than if you are still consuming carbs. maybe start with skipping one meal per day (for me breakfast) ideally at the start or end of the day i.e. breakfast or dinner. This extends your nightly fast (sleep) and gets the body used to doing without food.
I found bfast the easiest meal to skip and as it was usually for me carb heavy the best one to stop having. You may find it better to skip dinner.
Once you've done a couple of weeks of this and are comfortable maybe go for a 24 hour fast.
 

I've only been doing this for about 6 weeks but the most surprising thing is that I've lost 6 kilos ! Only another 10 to go and I'll just be overweight not obese. And I feel great for it. I know I've not been particularly scientific about this but I've just completely cut out bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, couscous, sugar, beer, processed food and most other root vegetables. Using the recipes on this site makes it easy, I'm eating well !
My normal breakfast was a banana, home made full fat yoghourt and black coffee, although the banana has been left out for the last month. Lunch was usually a sandwich of some sort but for the last 6 weeks it's been a portion of pate or cheese with a few olives or tomatoes or pickles. However, this week, I've found it relatively easy to skip lunch and just get by on a light breakfast and my evening meal, which is nearly always chosen from the 365 Recipe Book.
But I think that perhaps having even a small breakfast is inhibiting the fasting process so I'll try going without it for the next week or so. I'll just have my yoghourt as a dessert after my evening meal. So, in effect, I'll be extending my night time fast by another 9 hours.
Most of the time, my blood glucose level hasn't risen by over 2mmol/l two hours after eating, but my fasting blood glucose level has, if anything, started to creep up from around 6.0mmol/l to about 6.5mmol/l.
Just to add a little complication to it all, I've also been blessed with ulcerative colitis for the last 20 years. Sometimes it's been really grim but it also went into remission for over five years when I retired. It comes and goes as it pleases and at the moment it's just at the somewhat irritating stage, in other words, my colon is slightly inflamed. I'm allergic to the commonest medication so I don't take anything at all for it. If it gets really bad I follow a FODMAP regime until it calms down. Touch wood, it's been over 15 years since I've had to resort to steroids. There are a lot of very interesting posts about diabetes and colitis on this site.
I must say that these forums are great, surely this is what the internet was for !
 
bulkbiker said:
How are you going to make your coffee?
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I'll ask my dear wife to chaperone me in the kitchen. As far as she's concerned I can't make a cup of tea worth drinking and equally, I wouldn't trust her to make a respectable pot of coffee.
 
I never eat breakfast. I am now quite often skipping lunch also. Sometimes it can make me feel a little yuk, then I eat some nuts and a couple of slices of cooked chicken, throw in some blackcurrants, then feel right as rain again. Today around 2 pm I had two slices of chicken topped with watercress, cucumber,tomato and some cheese..Rolled them up like a Tortilla and ate. Strange but |I felt quite full.
 
Just a note on fasting from my own experience - not everyone experiences fasting as hunger-free and painless after a period of time. Not at all! I know many do, as does Art of Flowers? But don't get a big shock if you find out you are not one of those lucky folks!

To be honest, if going without food was painless for all we human folks I can't help thinking we human folks would deal with hunger and starvation a lot differently! Ie not as urgently, perhaps . Which, can, after all, be rather good for us, when it comes to finding food to feed our bods, if we lived in a situation with involuntary starvation.

I feel the pain, but do it anyway. Mostly.

It makes sense too that there is a lot of individual variation on how we experience periods of hunger/starvation/fasting. All those hormones (that we currently know of) we have inside us dealing with hunger and appetite and so on - it stands to reason that different folks have different levels of them. So would impact on the experience of how periods without food are felt? This is what I think, at least.
 
ps, I do talk about fasting as starving myself. Ditto a low-calorie diet when I did one. But I can be quite melodramatic. And it helps me deal with the hunger.
 
bluecurlylegand I am very interested in your thread
We are all different but thought my experience night be of interest
I too have ulcerative colitis ( diagnosed 4 years ago ) and shortly afterwards found blood sugars were high which I thought was related , I reacted badly to the normal UC medications and so my consultant suggested aloe vera which has worked for me and without changing my diet ( and taking no meds) my blood sugars reduced by 40% ( from diabetic to pre diabetic ) so I think for me UC and higher BS are related.. This seems to be borne out by the fact that a couple weeks ago I forgot to take my Aloe Vera and UC started up again and overnight blood sugars jumped to 7's . I am getting the UC under control again and blood sugars gradually dropping down but not yet in 5's .

On the matter of fasting after I got UC under control the first time I went went low carb as I wanted to lose weight and looked at the Dr Fung videos and went 16:8 ie not eating for 16 hours and moved my last meal to before 6pm and Blood sugars dropped down to average mid 5's .

Interestingly I note that Steve Redgrave had UC and later got type 2 diabetes so looks like we maybe are in in a club if somewhat unwanted !
 

Hi Dipsydo, thanks for your reply and sorry for not being able to get back to you as quickly as I would have liked.
I've had family and friends descend upon me for the last fortnight so things have been a bit hectic ! But I'm very interested in your Aloe Vera regime. How do you take it ? Is it in tablet form or as a liquid ? I've taken Aloe Vera tablets on and off for a few years but without noticing any difference. I can get a bottle of Aloe Vera gel in our local bio health food store, quite expensive though, about €16.00 for half a litre. And do you take it all the time, or just when you feel discomfort ?
 
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