What Happens If You Eat NOTHING For 7 Days

Fasting has been steadily growing in popularity and a lot of people have questions about extended longer duration fasting. Unlike intermittent fasting, this will typically involve not eating for a couple days. And most people immediately dismiss this as a viable option for Fat Loss and weight loss because there are so many myths surrounding this topic. People are worried about losing their muscle mass, they’re worried about slowing down their metabolism, and they’re worried about their health and well-being in general.

So in today’s video, I want to go over exactly what will happen to your body if you don’t eat anything for 7 days straight. If you’re looking to burn some fat lose some weight or if you’re just looking to try an extended fast I highly recommend you stay with me through this video because I can tell you exactly what to expect and help settle the myths and doubts in your mind about a longer-term fast. First off let me start by saying that you shouldn’t just jump into a 7 day long fast without first getting used to shorter fasting intervals like intermittent fasting, the warrior diet, and the one meal a day diet. I recommend you first try to fast for only two days, however, even if you did do a 7 day fast contrary to what a lot of you may think you’re not going to just drop dead. Your body is very good at conserving energy when it doesn’t have access to food. This is how Gandhi at 74 years old was able to go on a 21-day hunger strike and not starve to death. When you fast for an extended duration your body will mostly use stored body fat for energy. And even though Gandhi was already pretty lean before his fast he was able to complete all 21 days. For most of us, we consider a normal diet as one in which we eat every couple of hours.

However, before the invention of things like farming and refrigeration our distant ancestors would experience long periods of fasting followed by periods of feeding when food became available. So most people are actually very capable of fasting for 5 to ten days without much of a problem even though a lot of people think they’ll practically die from starvation just by just skipping a meal or two. Just to drive this point home even further there was a study conducted by researchers from a University in Scotland that was published in 1973. In this study, an extremely obese 27-year-old man fasted for 382 days. And believe it or not he didn’t drop dead. He actually went from weighing 456 pounds………… to 180 pounds. Such a long fast could obviously only be achieved under the supervision of doctors with the use of vitamin supplements like yeast, sodium, and potassium, but the amazing thing is that the researchers followed this man for 5 years after his fast ended and he managed to maintain his weight…. never crossing back above 200 pounds again. Studies like this completely disprove the myth that your metabolism will shut down and won’t ever function normally again just because you don’t eat every couple hours or every couple days for that matter. A 7 day fast is definitely something that you can work up to overtime, so what should you expect to happen to your body over the course of one week of fasting.

Well about 6 hours after your start the fast your body will completely finish digesting food and breaking down glycogen into glucose. That glucose is primarily used by your body for energy and even though it can last for up to 24 to 72 hours it will typically be depleted after just 6 hours. So for most people, that’s when you can expect sudden hunger pangs and food cravings to start kicking in. Also in this initial phase, your mood will change because your body is still used to getting its energy from glucose, so you can expect to be a little “hangry” in the beginning. These intense hunger pangs that can also come with the feeling of dizziness, weakness, and nausea, diminish after the first 2 days for women and can take 3 days for men. If you can overcome these first 3 days the hunger will dramatically decrease and your body will start to feel more energized. During these first 3 days, you can expect to gradually burn off the glycogen reserves in your muscles and your liver. This will cause you to lose a good amount of water weight in the beginning because the carbohydrates that you would normally be eating retain water in the body. Also, you will begin to switch over to using fat for energy.

Check out my client Nicolette’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.