Have you, or anyone else who feels markedly better from not eating gotten any further insight into why that that is, and find a better solution than going without food?
Nope, there is no better solution. What I can only say is that it may be easier to start fasting if all of your nutrients are replenished. Without some key nutrients it may be difficult for the body to switch itself into fasting mode (including but not limited to breakdown of glycogen, production of ketone bodies and their use by the brain, and hormonal changes required to survive fasting). I know that too well, because I've been there.
You may also improve your metabolic profile and the switch to fasting by taking:
- carnitine (improves fat burning)
- green tea (helps carnitine do its thing)
- coffee (as above, more less)
(the above are BTW components of the so-called thermogenic fat-burners so it is possible that any such a component will improve the fasting experience, just a thought)
- HMB (stops muscle tissue from breakdown directly whereas carnitine indirectly)
- If anything else fails you may take some pure amino acids - these don't require digestion but also kind of spoil the effect of fasting - it all of course depends on the dosage. I discovered that even a small dose (like a heapy teaspoon) once a day makes me feel better when fasting. But I don't need that anymore.
Fasting is actually a multi-prong approach to the problem of inflammation and gut problems. To simplify:
- when no food passes through your digestive system there is no cell shedding so everything can heal instead of shed.
- organs don't need to secrete enzymes and acid so they rest and the enzymes and acid don't digest cells.
- the cells of the immune system are not exposed to allergens
- the cells of the immune system are kept hungry so they don't have the energy to attack
- the cells of the immune system are kept in check by different hormones informing them that there's a state of fasting and it's no time for increased activity but a time for peace and quiet.
- the visceral fat is burnt as well as fat in the belly and that is very good because fat is actually quite active hormonally in a bad way.
- bad bacteria and/or candida die due to lack of food for them
- there are long-term hormonal changes like lowering demand for insulin when eating next time. And lower insulin means less inflammation.
- many other advantages that I forgot about or don't want to mention because enough is enough. But the conclusion is that fasting can't be replaced with anything else and over thousands (millions !) of years it became a part of human physiology. The human body should be ready to fast, should be metabolically flexible but it isn't because we simply don't do that. It's unthinkable. Only very few understand that it's... normal. So maybe we should... especially when there seems to be no other way...
But that doesn't mean that you can't get worse from it. As in case of any treatment or activity in general it may so happen that something really bad is going on with you and in the past you would simply die or have severe complications. And we don't want that, we want to prevent it.
