Difference between starving and Ketosis

I’m always curious to learn about other people’s Fasting experiences so I watch lots of videos and sometime I come across vloggers doing all sort of Fasts. Mono-fruit fasts, bacon fast, juice fast and so on. One thing I don’t understand is why people do not research anything about health or how the body works before beginning these types of fasts. I mean, if you’re followed by a doctor or a clinic, that’s fine – I’m sure they’re professionals and they know what they are doing….well at least in most of the cases I guess. But if you’re fasting as DIY I would think that – considering the risks – the minimum would be to take a look at the side effects or any possible harm I can do to my body! Well it's not that obvious.
So now I want to talk about the substantial difference between Fasting and starving myself.
If I Water fast or Dry fast – as long as I have extra fat on my body – I won’t be starving myself, give that my body, after 2/3 days, will switch from burning sugar to burning fat – the magic of being into Ketosis!
Here - from this article - a clear explanation why burning fat and being into Ketosis will help me NOT being in starvation:
“Human fat is valued at 3,500 calories per pound. Each extra pound of fat will supply enough calories for one day of hard physical labor. Ten pounds of fat are equal to 35,000 calories! This is equivalent to 35 pounds of fish or 192 pounds of carrots, good value for your fat. We carry around a supermarket of reserves, capable of sustaining us for many weeks.”
On the other hand, if I’m “fasting” while basically doing an extreme caloric restricted diet – like mono-fruit juice fast, Master Fast System, or just simply mono-fruit eating diet – well then I’m not only depleting my body of all essential nutriments that I need but I’m not allowing myself to go into Ketosis (due to the high amount of sugar), so my body is still trying to run on glucose and not accessing directly to the fat storage that I have all over my body.
Those types of diets are harmful, would make me feel super weak, will eat all my muscle tissues, it cannot be sustained for long period of time.

How to kill Candida?

There are many articles and entire websites out there on how to kill Candida; most of the people talking about the subject never had Candida in their life but common sense and general knowledge are enough apparently to write or talk lengthily about it.
Me, I’ve been dealing with Candida Overgrowth now for more than 3 years and saying that I had enough, it’s an understatement, but getting rid of it is not that easy, not at all.
I’m not going to give you any introduction on what’s a COS or how that heck happened, because if you’re reading this post, chances are you know exactly what I am talking about.
In my experience there could be many ways to act against a Candida overgrowth, are they all doable? No, they are not. Asking a person to stay 8 months on a diet that does not include: refined sugar, alcohol, starch, gluten, carbs, fruits, nuts, fermented foods or drinks, it’s like saying: go and live on a desert island and try to eat only fish or meat! Impossible for anyone to sustain this type of strict diet.
So how do we do it? Well I think the “easiest” way is to have a good plan and act in phases. You might find this type of approach everywhere, which I believe has some fundamental good basic in it.
First phase of the starvation I would do it with a prolonged Water Fast, at least two weeks drinking only water and doing enemas every single day. The second phase I’ll start the refeeding process with some liquids: first Bone Broth warmed up with a tbsp of Coconut oil and, maybe after 4/5 days of Bone Broth, adding some soups made of leafy greens and no starch or nuts whatsoever. Third phase for me best would be introducing slowly solid food and switching to a Ketogenic Diet having only 2 good size meals per day, so doing Intermitting Fasting. This 3^rd phase should continue till Candida symptoms are ….apparently gone.
I’m going to start this plan as today; usually Water Fast helps a lot with my cravings and in general with my wellbeing so I want to be positive and believe it will work. Wish me luck!

Water Fast - Refeeding Day #1 my experience so far...

Today is the day - I started my refeeding process. This morning I brought in the office my 3 meals of 2 ounces of watermelon. First meal I had at 9:00am, I stopped to drink water at around 8:30am; I took roughly 15 minutes to eat my watermelon – chewing it very carefully - and had some water again at around 10:00am, waiting 45 minutes after my meal.

My first meal was not as I was expecting it, I've watched so many videos on YouTube on people refeeding after 21 days, or even less than 21 – and everyone was like crying while eating the watermelon, almost as it was a mystic encounter never experienced before, the burst of sensations and taste was from another world! For me….it was just like eating a watermelon really. I mean, it was good sure, sweet enough but nothing that I would cry for.

So far I'm not experiencing any sort of side effect from my stomach; I don't feel hungry nor full, I'm sipping on my bottle of water, trying to be conscious today on drinking enough liquids – I feel I'm being really bad with my water intake, yesterday definitely I was under the 2L and while doing a water fast is definitely a negative thing to do. In fact this morning my weight was same as yesterday, my Ketosis was between small and moderate traces, definitely the sugar content in the coconut water impacted my ketosis and my weight, but I want to think that also not drinking enough didn't help the whole process.

My next meal will be at around 11:15am or so, depending on how I feel but I don't think I should have any problem, let's faced it 2 ounces are really nothing and watermelon is almost all water anyway. I think tomorrow I'll register a gain in my weight, I don't think I'll have any bowel movement for what I eat today, but it's not that I'm gaining fat or anything so I'm ok with that. I guess this rule will apply for the next 2/3 days, even more going forward since the food intake will increase day by day; I don't want my body feel that I'm in starvation.

Today for some unknown reasons my skin is really dry, maybe is the cold weather and Canadian winter coming but it feels really dry, and I always wonder if it could be due to the amount of water I'm drinking, in any case I'm constantly sipping today; the key is to do small sips every now and then. I also feel always cold – apart from the weather and the office temperature – I'm sure the Ketosis doesn't help either, but I don't really feel anymore drinking the hot water, I got bored of it. I might have some decaf tea or chamomile tea after the full refeeding process. I need to do some researches to see which one is the best decaffeinated beverage I can have in the morning, I like hot drinks so I hope I can find something that will not make me miss my morning coffee; sometimes I think on buying that odd tea that the acupuncturist gave me a while ago, it was tasting like chicken broth but it was definitely tasty.

HCG Diet - VLCD#15 Food cravings and weight gain

Today is Monday and it marks my fifteenth day on the VLCD. Believe it or not I registered a gain weight this morning. Who gains weight eating 500 Calories a day? But this is part of any diet I guess, some days we can be a bit constipated or TOM is on its way, factors can be many. During my Dr. Bernstein Diet for me tomatoes were making me gain weight! So I'm not much worried about it, especially since I had small traces of Ketosis this morning, that means I'm still burning some fat, I wonder if drinking too much water/decaf makes my Ketostix inaccurate.

Overall I can say that HCG is a miracle hormone for weight loss. Anyone can tell me the dangers or other silly explanations on why this Diet is so not-healthy but my reaction is always: have you tried it?

Because until you actually do the Diet, experience how HCG "fixes" my binge eating desires, how not-hungry I feel every day, how energetic I am – despite the 500 Calories intake; well until that I will not accept any comment or opinion in merit.

I did the Dr. Bernstein Diet many times; he has clinics all over the country – a 600 to 800 calories diet that leaves you starving and weak all the times, that puts you in starvation mode. So if there's someone to blame first, should be all those clinics that legally leave their patients go through this type of strict food regiment.

Yesterday I went do some shopping at Marshalls and HomeSense and every time during this Diet I get so many cravings looking at the organic healthy section where they sell of those different types of nuts. Ok, I should admit that I love love any type of nuts discovered on this planet and most likely if you bring me some more from Mars, I would like those too. But apart from that, I crave a lot peanut butter, the crunchy one. So much that I cannot have any in my apartment if I want to sleep at night without suffering for the desire of eating the whole jar! Anyhow, I had a revelation yesterday thinking about this – it might be obvious for many of you but it wasn't for me, till yesterday. My cravings are messages from my body that's craving fats, since the HCG Diet is a very low fat Diet, this would make sense. I recall thinking, during my Loading Phase, to eat the whole jar I have in my cabinet, to load healthy fats, but really it didn't appeal to me, so I didn't even open it. While, on the other hand, I would have eaten 2lb of Nutella with no problem. Too bad I was trying to load clean – due to my sugar addiction.