Fasting vs. Elemental Diet

These are two very different things even though both involve no chewing.

Fasting is no calories, just water (and salt or trace minerals) for hours/days.  You can ease into fasting by drinking bone broth, which is what I tried but need to be somewhat careful as consuming too many calories can turn fasting into a low calorie diet of sorts.  Why does this matter?  When you fast, your body will burn through the energy stores in your liver in 2-3 days, with no other calorie options present it will turn to burning body fat for energy.  If/when you get into this magic zone, leptin, your hunger hormone decreases and your metabolism revs up because energy is required to convert body fat to energy.  That's the very, very simple way of explaining what I understand from listening to Jason Fung and reading The Complete Guide to Fasting.  If you are over 300 calories then your body will not switch into this magic zone, you will remain hungry and your metabolism will not rev up and go into body fat burning mode. It will just slow down because you are consuming both too many and not enough calories. This is the zone many dieters end up in after years of calorie counting, exercise and yo yo dieting.  According to the hosts of Fasting Talk this is also what happens to some people who only eat one meal a day.  Your body adapts to the low levels of calories and you do not lose weight.

The elemental diet on the other hand, if done correctly, keeps your calorie consumption up to your normal levels.  If you do the homemade version and keep the fats high and carbs low you will go into ketosis and much of the initial weight that comes off will be water.  It shouldn't slow your metabolism.  The problem comes in that many people with SIBO end up not digesting fat well so they rely more on carbs, which with the elemental means sugars. This is also the problem with many packaged elemental diet formulas, heavy on sugars and nutrients, not much fat.  Thankfully so far I am not one of these people, protein and carbs give me difficulty, fat not so much.  I sucked a tiny bit of honey out of my son's honey stick at the farmer's market today and have had a headache ever since.  I didn't used to be this sensitive but cutting sugars out has reduced my tolerance. It probably doesn't help that I seem to have some lingering insulin resistance issues as well.  Turns out my BS monitor is wildly inaccurate and needs to be replaced so I don't know this for sure.

Given that my body is not digesting well and I have a lot of lingering methane I am considering the homemade elemental.  First I need to finish eating the perishable food in the house that only I will eat, then I'll decide.