24 versus 34

Yesterday (well, technically, this morning) I finished my first 'proper' fast. By that, I mean one that fit almost exactly with the primary examples in the book. I felt my body had adjusted fairly well to the version I was doing (very few hypos) and might be able to cope with a more hard core version, i.e. getting through the night without an extra snack or meal before bed.

Interestingly, the book says that it's fine to start and end your fast at any time of day, but it seemed to me that unless you fasted from breakfast to breakfast, it was never quite right. Thinking of the hours involved, though, that actually makes sense, because a fast from, say, 8pm to 8pm is 24 hours, and a fast from 8am to 8am is also 24 hours, except the latter, if you think about it carefully, actually includes two nights. (Unless you get up at 7 and have a massive breakfast before your fast begins - who does that?) So really, fasting from 8am is a fast from the last snack eaten the night before - in my case, usually between 8:30 and 10pm, making the total fast time at least 34 hours.

This extra fast length, and the lack of evening snack, was reflected in my sugar levels this morning - a nice 4.2. I felt a little bit wobbly but nothing too bad, so I'm not worried about this because, I'm assuming, my body will continue improve as it gets used to these changes.

Interestingly, this morning has been the first one since the beginning where I felt lighter. All of a sudden, you understand, not some gradual change from the last week or two. I've been weighing myself quite a lot lately (I tend to do this out of scientific interest when starting a new regime of any kind), and I had actually put a little weight on since starting the 5:2. But this morning, I weighed in at about 6lbs less than I had been weighing the previous few days (and 1/2 a pound less than before I began). I wondered at the change a few more hours made to the fasting process, and whether sleeping off a fast was part of the sudden change.

As I should have guessed, doing the longer fast affected my blood sugars the following day. As is quite typical for me, I half-forgot about this, and should have reduced my bolus insulin slightly but forgot! As a result, I had a few hypos and felt pretty hungry for much of the day. 

Hopefully my body (and I) will get used to the slight change to my fasting nice and quickly. I think it's going pretty well so far.