14 July 2014 blog....

My 10 day fast and the unexpected and glorious side effect

‎For those of us with McArdle's we have to accept that there are limitations that the disease imposes on us, we have to compromise and find a way despite them. Each of us is different and each must learn to listen to their body to know where those boundaries are. Daily exercise is by common acceptance a requirement, my belief is that we need to continually push cautiously at the edge of our capacity and that we can improve the quality of life through doing so. On diet, however, opinion is divided some call for carbs before exercise, while others including the specialist i have dealt with Dr Slonim suggest high protein, but more of that later.....

In short we need to find our own path and not be scared to try things. For me this has meant an annual detox for the last 9 years in order to keep my weight under control. I wrote this on Day 9 of my current Water Fast:

Day 9 of what has become an incredible fast because I seem to have stumbled across an unexpected benefit - the ability to exercise what seems like "normally". 

Feeling somewhat euphoric as today I swam 100 lengths of a 25m pool and walked around 15k all before 11am and all without the need for pause and with few M issues. (still can't get up the 3 flights of stairs to my room "normally" though). 

As context I have not swam more than 50 metres without pause in the last year. This is my 7/8th fast, on previous occasions I have taken juice drinks 5 times a day. This time decided to go hard core and just stick to water only, in hindsight a top decision. After an initial restful 2 days I started to increase exercise and on about day 6 noticed I was going from stop to walking up a 500 metre hill with no issue, while on my daily long walks hills just did not seem like hills anymore, rather than avoid them I sought them out and relished the challenge‎. 

Then yesterday came my first 100 length swim after which I was convinced something special was happening.  

I discussed with Andrew Wakelin and our working theory is that my body is in Ketosis, getting energy from fat (plenty of it), all the while. Hence when I exercise I believe I am in effect already in second wind and using the optimal energy pathway for M people. 

For me this has been a remarkable few days and I plan to experiment to see how long I need to fast to see improvement. For the moment though am not putting my genie back in its bottle. The fast goes on and I plan to test myself on the treadmill on Tuesday to see if I can see measurable improvement there!

I must add a word of caution it is not normally recommended to exercise too hard while fasting while there are often side effects for several days.