Started yesterday at 4:30. Goal is to do 5 days with just water or bone broth. Have been doing 24 and 48 hour fasts for couple of months working my way up to this.

Benefits .. creating ketosis and autophagy.

Forget juice cleanses and detox diets. While there’s probably nothing wrong with drinking your weight in liquid kale, it won’t flush out toxins any faster than if you were eating, you know, actual food.
The good news: There’s a little-known way your body does cleanse itself, and it’s a process you can optimize.
All you need to do is practice a little self-cannibalism.
What?

How autophagy works

Yes, you can actually train your body to eat itself — and, believe it or not, you want it to.
It’s a natural process called autophagy (the word literally means “self-eating”).
It’s one way your body cleans house. In this process, your cells create membranes that hunt down scraps of dead, diseased, or worn-out cells; gobble them up; strip ’em for parts; and use the resulting molecules for energy or to make new cell parts Trusted Source
“Think of it as our body’s innate recycling program,” says Colin Champ, MD, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Champ is also the author of “Misguided Medicine,” a book that questions many traditional health recommendations and provides evidence-based advice on diet and lifestyle.

The benefits of autophagy

There’s some evidence to suggest that autophagy (“ah-TAH-fah-gee”) plays a role in controlling inflammation and boosting immunity, among other benefits. In one 2012 study on mice, researchers found that autophagy protected against: Trusted Source

  • cancer
  • neurodegenerative disorders
  • infections
  • inflammatory diseases
  • aging
  • insulin resistance

Another study from that year showed how a lack of autophagy can be harmful. Researchers found that removing the autophagy gene in mice caused weight gain, lethargy, higher cholesterol, and impaired brain function.

“Autophagy makes us more efficient machines to get rid of faulty parts, stop cancerous growths, and stop metabolic dysfunction like obesity and diabetes,” Champ says.