disorder blog

Rags. it/its. 27. tw: abuse, disordered eating, sa, sh, alc/drugs i want you to be okay

[fishbonezzzzz]

this is a disorder side blog

@rrrrragsy - main blog

[ryebreadgf]

so it’s a wednesday night in july and you’re at home and you’ve showered and you’ve masturbated and you’ve gnawed at the inside of your mouth and you’ve eaten and washed the dishes and fixed a corner of the fitted sheet on your bed and texted your grandmother and thought positive thoughts and still the feeling comes. what then

[furiousgoldfish]

Dismantling the Lies of Abusive Parents Masterlist

Resources

Giving you food and clothing is the bare minimum

You don’t owe gratitude for food and clothes you needed as a child

You had the right for basic resources

Parents shaming you for costing money is ironic and stupid

What it means when they say ‘This is MY house’

My house = my rules is blackmail

Children don’t owe absolute obedience for being fed and sheltered

Physical abuse

You are allowed to refuse any touch, not only violence

If they ‘don’t know they’re hurting you’, why do they ignore or punish you when you protest?

Hitting children is irrational and doesn’t work

You cannot ‘provoke’ your parents to abuse you if they’re not abusive

Why do parents hit, manipulate and traumatize children

Blatant Lies

Care, nurture and affection do not make you weak

They’re lying when they say it ‘wasn’t that bad’‘

You wouldn’t have grown up spoiled if not for abuse

You got too affected by it’ is a lie

Your parents are not ‘just too emotionally immature’ to understand abuse

‘You’re not living in the real world!’ is nonsense

You’re not worthless, a burden, ungrateful, or stupid, and your parents know that.

Constant undermining of your accomplishments is abuse

Not being allowed to talk about the past is symptom of abuse

Parents who want you to be happy vs look happy

You are not abusive for resisting abuse

When they claim ‘they didn’t mean it’, it’s still abuse

Your parents are responsible for their own actions regardless of how badly they try to shift blame on you

Psychological abuse

Blind Obedience is not required in a healthy upbringing

Disgust is a weapon abusive parents use on their kids

If they say they love you, but walk all over your feelings, they don’t 

Parents don’t have the right to enter your room to scream at you

Parents insisting for you to be ‘tough’ are doing it to hide the trauma

Even if a kid acts like ‘they can take it’, it’s still abuse

Pretending abuse is discipline will leave children permanently scarred

It’s inhumane to control and shame children’s reactions to abuse

Why don’t you already know this? vs Teaching you necessary skills

Acting like they’ll change is escape sabotage

Parents are responsible for protecting children from harm

References to how healthy parenting looks like

Not being allowed to be angry with your parents is psychological abuse

If parents want you to act the way you did when you were little, they’re dangerous

Threats about how hard your life will be later on, are bad for you

Lack of continuity and ever-changing rules will cause anxiety

Forced obedience will lead you to abusive relationships

Parents acting like you’re a ‘bad child’ is a shame tactic to control you

There’s healthy and abusive ways to give children chores

Revisioning the past and insisting you remember it wrong is gaslighting

If your parents make you suicidal, they’re abusive

Parents threatening ‘they could be worse’ is abuse

Always assuming the worst intentions for your actions is wrong

Keeping children hostage in abuse is torture

If this hits home, also read Recognizing Abuse Masterlist

[pansyfemme]

i love when you see skinny pre t guys on here saying they want to be a bear some day. fantastic life aspiration. start eating

[pansyfemme]

being hairy and fat myself (im 19 so i feel weird calling myself a bear, yknow? cub, maybe.) its really refreshing to see a trend of guys who are interested in hairness and fatness after ive seen so much fatphobia and shaming in the transmasc community. it’s nice.

[canthaveshitingotham-crucified]

every artist who has ever attempted to satirize masculinity i am so sorry

[canthaveshitingotham-crucified]

you could name a movie Portrait of a delusional abuser ruining his own life in pursuit of a fictional standard of manhood and 89% of its fanbase would still be like "Fuck yeah man it was so cool when Shit Cumdick gave that badass speech about how pushing everyone away and never letting yourself feel emotions is actually a good idea for your life. fuckin dope flick"

[pitchcanker]

I AM FEELING OVERHWLEMED

[carnivoroustomatoes]

You might not want to hear this but people with anger issues and/or violent impulses need social accommodations. And no by accommodation I don't mean walking on eggshells around them, actual accommodations for people with these issues comes down to giving them a space away from what's triggering them to process their emotions and calm themselves down same as what kind of accommodations people who get sensory overload or just any kind of overwhelmed. There is no moral value to having anger issues or violent impulses, people with them are deserving of accommodation the same as everyone else.

[psychoticallytrans]

I had severe anger issues growing up, and the only way I was ever taught to deal with them was deep breathing. For some reason, deep breathing just triggers me to get angrier. But it's the only coping skill I ever got taught for it. Here's a few better ones.

Go and exercise. Get all of that energy out and away from the people you love.

Get a hang of when you're winding up to a rage and learn to tell people that you need to step away. I will warn you that the first time that someone refuses to let you go once you learn this skill will spook the hell out of you if you don't have a backup skill, so figure out ahead of time what you're gonna do if they won't let you leave.

Learn to set boundaries. One of the best things I ever did for my anger issues was tell people that I can't deal with people stealing food off my plate. Second best was when I'm mad, telling people not to touch me. I spook easily when I'm already angry.

Get a pack of pencils and if nothing is working, break one. Sometimes you really do need to break something in order to feel better, and pencils are cheap.

Don't cook with a knife when you're mad. If you get too much adrenaline, the knife can slip and hurt you.

If you have anger issues that pop up without any seeming reason and frighten you, I would strongly recommend going over the situation and over your mental health. If there's anything consistent with a mental health condition or with something particular happening to trigger it, seek to eliminate the trigger or treat the issue. Depression, anxiety, trauma, you name it, it can probably present as anger issues under the right circumstances.

Some quick notes for people without anger issues that want to help someone who has anger issues:

Fear transmutes into anger really, really well if someone's fear response is "fight". One of my guesses for why so many men have anger issues is that we're told we're not men if we have any other response to fear. However, this issue is far from exclusive to men.

Don't box people in when you're arguing with them or soothing them. If someone is backed up against a wall and upset, then getting closer to them without permission is a bad call for your safety and for their soothing, because that removes the ability to get away from you. Ask before getting close. This goes double if someone is injured or otherwise vulnerable.

Teaching angry people that are distressed about being angry the pencil trick on the spot is really easy and works more often than you can think.

Respect people's requests and boundaries. A lot of people think that some of the boundaries I set up are silly or that once we're pals, they can ignore them. No, because a lot of my boundaries are related to trauma, and crossing them will trigger me and bring up my anger.

All of this goes for children with anger issues as well. I was a child with anger issues, and a lot of disrespect for my boundaries and needs was because my anger was dismissed because I was a child. Respect children's anger.

Walking on eggshells is not and will never be a good way to treat anger issues. Recognizing that people with anger issues deserve to have their boundaries respected and to be treated like human beings is.

An end note: Anger issues are not the same thing as being abusive, because emotions are not abusive. Someone with anger issues can become abusive if they take them out on people, but so can someone with suicidal thoughts who takes them out on people. The issue is targeting another person in order to feel better, not having a mental health issue.

An end note for people with anger issues: It really can get better. You can find coping skills and perhaps meds that help cool you down and settle you. You can find people that will accept that doing that one weird thing spooks the fuck out of you, and will let you leave if you're scaring yourself. You can gain control of yourself without shutting down emotionally. It's achievable.

[queeranarchism]

I’ve worked on a community support training about some of this once. Here’s some stuff paraphrased from that:

It is probably also worth speaking specifically about rage attacks. Rage attacks are a lot like panic attacks. They’re often a result of trauma or a build up of high stress. They’re your survival instinct going into overdrive for a bit because too much has build up and a release is necessary. Like panic attacks, rage attacks are waves of overwhelming emotions that generally have a build-up, a peak and a cool-down. The build-up and cool-down can take hours, the peak rarely exceeds one hour and is often much shorter. Recognizing these stages can help cope with them.

The build-up can feel like a tension in the whole body, especially in the chest which can feel like a weight is pressing on it. Trying to control the rage can feel like holding the lid on a pot of boiling water. From the outside, people in the build up of a rage attack seem irritated and non communicative with a short fuse. They might suddenly speak loudly or slam doors as the lid fails and bits of the pot boil over. This is often seen as being rude, when in fact it’s the person doing their best to stay in control. During the build-up fase, it’s sometimes possible to let the pressure off through acts of controlled destruction (pencil breaking, tearing up cardboard boxes, etc.). For some people deep breaths work, for some people exercise works, for some people writing down a violent fantasy and then tearing that up works. This will differ from person to person.

When not averted, the peak of the rage attack is an overwhelming phase during which the lid flies off and the rage can not be controlled, though it may to some extend still be directed at a point where it can do no or limited harm, such as punching a wall (or preferably, hitting the wall with some sort of stick so you do not damage your hands). People in this stage may ‘see red’ or see spots and may be nonverbal. There isn’t much you can do to support someone during a rage attack except keeping people away from them and trying not to redirect their focus towards a person. As long as the only things being hurt is inanimate objects (and maybe some bloody knuckles): do not intervene. Absolutely do not try to physically stop the rage attack.

NEVER call ‘emergency services’ when a person is experiencing a rage attack. A person in a rage attack can not control their actions, follow instructions, etc. Your phone call can very easily result in their murder-by-cop. Don’t do it.

After the peak comes to cooldown. Most of the rage has passed but the body is still full of adrenaline. Often at this point he person experiences shame and fear that the people who witnessed the rage attack will reject them. It’s quite common to self-isolate in this stage. If you’re supporting someone during this stage: give them that time to themselves. Once they return, you can check in with them in a nonjudgemental way, making it clear that you are still their friend and are not judging them for experiencing a rage attack. After a bit of cooldown, some people enjoy exercise, dancing or swimming to reduce the left over adrenaline in the body. Others might be too exhausted for such a thing.

Many rage attacks are harmless, but if a person did do harm during a rage attack: wait for them to fully recover (preferably at least one night of sleep in between) before engaging in a restorative conversation about the harm done. In such a conversation it is important to be nonjudgmental about the rage attack itself and to clearly separate the rage attack (something the person did not chose and could not control) from the harm (something the person does bear responsibility for). A person who has rage attacks can not ‘decide’ not to have them but can decide to work on repairing harm and avoiding harm in the future. You could work on a support plan together to figure out how better to recognize and re-direct a build-up, how to avoid harm during the rage itself and how to offer support during the cool down.

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

Hey, I am very disconnected from my feelings, be it emotions or bodily feeling like hunger. I usually need to really overthink or write down my reactions, to find out what the feeling behind it is. Why did I yell at my boyfriend? Overthink overthink. Because I didn't eat in 20h and I am anxious because I got bad news. And I didn't feel the hunger nor the anxiety.

It is not a firm issue, it gets worse with stress and at least the bodily sensation issue started some years ago. I remember a time without it.

But it is really impractical because I usually don't even realize something is wrong, until I write in my diary and find out or until I break down or get anxiety attacks.

What can I do to get a better connection between myself and my feelings? Or what are some more practical tricks, to find out if something is wrong and if yes, what is?

Hi Anon,

Thank you for reaching out and I am so sorry to hear how this has been impacting you.  To me, the way I read this is something I’ve similarly struggled with: emotional detachment.  There can be several reasons/causes behind it, but I also promise there’s options for helping the mind and body integrate and be able to “hear”, process, and work through emotions before it reaches that "breakdown" level.  I’m including a few links about emotional integration/regulation here: 

How to get in touch with your emotions (also includes sections that can be jumped ahead to)

Seven tips for expressing your feelings

Seven ways to connect to your emotions (including art therapy suggestions)

Nine Emotional Regulation Tips For Anyone’s Who’s Struggling Right Now

One of the things that helped me tremendously was using a “feelings wheel” where I not only learned various terms to help me put words to my feelings, but it also helped me to do a check in (sometimes daily, sometimes weekly) where I would go through it and check off any that applied.  Sometimes seeing multiple areas checked off helped me better understand why a situation might have felt so heavy (because I was holding space for a lot of feelings).  Here’s three that I’ve used over the years:

Lastly, regardless of the steps you find that help you, you deserve to heal and feel integrated and not overwhelmed by feelings.  Wishing you well, 

- Mod Kat 

[danielcalmdown]

It's tru

[lillyofthewoods]

Love that they put “a sense of impending doom” as one of the symptoms of a heart attack, like girl, that’s just how it is to be alive these days, you’re gonna have to be more specific

[undeadhousewife]

This made me chuckle but after scrolling away I felt the need to come back to it.

Because as someone who has felt this I can not stress how different it actually is from anxiety. Which is saying a lot because I have a massive anxiety disorder.

I've only felt this twice in my life - once when I was going into kidney failure due to an infection and again when my body was going into shock due to dehydration and malnourishment due to GI issues - and I can not stress how much it saved my life. It's hard to even put it into words. It's not like a panic attack, or anxiety. It is a horrific gut turning feeling of absolute dread.

Especially if you have anxiety you'll know the difference honestly. It's so much worse. It's every cell in your body and your brain screaming that there's something horribly wrong in a way you've never felt. It's your brain screaming out that you are going to die in a way no panic attack has ever done before.

I can not stress how important it is to get yourself to the ER if you feel this way. Especially if your having other physical symptoms.

[naamahdarling]

This is amazing and incredibly helpful, oh my god. Thank you.

[recapitulation]

meal ideas!

low energy ("do not ask me to do any prep work at all, so help me god")

mozzerella cheese wrapped in pepperoni ("pizza tacos"!)

hummus and pretzels or naan (putting the naan in the microwave for like 10 seconds...heavenly)

canned chili (with shredded cheese and sour cream if you have it! boom done!)

instant miso soup (warm and lovely!)

cheese and cured meat, olives, canned fish, crackers, dried fruit, or whatever easy "charcuterie" type items you like

alternate bites of apple and spoonfulls of peanut butter (mixing honey or chocolate chips to the peanut butter is my favorite)

a "deconstructed sandwich": bites of lunch meat, pickles, cheese, cherry tomato, etc (I love roast beef and white cheddar for this)

yogurt and granola or fruit

medium energy ("I'll boil water but don't ask me to chop shit")

boiled eggs and fresh veggies (put a little salt on top of the eggs for pizzaz!)

buttered noodles (take it up to level 10 and add roasted garlic; takes 30 mins in an oven, only one swoop of the knife required)

baked potato with toppings (I like cheese, bacon, broccoli, green onion, and sour cream)

quesadilla (add some canned beans, cilantro, or avocado!)

pot roast (requires a lot of time but not a lot of actual work. I love it with peas!)

cuban sandwich (bread, swiss, pickle, mustard, ham... my favorite thing to panini-ify by far)

pan-fried tofu with scallion sauce (this sauce goes well with everything and tofu is no exception)

pancakes or waffles! (I love mine with jam)

ham, pickle, and cream cheese roll-ups

fried eggs (with toast and lots of butter...so comforting)

fruit smoothie (bananas, frozen strawberries, yogurt...or whatever!)

I hate salad but could write essays on this copycat olive garden salad (throw it in a bowl! chopping required if you use onion)

spaghetti (controversial maybe but angel hair > spaghetti noodles)

pasta salad (olives broccoli fresh mozerella... those little mini pepperonis... yeah)

high energy ("I don't mind chopping some things up!")

stuffed shells with spinach

chicken and roasted garlic (oh my god.....one of my all time favorites)

beef tacos (I like mine with cilantro and onion, and when I'm feeling especially high energy I love a tomatillo salsa)

chicken alfredo

tom kha gai (a thai soup and my absolute favorite! you just need access to galangal)

lasagna! (freezes well and then boom! low energy meal for later)

pad thai! (not as hard as you'd think, as long as you have access to tamarind paste!)

potstickers! (this is a lovely group activity if you want to cook with housemates!)

rice and beans

bang bang shrimp (ogughfhgfuh I love it. you can also do bang bang tofu!)

minestrone soup (so many nice veggies!)

fried rice (put whatever you have on hand in there! broccoli, peas, carrot, and beef is my favorite combo)

broccoli cheddar soup

spring rolls and peanut sauce

skewers (such as beef, onion, zucchini, bell pepper... you don't need a grill, oven works!)

roasted turkey with garlic parmesean asparagus

pork chop with mashed potatoes

other tips:

whenever you think of a meal you'd like to make, take 3 seconds to google search it, take a screenshot of the image results, and put it in a "food ideas" folder. instant visual menu!

if you're on instagram, there are a bajillion different recipe accounts that post videos! a few of my favorites: jipsoon_kitchen, eatwitzo, cordandthekitchen, chungeats, tiffy.cooks, two_plaid_aprons

[witchaj]

This is all great!

I got this website from a nutritionist and it’s become my absolute favorite way to find new recipes. The search filter options are fantastic! Sorting by method really helps me because I think that’s what makes the biggest difference in how much energy you need.

Visit here to search all of our posts in a comprehensive recipe index. You can find whatever you're looking for to fit your health needs her

And here are some other ideas for low/medium energy meals:

Cottage cheese with crackers, fruits and/or veggies.

Guacamole with veggies and/or tortilla chips

Chickpeas/garbanzo beans with tzatziki. You could add rice, lettuce/spinach, and/or pita.

Buffalo cauliflower with yogurt dip. You can roast or microwave the cauliflower, top it with hot sauce, and add bleu cheese or shredded cheddar on top.

[thoradvice]

things get better slowly. you’ll wake up and you won’t feel an aching dread in your chest, but feel lighter. you’ll start to notice little things that make you smile: sunlight, soft pyjamas, hot tea, biting into fresh fruit. you’ll seek out these things, and your life will get warmer and fuller. day by day. you may still have days where you can’t get out of bed, but they’ll be fewer - small dark spots in a world of colour. if things aren’t too good yet, please remember that recovery is slow. show yourself some kindness. you deserve it.

[furiousgoldfish]

Living in long term abusive situation, the abusers will often require you to ‘act normal’, as if everything is fine and good, even if you don’t feel okay. They present it to you as necessary, polite, ‘don’t be rude to xyz’ or will straight-up belittle and humiliate you until acting ‘normal’ will be the only safe option for you. It creates the illusion that everyone is secretly falling apart inside and suffering silently only to be polite.

Acting normal in every situation can become a compulsion, something you do automatically to protect yourself against possible or imagined backlash; you live as if you’re unphased by anything, because showing pain feels like showing weakness, and being hurt while you’re weak is worse. You additionally might feel that your feelings are too much, nobody would want to deal with them, you’re oversensitive, overdramatic, over-emotional disaster of a human and you keep it all in to save yourself rejection and embarassment.

The abusers will enforce the 'play normal’ rule even when the situation is desparate, when you’re seriously hurt, panicked and in need of help, you’ll find that you’re expected to extend any effort to 'act normal’ or else. They also use the fact that you’re able to 'play normal’ to prove that 'nothing is actually wrong and you were just dramatizing for attention or pretending to make them feel sorry for you.

After being gaslit like this for a while, you start to believe it. You start to think that if you can still play normal, then you’re clearly not suffering enough for it to be adressed. Even if you’re in such bad state you’re dissociated for the most of the time, you dismiss your own pain and fear just like the abusers do, it must be nothing, if you can still keep yourself from screaming, you must be okay. You wonder if everyone lives feeling like this, and envy their acting; you’re barely holding it together. You feel ashamed and pathetic for every second you’re not able to 'keep control of it’, or every little feeling that bleeds out thru your pretense. You feel like you’re weak and failing to control yourself, when everyone else does it so easy.

So let me relay some facts: Most people don’t act. They’re allowed to be upset, and don’t try to control their feelings at all. Most people aren’t exposed to the amount of trauma that would require them to control their feelings 24/7. Most of people were never told to 'keep it in’ or to 'act normal’ when everything is falling apart. The amount of effort people put into being polite is way below containing trauma. What you’re enduring is completely unimaginable pain to them. You’re keeping together what they never would, or could. You’re not weak for a moment of distress; anyone else in your situation would be fully freaking out, full time.

Even if it’s possible, by insane effort, to act okay when terrified and hurt, it doesn’t mean you’re 'okay enough’ to dismiss it. Your abusers lied. Being forced to keep horrible feeling unexpressed makes them that much worse; not only you’re in pain, but you’re in danger, unsafe to express distress, unable to call for help. It’s being trapped in a world where only 'acting okay’ is safe, but there’s a time limit to how long you can do it without breaking, and every time you break a little, you experience terror and shame. You don’t know how to keep it up, and you blame yourself for it. It’s a world where nobody cares what you’re going thru, and you can’t make anyone care.

This is what abusers do to gaslight, isolate and force the victims to hide the trauma and abuse that’s been caused. It’s a tactics to protect the abusers, at the immense cost to the victims. If you felt this, your abusers are monsters, and they lied to you; you’re not supposed to act okay. You were supposed to get a relief from pain, you were supposed to get help, comfort reassurance, to be taken seriously, to get protected, safe, understood, and your pain removed. They denied all of this to be able to abuse you some more. Your self control was never the problem. Their control of you was.

[not-caused-by-those-who-love]

“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”

—

Johann Hari,

Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?

(via bigfatsun)

[person918x]

Rot Day

[little-tunny]

today's my birthday every year i draw a sad birthday creature. This year's inspiration was a guy who left a mean quote retweet on my art and when i clicked his page it was his bday that day, he was spending his bday talking about how disgusting he thinks senior pets are, and it made me laugh uncontrollably

[fullofseoul]

Fasting Zones

Whilst fasting I decided to do some research into fasting and the different zones so that I could understand how to lose more weight whilst on a fast and wanted to share it with everyone. 

I’m not promoting fasting in any way but I realise a lot of us do it and I want people to be informed and stay safe. Remember to keep yourself hydrated on a fast, drink some water or 0 cal drinks and please take a break if you start to feel sick or dizzy. You come first. 

Anabolic - 0-4hrs

This zone lasts 4 hours on average and is usually spent processing the last meal you ate. After your body breaks down the carbs, protein and fat into glucose, amino acids and fatty acids your body converts this into energy for later use. People who snack a lot or have frequent meals usually spend most hours of the day in this state. 

Depending on your diet and activity levels you can decrease this time, moving into the next zone faster, such as the fat burning zone. 

Catabolic - 4-16hrs

This zone lasts 12 hours on average where the body’s blood glucose and insulin levels drop and you’ll start to use up the stored glycogen and fat for energy, this is called the breakdown state. Glucose is still the primary fuel source in this state, however when your glycogen reserves are nearing empty, you’ll start using fat. 

Depending on how active you are during the day, doing exercise during this time will use up the glycogen stores quicker, moving you into the next zone.

Fat Burning - 16-24hrs

Whilst your body may always be burning fat, this zone is where it accelerates. Your body will now be in fat burning mode. Your body will always use some amount of glucose however it is now more dependant on fatty acids for fuel. Your brain still needs glucose to function, any glucose still being produced within the body will primarily be used by the brain whilst the rest of the body relies on fat for fuel. 

Ketosis - 24-72hrs

Your fast is now a multi-day fast. Exercise can accelerate the transition into this zone. Your primary fuel source is fatty acids and ketone bodies plus glucose. The body now relies more and more on fat and ketone bodies in this state and will prioritise burning fatty acids with ketone bodies being spared for the brain. 

Ketone bodies: this refers to 3 molecule types acetone, acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB). Acetoacetate and BHB can be used for energy production. 

It is suggested that a healthy fast end after 3 days due to health risks. Take a break, eat a meal, drink lots of water and rest. You did well to reach three days, don’t risk your health. 

Deep Ketosis - 3+ Days

The body is now in a prolonged fasting zone. After day 3, glucose and insulin levels stay low and hunger will stay suppressed. You’ll see a decrease in IGF-1 a hormone involved in growth and development. Insulin and Glucose production will fall around 30% or more.