I look forward to airport food. You can find some good restaurants depending on where you are.
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16 hours’ fast. Thats the same as skipping breakfast, people. You can relax. Many, many of you have ‘fasted’ 16 hours before. You were fine.
I used to not eat on long flights, unless there was something healthy, filling and not starchy, which usually meant eating nothing or just the peanuts for 16-24 hours, though it never would have occurred to me to say I was fasting. I agree that you avoid a lot of e.coli that way, and hands/feet swelling from all the sodium combined with immobility. The last two trips they just automatically had pasta dinners even if you hadn’t ordered a vegetarian meal in advance, and I ate it, and the bread rolls, crackers, other crackers, extremely questionable salad in a tiny plastic clamshell, and dessert, and both times I felt like crap, got mild upset stomach, and spent the whole trip hungry because straight up starches just make you want food again in an hour when you’re bored anyway.
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That’s my experience too. You just have to get through the first three or four days, and even that not so much. After that: sharper.
If you think airport food is too expansive, why don’t you make yourself a sandwich before the trip ???
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So THAT’s the issue.
The first time I flew from the UK to the US, I was a bit surprised by the strict import rules. I’d brought a homemade sandwich along, and hadn’t yet eaten it. I pulled out my sandwich stuffed with nice thick chunks of Stilton, to ask if I really wasn’t allowed to bring it in. Both guys physically recoiled in horror, before offering a bin I could leave it in. So disappointing.
They just wanted your Stilton! (yum!)
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So there is a downside to living on an idyllic island after all?
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And yet there are many qualified exceptions to doing the Ramadan fast, which ‘only’ requires fasting during daylight hours. Because it’s not actually safe for everyone.
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Sure, but try being in the same county as my wife when she’s got “food mood”. Ain’t nobody adapted for that experience.
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Indeed.
If we assume my BMR is 2000kCal/day, and we assume that “fast” means no solid food and nothing but clear liquids (no cheating by drinking milkshakes all month, for example…), that means I’m running a… wait for it… 2000kCal deficit. Every. Day. That’s (roughly) 60,000kCal in that month, which is something like 17lbs of weight loss for me. Except it’s worse that that, actually- because there’s no way you’re getting all the macro & micro nutrients you body requires, so it’s not just fat it’s metabolizing- it’s going to be pulling calcium from your bones and having trouble getting iron for new blood cells and all sort of other problems.
Fasting for a month isn’t something the human body is “well adapted” for- it’s something it can (maybe) survive.
Saying it can do it with “no ill effects” is wrong.
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And you don’t even operate a back-patting lifehacks blog?
What a waste of a good complex 
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I have a Muslim co-worker who shared with me that he lost close to 25 lbs last Ramadan just by living in America where the daylight hours are longer compared to his home Pakistan - which extended his daily fast considerably.
I was also not aware that devout Muslims do not even drink water during the Ramadan fast. That surprised me.
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I guess he could gain it back in about 12 years when Ramadan drifts into the winter…
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Because it’s friggin’ 4am and the fridge is empty of perishables because I’m leaving on a trip.
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Thank you for the concise point, I was trying to think of how to get across a point I had in my head and you did it quite well.
A lot of airports now are going upscale/local with the food, and while there typically is still a McDonalds somewhere in the airport, they are getting harder to find. I found myself in MSP recently and after schlepping to my gate found out cheaper fast food required going to a completely different terminal, and the only food in my entire terminal was expensive- nowhere was even a glorified egg mcmuffin less than $10. Maybe that’s what they charge outside the airport as well and maybe it’s one of Minneapolis’ finest restaurants, but while traveling I’m not looking for a dining splurge and I’d like options that are less quality for less money.
Everyone being the operative word. But if you’re in reasonably good health it’s perfectly safe. It’s safe for more people than it isn’t. And I wold posit that 24 hours is safe for the vast majority of Americans.
From what I understand (obvious disclaimer here), there are common conditions that fasting really messes with like PCOS. Again, super not a doctor here.
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