Thanks ChrisB1 and Nothingbetter! I appreciate you sharing this information with me. I broke the fast around 3pm with 1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice. Around 5:30pm I had another. Tomorrow I will move on to yellow meat Watermelon - which I've had to watch my family eat for the past week and wish I could have some. I will do fruits tomorrow and try veggies the next day then try to move on to saled. I'd love to add canned tuna to my saled on Tuesday - should this be okay? If not, I'll not do it. Anyway, I plan to modify the things and amounts of foods I eat from here on out. I always try to eat healthy (most of the time) but sometimes eat badly. I feel I'm craving much more healthy foods. Thanks again for the advice! :)

nothingbetter wrote: "anything but fruit and vegetables (juiced or raw or lightly steamed) with carbohydrates will risk refeeding syndrome and you'll get sick quickly, sometimes really sick - any kind of dense protein or fat will put a strain on your kidneys and you wont be able to digest it."

ok thats it, now i'm coming out of the closet lol :-)

back in my 20's i did a lot of experimenting. a few years after my no-carb total ketone burning insulin lesson (which was - correction - the pritkins diet) i went on a long water fast. i'd been doing a lot of 4-5 day fasts during the work week with diet coke (naughty, naughty) and gotten into a bad restrict/binge cycle.

this time i was determined to drink only water and take it one day at a time, no time plan. for some reason (probably becos my body was used to ketosis) i found it quite easy (in waves) to just keep going and each day rolled into the next surprisingly quickly until before i knew it i'd lasted 30 days! (way too light tho). when i broke the fast i broke all the rules and have kept quiet about it here, knowing all you fruit juice advocates would have a tissy fit ;-)

i chose to remain in ketosis after my fast (given my no-carb experience) until the digestive system was used to food again. my refeeding began with teensy bits of chicken. nothing happened! my stomach remained perfectly comfortable even more not being hungry anymore. i continued carefully, eating small portions of various no-carb foods throughout the day for 4 days and introduced low GI vegetable juices on the 5th. i experienced no gas whatsoever and no overexcited appetite.

what i did notice tho upon refeeding, was i became 'extremely' thirsty and found it hard to retain enough water to rehydrate. without carbs it took many weeks, but i never once felt sick - quite the contrary - or bloated, and my energy level shot up from day one of the refeed. the tiny portions without Sugar or fiber were accepted by the stomach effortlessly and went down like little pieces of pure joy. my lungs were so clear i felt like i could breath whole mountains. the bowels moved on the second day (which ...um... felt rather rude after so long :-) and i was literally bursting out of my skin with energy.

the world didn't have the net back then, so i kinda liken my experience to this:
http://www.sourcetext.com/sourcebook/essays/scotoma.html

and it looks like my low glycemic preference ever since has done me some favors too. i recently researched 'insulin inflammation' for my mothers cholesterol and whattayaknow it confirmed everything i've experienced over the years. go figure.

Shelton discovered that breaking a fast with high water content foods was just as beneficial and as easy as with juices. This was tried and tested by his colleague Dr Virginia Vetrano at his Health School in San Antonio Texas.

Anyone may break a fast with any food of their choosing just so long as it is unprocessed. This includes meat.

However their is a huge distinction between breaking a fast upon the genuine return of hunger, where in this instance, any food is readily digested to prevent starvation. Digestive capacity is at its maximum at this point in time.

But, where the fast is broken in the absence of this return of hunger, the body is not that able in digesting food and where it needs to be re-nurtured back into activity and full capacity.

The poster whose experience in breaking a fast with meat before the return of hunger is taking a huge risk with their health, as there are cases on record of people who have broken their fasts with meat and potatoes, who have actually died as a result.
Meat is a very concentrated food which requires much more nervous/digestive energy in comparison with fruit and plant foods, and for this reason should be avoided until such time as full digestive energy has been restored in the fullness of time.

No fasting supervisor would contemplate breaking a fast with meat or any other concentrated food, if digestive capacity is diminished and which is the case before the return of natural and genuine hunger.
We should also bear in mind that most fasters break their fasts well before the return of this hunger as well.

Chrisb1.