The First Two Days: What a Short Fast Actually Does
After roughly twelve to sixteen hours without food, the liver exhausts its glycogen stores and begins converting fatty acids into ketone bodies for fuel. This is the metabolic shift most people associate with fasting benefits, reduced blood glucose, a drop in circulating insulin, and a mild anti-inflammatory effect documented by the Indian Council of Medical Research in its research on periodic caloric restriction. One day of Navratri fasting, particularly the common pattern of eating one meal of sabudana khichdi or fruit, rarely pushes the body past this early threshold. Insulin drops, digestion slows, and by the next morning the cycle resets. The effect is real but shallow.
