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Time Restricted

A blog on fasting, health, and other issues of midlife

Exercise — integral to the Otto Buchinger fasting method

June 1, 2019 By spao Leave a Comment

Exercise — integral to the Otto Buchinger fasting method

Yes!  You can do a fasting program and still exercise!

There are different schools of thought with respect to fasting.  On one extreme is pure water fasting, such as practiced at Goryachinsk on Lake Baikal in Siberia.  In this program, exercise is not compulsory.

Otto Buchinger, on the other hand, created his fasting program 100 years ago with the thought of providing patients a small calorie intake but augmenting with daily walks as exercise.  The idea behind providing of limited food (250 calories per day) with exercise is to make fasting more accessible, with fewer side effects.  Daily walks in the forest  (or Wanderung as they refer to them here) are every day, rain or shine.  With a little bit of nutrition, people do have the energy to exercise!

Buchinger Wilhelmi Wanderung
View from a daily walk (Wanderung) at Buchinger Wilhelmi

The clinic is currently managed by the fourth generation of the family, and Otto Buchinger’s descendants have since further updated the program to augment the daily walks with an indoor fitness center.  It’s a pretty sophisticated facility with great views of Lake Constance.

Buchinger Wilhelmi Fitness Center
Buchinger Wilhelmi Fitness Center

I just wish the fitness center opened earlier in the morning!  The walks in the summer start at 6am, and the fitness center would have been a great alternative to walking in the rain!

Buchinger Wilhelmi Fitness Center Hours
Buchinger Wilhelmi Fitness Center Hours

For me, this month of fasting resulted in a personal record on my Garmin step counter, with over 600K steps in May, 2019.  It also capped a personal record of over 5M steps in the trailing 12 months!  In the month of May for me, 25 of those days were fasting!

Step Count During Buchinger Wilhelmi Fasting Clinic
Step Count During Buchinger Wilhelmi Fasting Clinic

Note that the daily walks are typically only about 4 miles for “Group A” (the fastest group of three), so you don’t have to break any records to participate!  That said, after the morning walks, we just enjoyed walking around the lake and on the trails around the town, too!  It’s really beautiful in this part of Germany when it’s not raining!

Walking on Lake Constance
Walking on Lake Constance
Walking on the trails in Überlingen
Walking on the trails in Überlingen

We were also able to squeeze in a 10K (the Volksbank Überlingen Lauf) in town.  It certainly was not my fastest 10K ever (actually my slowest race), but I was able to complete it with a sub-10 minute per mile pace — even after 12 days of fasting!

Finisher Certificate - Volksbank Überlingen Lauf
Finisher Certificate – Volksbank Überlingen Lauf

So don’t be afraid to fast!  You will have a lot of energy!

Filed Under: Buchinger-Wilhelmi 2019, Fasting

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Stephen Pao is the author of the Time-Restricted blog. Following a Type II diabetes diagnosis in 2003, Steve began experimenting with alternative approaches to managing the disease, including prolonged fasting as a complement to a low-carb lifestyle. By day, Steve is a consultant and board advisor to early stage technology companies. Steve and his wife are empty nesters, with two college-aged daughters across the country.

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