Feel Human · Global Fast
Three days.One community.
On 18 October, people in London, Austin, Delhi and Lisbon stop eating at the same time. Not alone. Not to lose weight. To find out what their bodies do when they finally stop interrupting them.
The invitation
Doing a hard thing alone is willpower. Doing it together is something else.
At hour forty, somewhere in the middle of a Tuesday, you will want to stop. And you will open your phone and find that someone in Austin wants to stop too.
Six years ago I started fasting with one friend. About a hundred people have passed through since. Schoolteachers, lawyers, founders, a woman who has fasted with me since 2021 from a different continent.
Nobody was ever paid to be there. They come back because at hour forty, being known matters more than being disciplined.
You are not joining a programme. You are joining a few dozen people who have agreed to be hungry at the same time, and who will be glad to hear from you when it gets hard.
For Sauna and Plunge members
Joe is doing this one himself, for the first time. He has been asking me about extended fasting for months and has now put a date on it, so he will be in the group alongside everyone else, at hour forty, like the rest of us.
Because of that, Sauna and Plunge members join this round at £27 rather than £97. Consider it a member benefit from the club.
One thing worth saying plainly, since it is the obvious question in this crowd: sauna and plunge during the fast is not a good idea. Three days in you are dehydrated and your blood pressure runs lower than usual, and heat plus cold on top of that is how people faint. Gentle movement and walks outside during. We go back in properly afterwards.
Inside the 72
Drag it. See what your body is actually doing.
Hunger is not a line that climbs forever, and the interesting things happen later than most people think.
How it runs
A week of getting ready, then three days
Most people who struggle with an extended fast did not struggle during it. They lost it in the week before.
Choose your fast
There is no single right way to do this
Every argument about what breaks a fast dissolves once you decide which fast you are doing. All three are welcome and nobody is keeping score.
Intermittent Fasting · beginner to intermediate
A daily eating window of eight to twelve hours, so a fast of twelve to sixteen. The gentlest entry, and a sound year-round habit in its own right. Supports fat oxidation, growth hormone release and insulin sensitivity, and sits comfortably alongside normal training.
Best for: body composition, metabolic flexibility, building the habit.
A completed calorific liquid fast beats an abandoned strict one. The people who quit at hour thirty are usually the ones who chose the hardest option to prove something.
The evidence
Why seventy two, and not sixteen
In 2024, researchers at Queen Mary University of London tracked around three thousand blood proteins across an extended fast, looking for when the body actually changes.
It is not gradual. For two days you burn through stored fuel and little else happens. Then at roughly three days, a coordinated response appears across multiple organ systems including the brain, showing up in over a thousand proteins at once. Their own conclusion: the benefits beyond weight loss arrive later than anyone expected.
Six years of running this, and the thing people report most is never the thing they signed up for.
And the part most people leave out
A 2025 study of a ten day water fast found rising inflammation and platelet activation alongside the benefits. Extended fasting is a genuine physiological stressor, not a purely restorative one.
Which is why we stop at seventy two hours, and why this is guided rather than something you attempt alone off the internet.
You get the full picture in the pack, studies named so you can read them yourself. Test, don't guess applies to me as much as to you.
For women
Most fasting protocols were written for men
Designed around men, tested on men, handed to women unmodified. Then women fast in the wrong week of their cycle, feel wretched, and conclude they are bad at fasting.
You are not bad at fasting. You fasted on the wrong week.
The pack covers where in your cycle this round lands, who should go gently, and who should sit a round out. It also covers what almost nobody addresses: what to do when your cycle has stopped being predictable at all. If you are in perimenopause and the calendar no longer helps, the guidance is built around your symptoms instead.
I moved this round's date so it would sit in my own follicular phase. I am not willing to teach this and then ignore it in my own body.
Six years of messages
What people say at the other end
These are real messages from the group, sent in the hours after people broke their fasts. Nobody was asked to write them.
Thanks to you, Dorota, who taught me how to fast. Otherwise I would have been a wreck. I have been doing this since 2022 now, coming up to four years.
Group member · four years of fasts
I made it to 74 hours. Now, five and a half days after starting, I have woken up to realise my skin is the best it has been for over three years.
Nicky · London
I finished after 80 hours. I used the fast to lock in and clear the decks at work. It helped me stop procrastinating.
Johnny · London
My first attempt last year lasted 48 hours because I turned into an angry monster. This time I lasted 70 and it was a totally different experience. On day two I had a surge of energy.
Beata · second time round
I am sure I could not have done this without knowing you and this community were cheering me on. Breaking my fast now at 74 hours and already looking forward to the next one.
Gitanjali · London
I am in my last hour of the 72 and feel so grateful and energised by what I have achieved. Breakfast felt like I had never eaten before. Literally a taste explosion.
Fran · first Global Fast
I managed 63 hours. My first fast, and it has definitely switched up my mindset with food.
Katie · first Global Fast
Who runs it
I am in it with you
I am Dorota Cloke, a nutritionist and biohacker. I work with high performing professionals on metabolic health using continuous glucose monitors, functional testing and a great deal of data, under a principle I repeat until people are sick of it: test, don't guess.
I tell you that last one deliberately. There is no prize here for pretending any of this is effortless. I will be fasting alongside you, posting at hour forty like everybody else.
What you get
Everything, in one place
- The Prep Pack
Six years of this community's questions answered. Which fast to choose, what every drink does, electrolytes, training, the research, cycle and perimenopause guidance, and how to break it properly.
- The Daily Journal
Energy and focus tracked morning, midday and evening, so by Wednesday you have a record of how your own body moved through three days without food.
- Prep week guidance
From Sunday 11 October, day by day, so you arrive at Sunday ready rather than hopeful.
- The group
Running throughout, with me in it. This is the part people actually come back for.
- The live refeed call
Wednesday 21 October, 6pm. We break it together and talk about what your body just told you. Recorded if you cannot make it.
- Integration
A guide for the week after and a check-in seven days later, so the three days actually change something.
£27
Sauna and Plunge member rate · 18 to 21 October 2026
Join the October fastPlaces close Saturday 10 October, when prep week begins.
Questions
The ones everybody asks
I have never fasted longer than sixteen hours. Is this too much?
No, and people arrive at exactly your level every round. Choose the calorific liquid fast, aim for twenty four to thirty six hours, and treat it as a first rep. Finishing something you chose beats failing something you were talked into.
What if I have to stop early?
Then you stop early, and you will have got a great deal of the benefit anyway. Nobody here wins by lasting longest. The honest posts about stopping are consistently the most useful thing anyone writes in the group.
I am not in the UK. Does that work?
It always has. Hour zero is yours, wherever you are. The group has run across several time zones for six years and the Wednesday call is set to work either side of the Atlantic.
Can I still work, train, look after children?
Work, yes, and many people find day two unusually clear. Walking and gentle movement, yes. Heavy training, no, and we cover why. Life continues, which is rather the point of doing it in an ordinary week.
Is this about weight loss?
No. Some people lose a little and it mostly returns. What people report, year after year, is clarity, energy and a changed relationship with hunger. If weight loss is what you want, this is an inefficient way to get it.