Water Fasting. Long term or just a Quick Fix?

Ever since last summer I've been trying to sort of investigate Water Fasting as a whole. We all where told that if one does not eat will die. I thought that the average human being can only go  4-7 days without food. Well I was wrong. People have gone 30- 40 days without food and lost over 100lb, 1-2 lbs per day. There are many different kinds of fasting in which the amount of weight you lose a day varies. I wanted to see if Water fasting was a long term thing or just a quick fix. The truth is that Water Fasting Can be both of these things and it is up to the individual to decide if they want their Water Fasting benefits to stay or not. "Starving" yourself is not the hard part but its breaking the fast ( the period of which you stop fasting and slowly transition to regular foods) witch is the hard part. The key word is slow. You simply cannot go on a 12 day water fast and lose around 10-15lbs then eat the whole McDonalds menu, or raid your refrigerator. It takes at least 1 full week to completely break a water fast. Each day you would have to slowly introduce foods to your body.After you break a fast then you can learn from this and lead a healthier lifestyle of diet and exercise only then will the effects of your water fast be long term. Below are links to different site where the main focus is Water Fasting if you want to do your own research

 More Information on Water Fasting
http://www.gaianstudies.org/articles4.htm
http://www.fitnessthroughfasting.com/benefits-of-water-fasting.html
http://www.allaboutfasting.com/water-fasting.html
You can see peoples real life water fasting experiences on YouTube as well