1. Introduction
Hello reader,
let me tell you why water fasting is an amazing tool not only for your body shape but also for your health.
This article aims to provide you with everything you need to know about water fasting to use this great fasting method for your own good.
I want to give you all the information you need to do it safe and healthy.
Done right every type of fast is a great tool for you to have in your backpocket.
It can be a great way to improve your health and overall well beeing.
Note that everything mentioned in the article is based on my personal history and expierience with water fasting.
More about why I choose to do this article this way later on.
I am no doctor or expert and I don’t take any responsebility for anyones health!
My name is Nico and I use water fasts on a regular basis to heal my bowel, loose some weight and to feel better overall.
You will probably read in this article my positive attitude towards water fasting.
This is because I could use water fasting not only to lose weight and to detox,
it helped me cope with a serious illness!
I suffer from ulcerative colitis a chronic inflammatory bowel disease but with the help of water fasting I managed to master this disease.
If you are intrested in the full story behind my jurney with this disease check my post on it.
My Battle With Inflammatory Bowel Diseases And How I Won
But now back to the topic.
Before you can jump right into your first water fast you need to understand when and how to use it.
- Introduction
- What is water fasting
- How to prepare for a water fast
- Common misconceptions
- How does it work
- Potential benefits
- Who should not fast
- What can you consume
- Dissipate intestine
- Support the fast
- How to break the fast
- Your takeaway
2. What is water fasting
Water fasting is exactly what the name suggests.
A diet composed almost entirely of water.
That means no coffe, no zero-calorie no tea no supplements, no shakes, no diet drinks, and of course no food.
Fasting even tho it got popular again recently is around for thousands of years.
Pretty mutch every Religion today promotes fasting of some kind.
There are many reasons people do water fasts, for example:
- Religious or spiritual reasons
- Weight loss
- For detoxing and cleansing
- For its health benefits
- Psychological reasons
Fasting is natures reboot button for the body.
As soon as you dont have anything left in your digestive tract your body can use the saved energy you normally need to digest all the food we shovel into us and start healing, detoxing and recycling.
3. How to prepare for a water fast
As for pretty mutch all types of fasts, you should prepare your body to get into a calorie deficit and learn how to deal with it.
I usually prepare my fasts with one week of intervall fasting, I prefere the 16/8 method.
I switch it to a one hour feeding window later in the week better known as omad.
You want to prepare your body to go into ketosis.
Simplified, ketosis means that your body no longer draws its energy from glucose but from fat.
Banish processed foods from your diet.
This step should be a permanent inclusion into your diet.
I know they taste good but the chemicals hurt your body over time for sure.
Another step you can include into your diet permanently is drinking a lot of water.
I normally drink only water at home.
And I mean just water! no water with any addet chemical taste or anything like that.
Leading into your water fast you should try to avoid all foods that stay in the digestive tract for a long time.
It could also be helpfull to switch to a completly plant based diet leading into your cleanse.
Although this is not a must, I myself ignore this step.
for the people who have a weak will.
Clear your place from any food if possible.
The most important thing is that you are healthy and well fed if you consider fasting.
I recommend you to see your doctor and let him check on you, explain to him what you intend to do and make sure that you don’t hurt your body!
4. Common misconceptions
This point is for me personally the most important and emotionally concerned.
I still can’t beleave how many crazy rumors still exist around fasting.
And what makes me so angry is that most of them have a financial origin.
I hope I can get you to rethink some of them with common sense.
- You can survive far longer than two weeks without food, in fact the world record for fasting is 382 days!
In theory, you could fast as long as you stored excess energy in the form of fat. - Fasting causes a jojo effect. This is so far from the truth, more on that in the how does it work section.
- Fasting is not very risky. Of course everything in life comes at a risk even breathing, for a healthy body fasting is not very risky at all.
- Fasting causes muscle loss. Another crazy myth about fasting.
- All or most of the weight you lose is water.
- Water fasting does not burn fat.
- You should’t or can’t exercise while fasting.
- Water fasting couses malnutrition.
- You have to drink X amount of water. You should drink more than average yes, but you shouldn’t force it into you.
Listen to your body.
5. How does it work
since I’m not an expert or a doctor, this explanation will be a little more simplyfied, but also a bit easier to keep up with.
So what happens when you stop eating?
Your body normally gets all the energy it needs from our food and burns it in form of glucose.
Most of the excess energy gets stored as fat everywhere on our body.
When you stop eating, the body burns the remaining energy in your digestive tract, which takes between two and three days.
In this period of time, your body will notice that it is no longer absorbing enough energy through the food and is switching to energy production through stored fat burning.
After that, your body will provide almost 100 percent of the energy it needs through just fat burning.
What your body does in an incredibly efficient way because fat is easier to burn.
What makes sense because the body keeps the energy explicid in this form.
This time frame of two to four days is the time when many people feel bad and experience symptoms such as fatigue, lack of motivation, headaches, dizziness hunger diarrhea and more.
Simply because the body has too little energy available.
As soon as your body gets its energy from stored fat in other words gets into ketosis all of these symptoms just vanish!
From that point on your water fast will be easy.
So why no jojo effect?
It’s simple your body won’t go into a emergency state.
Becouse a lack of food for a few days is perfectly normal for the body.
The human body deals with this case for more than 10.000 years!
It just uses up a bit of the stored fat, no big deal.
Your body understands that after that Fasting period there will be food again.
Just like it was for your ancestors as funny as it sounds!
They hunted and then ate large quantities, after which there was no food for days or weeks again.
But what happens when you utilize a caloric restricted diet over a long period of time?
It basicly simulates a prolonged period of drought in which there is not enough food and no prospect of a big meal in the near future.
That is definatly a emergency for the body!
So what happens now?
Your metabolism slows down, you get cravings, you are tired and feel a lack of energy.
While your body preserves the stored fat!
Everyone has already made this experience right?
The body runs on low flame which means that you reach a plato and you have to reduce your caloric intake more and more to lose weight.
Then you start a healthy diet again, but your body is still in emergency mode.
What happens next is it will store fat for the next prolonged period of drought.
Exactly that’s a jojo effect.
So when loosing weight in a healthy working way is that easy why do no one promotes it?
What do you think?
I think it’s becouse there is litteraly no way to monetise water fasting, you just need water and avoid anything else.
No expensive diet pills or what ever people are buying.
And the best thing for the industry is all these diets do not work.
What about the health risks?
Again im not a doctor and i take no responsebility for anyones health!
There is just one question I ask myse If a few days without food represent such a huge risk to health, how could humanity be so successful in the past?
Doesn’t make sense to me.
Fasting couses muscle loss?
Let’s go back to our ancestors.
They have killed an animal and eat as much as possible.
Since there is no way to preserve the food, the body stores as much as possible as fat.
A perfect system of nature.
Now our ancestors are back on the hunt and have not eaten for days.
To track and hunt an animal you need your muscles right now.
And now people want to tell me that the body uses up vital muscle mass as fuel instead of the stored energy?
This pretty mutch debunkes the argument that you can’t work out when fasting for me as well.
6. Potential benefits
Water fasting brings many “potential” benefits.
I call them potential in this article becouse I cant prove them.
Mostly due to a lack of research.
The problem I see is that medical resarches are mostly financed by companys.
Big companies have no interest in researching the positive effects of fasting because of obvious reasons.
- Weight loss
- Improves your body composition
- Gets your metabolism running
- Decreases Inflammation
- It can lower blood pressure
- Promotes cell recycling also knows as autophagy
- May lower the risk of developing cancer
- May lower the risk of brain diseases like pakinson
- Increases insulin sensivity
- May lower the risk of heart diseases
- May promote muscle density
- Mental clarity
I myself have experienced many of these benefits on my own body.
Especially the activated self-healing of the body and the renewal of the cells helped me to cope with my chronic inflammatory bowel disease.
I do weight lifting and Thaiboxing on a regular basis as well as througout my fasts and I never expierienced muscle loss or any other problems.
If you are intrested in Martial arts click here and read my
33 Reasons You Should Start Martial Arts Today!
I always felt well and had about 80% of my usual power while working out.
On my first fast I lost about 6.5 Kilogramms or 14 lb, after introducing food again i gained back about 1.5 kg or 3lb.
7. Who should not fast
You should not do a water fast when you are:
- Malnutritioned
- Underweight
- Pregnant
- Under 20 years old
- Have heart problems
- Getting a blood transfusion
- Suffer from type 1 diabetes
- Elderly
- Taking medication
- Have known diseases
8. What can you consume
This depends on how long you going to fast.
If your fast is going to be less than four days you dont need anything else than water.
If u fast longer than four days I suggest you to add some salt to your water.
This prevents dehydration due to a lack of electrolytes.
As well as one teespoon of apple cider vinegar every day to keep your gastric acid in check.
If your fast extends one week you may want to add some minerals or vitamins to your diet.
In this case you should work closely with your doctor.
9. Dissipate intestine
This is probably the most unpleasant part of your fast.
Your body will be cleansed as it tries to get rid of the excess garbage and waste products.
This can basically happen through all body opening.
The body excretes these substances predominantly via the skin and intestines.
This means that moderate diarrhea is a normal by-product of fasting.
Wich is absolutely normal and healthy.
If the body does not cleanse the bowels by itself, it may be helpful to use natural remedies.
This is espacially important at the beginning of your fast becouse you want your digestion to shut down in order for your body to go into ketosis.
10. Support the fast
In order to improve the benefits of your water fast you should try to do the following steps:
These tips are espacially important in the first two to four days when you feel all the negative symptoms from the switch to ketosis!
- Relax! take a break for a few days if possible
- Try to avoid mental and physical stress
- Take your time to get used to the caloric defecit
- You can still get a good workout in but it might be a good idea to slow down a little
- Maybe if possible take of some time at work and use the time and mental clarity for projekts and activitys sutch as reading or writing.
- Focus on activitys that inspire and motivate you rather than draining ones.
11. How to break the fast
This is one of the most important points while water fasting!
it depends heavely on the duration of your fast.
1-4 days:
Here you should eat a light meal consistend of simply digesting food.
4-7 days:
I recommend you to do two days of liquid food sutch as organic beef broth.
After that you can slowly introduce easy to digest meals.
More than 7 days:
I recommend you to do the two days of organic beef or bone broth as well.
After that you should introduce probiotic or fermented foods such as:
- Sauerkraut
- Kimchi
- Kefir
- Miso
- Yogurt
After that you can slowly introduce easy to digest meals.
This is what works best for me and exactly how I refeed.
If you think about following your water fast up with a healthy diet, i would soggest you to try the ketogenic diet.
It’s based on fats and excludes carbohydrates completly.
After your waterfast your body is perfectly used to burn fats as fuel wich makes the transition really easy.
12. Your takeaway
I think this article speaks for itself.
I can just tell you to try it and see for yourself.
For me, water fasting is a powerful tool to protect and regenerate my body.
I am absolutely convinced that the human body sometimes needs a break.
And that the abundance of food and above all, the amount of carbohydrates we eat every day over decades, cause a list of serious illnesses.
If water fasting scares you or you think its to mutch to start out with check my article on juice fasts!
Juice Fasting & Cleansing: How to, Safety and more
If you like this article or know someone who could benefit from water fasting consider sharing this post.
Thank you! stay healthy & happy
