What can you drink while fasting? Learn what’s good to drink, and what will blow your fasting efforts out of the water.
Not all “zero calorie” drinks are helpful if you’re fasting, especially if you’re fasting for the benefits of autophagy
Avoid any drink that contains calories, here’s why:
You may be considering a fast for one of these two common reasons:
- To lose weight
- To achieve autophagy.
It’s also possible that you’re interested in gaining both these benefits at the same time.
If you’re only interested in losing weight, exactly what you drink during your fast won’t be critical to your success.
As long as you are seriously reducing your daily intake, you’re going to be shifting your extra pounds.
If you want to make your fast a little more tolerable, you may want to add a few liquids to your diet that will help you to stick with your no food plan.
You could try almost any liquid including bone broth and any diet soda. You could even include a clear soup if it helps you to get through the day.
While it would be true to say that such a fast isn’t a 100% fast, it would be near enough for you to see some significant weight loss.
People who practice this type of fast often choose a day or two each week, and eat normally for the rest of the week. This 5/2 pattern of eating and fasting has proved to be very beneficial for weight loss.
Further, many fans of the 5/2 fasting technique find it super easy to stick to. Knowing that they can eat as normal on the other 5 days.
This is a fairly straightforward, if not purist, way of fasting. You could try this kind of fast to start with, maybe following on with some tougher fasting regimes once you’re used to this one.
However, if you’d like your fast to also dramatically improve your health, you’re going to need the type of fast that will trigger autophagy.
What is autophagy?
When the body senses a lack of nutrients, the process of autophagy begins.
Autophagy repairs damaged cells and proteins as well as removing toxins. This literally gives your cells a new lease of life and reduces your biological age.
Autophagy also repairs damage to the mitochondria which is the cell component responsible for the generation of energy.
These damaged mitochondria also release free radicals into our system. So when they are repaired the amount of free radicals and oxidative stress is also reduced.
This leads to a greatly reduced chance of developing age related diseases and enhances the body’s ability to fight infection, leading to a longer possible life span.
As long as you maintain a complete absence of any nutrition, your body will continue the process of autophagy.
It’s not yet known exactly how much you’d need to eat to stop autophagy, and for this reason the limit is set at zero.
Therefore, if your goal is a complete spring-clean of your cells, you’ll need to make sure that nothing passes your lips that contains any nutrients at all.
This is “real fasting”. You’ll lose weight, increase your metabolism and benefit from autophagy with this type of fast.
You’ll need to decide how long you’d like your fast to last. Generally speaking, the longer fasts have more health benefits but it’s important to remember that more is not always better.
From a health point of view, it’s possible to overdo fasting, which could cause it’s own set of health issues.
Make sure that you understand fasting and autophagy, and work out which length of time you’d like to stay on your fast.
Moreover, most people like to start with a short intermittent fast before taking their fast to the next level.
What Can You Drink While Fasting ( pure fasting)
Water and fasting
Water is super important all the time, but you’ll need a little more of it while you’re fasting.
This is because you’ll be releasing a lot of water along with the fat that’s stored in your fat cells.
It’s usually a good idea to sip on water throughout the day. This will help you to maintain proper hydration throughout your fast.
You can add a small amount of lemon juice or similar to your glass of water, to ring the changes. However, make sure that this really is a tiny amount. No more that a teaspoon or so per glass of water.
If you like fizzy bottled water, this can make things a bit more interesting for you too.
Tea
Tea is naturally calorie-free and great to have during a fast. Just make sure it’s made by you at home from tea bags or leaves.
Don’t use bottled iced tea as it’s often full of sweeteners or sugar, both of which you should avoid.
Obviously, you’ll need to omit the milk too. If you enjoy flavored teas such as mint tea, this would be a good option too.
If you’re feeling anxious during your fast, it would be worth considering only drinking only decaf teas.
Coffee
Any type of coffee is good as long as it’s taken black.
Again, if anxiety is an issue for you, you may want to use only decaf coffee and stop drinking coffee altogether three or four hours before you normally go to bed.
Try an ice-cold coffee by adding some ice from the freezer for a different type of drink.
Don’t add sugar or sweeteners.
In summary:
If you’re only interested in losing some weight, then you can afford to be a bit more lenient with what you drink during your fast.
You could include some bone broth, clear soups or diet sodas. The fact that you’re limiting your intake will ensure that you’ll lose weight on this type of fast.
However, if you have health goals as well as weight loss goals, you’ll want to follow the more purist version of fasting.
When following this sort of fast, you’ll need to avoid any drink that contains calories, even if it’s a very low number. You’ll also want to avoid sweeteners as there is some evidence that they can interfere with the process of autophagy.
Stay with water, tea or coffee and drink it often during the day. Listen to your thirst, and make sure you keep yourself well hydrated at all times.
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