Introduction

Congratulations on making it this far in your fast! If you have yet to begin your fast, I have full faith in you to do it successfully because of your level of preparation. In this post, I’m going to share with you the best way to break your fast. This advice is based on secondary scientific research in addition to my personal experience. May you enjoy your refeeding phase. Refeeding your body is just as important, if not more so than the fast itself. Properly breaking your fast will ensure your health benefits remain intact and the weight loss that you’ve seen can be maintained.

The blog posts on fasting were derived from a free ebook that I prepared for you. This ebook goes into detail about what fasting is, the different types of fasting, how to successfully break your fast, and how to incorporate the Daniel fast to further detox your body! You can find that ebook here

– Aiyaken Sarai <3

Keep your portions small

I get it, you’re starving. it’s funny how when you’re fasting your hunger completely goes away. Yet the moment you decide to eat again you want to consume any and everything in sight. From personal experience, please don’t do that. It is such an uncomfortable feeling. It’s best to keep your portions small while in the refeeding period. Your body has become accustomed to going without food for so long. Your digestion system hasn’t been active. You want to ensure that all your food is being digested before consuming your next meal. You do this by keeping your portions small and providing your body with nourishing foods. Here are foods to avoid when breaking a fast.

Avoid carbs

For some odd reason, when I come off of a fast, my body craves carbs and meat. I tend to want a big juicy burger and a double order of french fries. Even if you’re still in a hypocaloric state, eating carbs will produce abrupt weight gain. There will be an immediate reversal of salt and water loss. Your brain will tell you, it’s one french fry or one sweet potato- don’t do it. Try your best to keep away from starchy vegetables in general.

Avoid nuts and meat

Immediately consuming foods high in fiber can be hard for your body to digest. Consuming nuts and seeds (butters included) can cause you to experience an upset stomach. They’re an excellent source of protein. My non-meat eaters may want to up their protein after fasting. It would be in your best interest to wait a while before consuming them again. This doesn’t include the intermittent faster.

Avoid meat

A person only implementing intermittent fasting needs not to worry about consuming meat after breaking their fast. However, if you’re someone who is coming off of a prolonged fast you should avoid meat. During prolonged fasting, the digestive enzymes in your stomach reduce to accommodate for the lack of foods you’re ingesting. Meat is highly acidic and hard to digest. There’s a good chance you will make yourself sick. I can recommend from personal experience, that you do NOT want to feel that level of discomfort. If your body is simply craving meat, try to stay away from red meat, and stick to the lighter and easier-to-digest meat like tuna.

I’ve listed a lot of things to avoid- here’s exactly what you SHOULD do.

Allow your digestion system to get back into the habit of eating.

I’ve written a blog post that goes into more detail about how to further detox after breaking a fast. You can read that here. The following explains that blog in a nutshell. For the first week of consuming foods again, treat your body to green juices and fruit juices. This allows your body to receive the nutrients it’s been craving. It also allows your system to slowly begin digesting foods again. One of the beautiful things about introducing juices to your body after a fast is your pallet has completely reset and the flavors you once disliked, are now hydrating and refreshing to your system. This allows you to refeed your body with nutritional goodness and further assist the detoxification process. 

After your body is comfortable digesting fruit and vegetable juices, slowly introduce fruits to your system. Again, this is the perfect time to incorporate fruits that you may not have enjoyed before. Go for berries, papaya, watermelon, avocado, and anything else you can get your hands on. If you can find seeded fruit, I’d opt for those. Although you may want to consume smoothies, try to get your body back to chewing and digesting whole foods. 

Once your body is comfortable digesting juices and whole fruits, you can incorporate whole vegetables into your diet again. Try your best to stay away from starches such as white potatoes. I know they’re absolutely delicious, but let’s limit them as much as possible during the refeeding process. Salads are amazing, but they don’t have to be boring. You can blend your own salad dressings. Personally, I think they taste better than what they sell in stores. Don’t be afraid to try raw vegetables as opposed to baking them. Of course, I understand if you’d want to bake and steam them. After your body is used to vegetables, that’s when you should begin incorporating grains back into your diet. Followed by nuts and seeds. 

Summary

When you’re incorporating intermittent fasting you don’t need to be as strict when it comes to breaking a fast. However, when you’ve been on a prolonged fast of three days or longer, you’ll want to be gentle on your digestive system. Prolonged fasting decreases the digestive juices. Show your body kindness by consuming small portions of easily digestible foods such as whole fruits and juices. Consuming starchy foods such as potatoes, sweet potatoes included, can cause weight gain rapidly. This is because it results in an immediate reversal of urinary salt and water loss.

Refeeding with fat doesn’t result in any sodium retention, protein does cause delayed sodium retention. When your body retains a lot of water, it makes the number on the scale increase. The rapid weight loss that people see during the initial phase of their fast is from the body releasing urinary salt and retained water. It is very important to break your fast with nutrient-rich foods that assist your body in the digestion process. I’ve written a free ebook for you that is a compilation of all fasting blog posts. In the final chapter, you’ll find information about the Daniel detox that is perfect to incorporate into your refeeding phase.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. May you now have a better understanding of how to have a successful refeeding phase after breaking your fast. Remember, all things are possible, they are! The best is yet to come and the odds are always in your favor. Take care!

-Aiyaken Sarai <3

Sources

• Walter Lyon Bloom, M.d. “Inhibition of Salt Excretion by Carbohydrate.” Archives of Internal Medicine, JAMA Network, 1 Jan. 1962, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/566807. 
• Veverbrants, E, and R A Arky. “Effects of fasting and refeeding. I. Studies on sodium, potassium and water excretion on a constant electrolyte and fluid intake.” The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism vol. 29,1 (1969): 55-62. doi:10.1210/jcem-29-1-55
• Boulter, P R et al. “Pattern of sodium excretion accompanying starvation.” Metabolism: clinical and experimental vol. 22,5 (1973): 675-83. doi:10.1016/0026-0495(73)90239-4
• Kerndt PR, Naughton JL, Driscoll CE, et al: Fasting: The history, pathophysiology and complications (Medical Progress). West J Med 1982 Nov; 137:379-399

This blog post was written without the assistance of AI