Fasting Tips...by Dr. Jason Fung

1. Drink water: Start each morning with a full eight-ounce glass of water.

2. Stay busy: It’ll keep your mind off food. It often helps to choose a busy day at work for a fast day.

3. Drink coffee: Coffee is a mild appetite suppressant. Green tea, black tea, and bone broth may also help.

4. Ride the waves: Hunger comes in wave; it is not continuous. When it hits, slowly drink a glass of water or a hot cup of coffee. Often by the time you’ve finished, your hunger will have passed.

5. Don’t tell anybody you are fasting: Most people will try to discourage you, as they do not understand the benefits. A close-knit support group is often beneficial, but telling everybody you know is not a good idea.

6. Give yourself one month: It takes time for your body to get used to fasting. The first few times you fast may be difficult, so be prepared. Don’t be discouraged. It will get easier.

7. Follow a nutritious diet on non-fast days: Intermittent fasting is not an excuse to eat whatever you like. During non-fasting days, stick to a nutritious diet low in sugars and refined carbohydrates.

8. Don’t’ binge: After fasting, pretend it never happened. Eat normally, as if you had never fasted.

The last and most important tip is to fit fasting into your own life! Do not limit yourself socially because you’re fasting. Arrange your fasting schedule so that it fits in with your lifestyle. There will be times during which it’s impossible to fast: vacation, holidays, weddings. Do not try to force fasting into these celebrations. These occasions are times to relax and enjoy. Afterwards, however, you can simply increase your fasting to compensate. Or just resume your regular fasting schedule. Adjust your fasting schedule to what makes sense for your lifestyle.

What to expect

The amount of weight lost varies tremendously from person to person. The longer that you have struggled with obesity, the more difficult you’ll find it to lose weight. Certain medications may make it hard to lose weight. You must simply persist and be patient.

You’ll probably eventually experience a weight-loss plateau. Changing either your fasting or dietary regimen, or both, may help. Some patients increase fasting from twenty-four-hour periods to thirty-six-hour periods, or try a forty-eight-hour fast. Some may try eating only once a day, every day. Others may try a continuous fast for an entire week. Changing the fasting protocol is often what’s required to break through a plateau.

Fasting is no different than any other skill in life. Practice and support are essential to performing it well. Although it has been a part of human culture forever, many people in North America have never fasted in their lives. Therefore, fasting has been feared and rejected by mainstream nutritional authorities as difficult and dangerous. The truth, in fact, is radically different.