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FASTING IS an efficient way to lose weight
quickly. But it helps to know what you're doing. Below are seven
sensible and safe suggestions for how to fast to lose weight:
1. Try juice fasting before you try
water-only fasting. Juice fasting
is easier. Water-only fasting is more uncomfortable. Begin gently
and get used to it. If you don't know how to fast to lose weight
— if you've never done it before — beginning gradually
is especially important. Read more about the differences here:
Juice fasting.
Water fasting.
2. Begin by fasting for only one day.
You probably have some concerns
about how to fast to lose weight and how to do it safely, and
those fears can make your fast more unpleasant than it needs
to be. So give yourself a chance to discover how safe and relatively
easy fasting can be by fasting for only one day to begin with.
The easiest way to fast for one day is
to eat breakfast, and then don't eat anything else until breakfast
the next day. A little more challenging is to eat dinner like
normal, and then don't eat the next day at all, going to bed
without eating, and then resume eating the following day with
breakfast.
Try the easiest first; then the more challenging
version of a one-day fast. Then try fasting for two days. Do
it a few times before trying three days.
3. Fast on your days off. You may occasionally feel sluggish, week, or foggy-minded
while fasting, so don't put extra pressure on yourself by fasting
while working when you have to be energetic or mentally sharp.
Make your fast a spa day. A day of relaxation. In the short run
it might seem to be a good idea to burn as much energy as possible
while you're fasting, but in the long run, it will probably discourage
you from ever trying it again. If you burn too much energy too
quickly, you will feel terrible. That's not how to fast to lose
weight. Be sensible. Be safe. Take it easy.
4. Drink plenty of water. There's nothing magical about water. It won't flush
fat out of your body. But one of the fundamentals of fasting
is drinking plenty of water, because under normal circumstances,
your body retains water. When you fast, your body releases that
water, and you will get thirsty. You should drink more water
while fasting than you usually do because most foods are partly
or mostly water, so you routinely take in more water than you
think.
5. Eat healthy food before you start. While fasting, you will not get any nutrition
(on a water-only
fast) or very little nutrition (on a juice fast), so if you are already deficient
in some nutrient, you will become even more deficient during
the fast. This is not how to fast to lose weight. Eat nutritional
food before you start fasting.
6. Eat healthy afterwards. Fasting is a great tool to help you improve your
diet. Everything tastes great after a fast, so you can start
a new way of eating fairly easily and painlessly. At that time,
eating healthier won't feel like a deprivation. Even a piece
of fruit feels like a luxurious indulgence after a fast. If you
want to know how to fast to lose weight and keep it off, this
is a key factor: Use your after-fast hunger to your long-term
advantage.
A fast won't do you much good if you eat
unhealthily after the fast. Try to improve your diet, if only
a little, after every fast.
7. Get up slowly. You
will have a tendency to feel lightheaded when you stand up after
sitting while fasting. Your blood pressure is lower than normal
because you're not retaining water. You can actually pass out,
so be careful.
Get up slowly. If you feel you're going
to pass out, sit back down. If you still feel like you're going
to pass out, lie down on the ground and raise your feet up about
six inches. This will keep the blood from leaving your head.
When you get up, get up slowly.
Fasting is a great way to lose weight and
improve your health (read
more about that here). Follow the seven guidelines above
to do it safely and intelligently.
Make or read comments on fasting
here. Share your experiences with
fasting, ask questions about it, and read about others' experiences.
Read a personal account of my longest fast
yet: Fasting, Metabolism,
and Happiness.
I've read a lot of books on fasting. I
thought most of them were not very good. But I found one I really
liked, and I recommend it if you're interested in trying a fast:
Principles of Fasting.
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