Dry fasting can be literally draining on your body, but the actual feeling of dehydration can mostly be avoided. In fact, dry fasting should feel effortless when done correctly.
If you’re doing a prolonged dry fast of over 24 hours, you should have already done a few prolonged water fast and intermittent dry fast (12-18 hours), so you’ll be more familiar with your body’s signs and comfort level.
Planning your dry fast will help you be ready mentally, physically, and emotionally to have a far more comfortable and safe dry fast, so don’t just jump into it, especially you’re aiming to do 24 hours or more.
Here are 6 tips on how you can avoid getting and feeling dehydrated when dry fasting;-
1. Mental preparation
Make sure you educate yourself on dry fasting. Having information on what’s going on with your body can save your life; when you fail you prepare, you plan to fail. There’s people around you telling you dry fasting is dangerous, so find out for yourself what it actually does. Many time we only feel like we’re thirsty, when actually is just in our heads—as explained, dry fasting, especially if you’re in ketosis, shouldn’t make you thirsty.
A headache could be a caffeine hangover, not a sign you need to stop. Feeling faint could be an imbalance in fluids, not mean you’re dehydrated and about to die. Know the answers to these questions before you jump the gun and stop your fast before you even start.
Read this article on the dangers of dry fasting to learn more about what to expect and what you can do about avoiding dehydration.
After you’ve read on all the information, you should plan your dry fast timing. Set an objective on when to end your fast, and stick to it. You might consider prolonging your fast to 3 days, when your initial plan was 16 hours. However, you could’ve entered your fast without being properly hydrated, meaning having light coloured pee. You could have taken diuretic medication, or had too much fiber which requires your body to retain water in your colon, making you more dehydrated.
Simply extending your dry fast at a whim can be dangerous and stressful on your whole system, causing severe dehydration. So end when you plan to end.
2. Physical preparation
Preparing your body for dry fasting, also means doing a cleanse before hand.
There’s a lot of waste stuck in your body, and this could clog up the way your body retains water, a poorly functioning digestive system won’t work as well to help you during the processes of dry fasting and could amplify dehydration.
You can try colonic hydrotherapy, laxatives, or a juice fast, beforehand, to prepare your colon and kidney for the dry fast.
To make sure your ready for dry fasting, you should be practising. Fasting is a muscle, and can be trained. If you’re planning 24 hours dry fasting, practice juice fasting, intermittent water fasting and prolonged water fasting. Fasting more also helps you understand your body’s cues—if you’re feeling faint with juice fasting, then your prolonged dry fasting might cause you trouble.
The best way to ease into dry fasting, is to simply do daily intermittent water fasting for 12 hours first, then 16 hours, then 24, then 36 hours weekly. Doing intermittent dry fasting often can also work, to see how well you adapt, then move up by 12 hour increments.
The food and drink before a dry fast will also impact how dehydrated you feel. It’s important to drink loads of water before the dry fast. Never go into a dry fast, already low on water, unless your pee is crystal clear.
This also means you should avoid anything dehydrating, like alcohol, and coffee. Withdrawal from caffein can cause headaches. Drink clean, healthy and raw, so you don’t feel more dehydrated.
3. Nutritional preparation
You should also be eating the right food before dry fasting, having highly processed foods, with a lot of salt in it, will make you feel more dehydrated. If you’ve had too much fibre, or a diuretic, you will pee more, and that means there’s less water in your system to begin with.
The most comfortable way to feel less dehydrated in a dry fast, is to go into the fast, with your body already having a readily available source of water, which means free fatty acids swimming around.
Since fatty acids would only be in your bloodstream when there’s no more alternate fuel source (glucose) in your body, the day before your dry fast, you should have only half the calories you usually take. This way, your calories will run out quicker.
The last meal you have should also be a high-fat meal, so you now also have some fat going into the dry fast that your body can quickly convert into the water, so you feel dehydrated, since you won’t be.
There is, however, a way to hit the ground running with water production, so you’re even less dehydrated in a dry fast.
For instance, if your body already has free fatty acids in its system—like when you’re in ketosis.
Entering a dry fast after doing a ketogenic diet, even a few days before, means your body has been breaking down fat for a while. So there will be plenty of free fatty acids floating around your system, ready and able to be used as fuel for your body to make water.
This means ketogenic diet are foods with 70-80 % fat, 10-15% protein, 5 -10% carbs. An omelette with avocado, or a handful of nuts, salmon with kale, or a salad with loads of olive oil are some examples of foods that are ketogenic.
Another benefit of already being in ketosis before you start your dry fast, is that ketosis will take you into a deeper level of ketosis quickly, which triggers more autophagy to happen, so now even more bad cells can be broken down and processed into becoming water for your body.
Check out my article, What to Eat Before A Dry Fast, for more tips.
4. Break your dry fast properly
Breaking your fast is also an important factor to make sure you’re not dehydrated. Dry fasting doesn’t end the moment you drink your first sip. You must also plan to hydrate so carefully and over several hours, so that you’re not dehydrated after the fast either. How you hydrate will depend on the length on your dry fast.
If you’ve been fasting for less than 24 hours, then it’s not too much of a concern, proceed with drinking normally. But if more than 24 hours, make sure you’re drinking the first glass over 15 minutes, and hydrating with a glass every hour after. After 4 hours, you can drink again normally, and drink until your pee is light coloured again.
5. Choose your environment
Your setting is also important to make sure you don’t get dehydrated. Remember, your body is making water from air, which means you need access to oxygen from your environment. Don’t be in stuffy, small, cramped spaces that don’t have good circulation—like a car, or an office without ventilation.
Ideally you should dry fast in a location that is also close to nature. Your skin also gets more porous during a dry fast, so it will start absorbing more water from its environment, which is another reason to make sure you’re in a location that you can give your body fresh, clean water, like from the mountain tops or jungles.
6. Follow dry fasting best practice
Doing daily exercise is important to increase more oxygen into your body, you’ll find it invigorating. Although strenuous exercise isn’t recommended during a dry fast, anything that encourages you to take deep, long breaths—like yoga and long walks—is good. Doing more exercise increases your circulation, which will help you avoid dizziness, vertigo, feeling faint, blackouts and the common symptoms of dehydration, but gives you so much more energy to sustain the fast.
The ideal way to get more circulation, energy, and more water is to get nature walks even slow hikes, where you can take nice, long, deep breaths of excellent quality oxygen to feed those water-starved cells.
Being in the right physical condition, is also a vital part of making sure you won’t be dehydrated or be at risk of dehydration before the fast. Make sure that you don’t go into a fast after a binge night out, and drinking till all hours, and come home drunk, because you’ll be rehydrated.
If you’ve just come off a long flight, then be aware you’re already dehydrated. In a 10 hour flight, men can lose 2 litres of water, and women, 1.6 litres of water. Which means if you’re flying from Australia to London, you could be losing up to 4 litres of water.
The same if you’ve just climbed a mountain, as they is less oxygen in your blood naturally, so you won’t be able to make as much water. If you’’ve gone scuba diving, you could take extra care too, as that changes the level of nitrogen to oxygen in your body.
If you’ve been exerting yourself physically, working in the sun, or running a long race, or gone hiking for hours in the sun, where you’ve been losing a lot of sweat, don’t start dry fasting until you’re hydrated again. Naturally if you’re one of the high-risk people for dehydration, such as pregnant or breastfeeding, under no circumstances, should you be dry fasting!
For more on how to dry fast safely for age reversal and weight loss, check out my video course, 25 Again! The Dry Fasting Lifestyle For A Younger, Slimmer You.
***Disclaimer: I am not a doctor/ physician, and although I have a bachelors degree in Biomedical Science, I cannot and do not hold myself to be a medical professional (“Medical Provider”). This article does not contain medical /health advice. The medical/ health information here is is for general and educational purposes only. It is my opinion, based on my research and personal experience, and not a substitute for professional advice by your health care provider. Please consult with a professional before acting on the information here, and do not disregard medical advice or delay seeking medical attention because of anything you read on this article. THE USE OR RELIANCE OF ANY OF THE INFORMATION ON THIS WEBSITE IS SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.***
References
- Filonov, Sergey. 20 Questions & Answers About Dry Fasting . Translated by Vera Giovanna Bani , Siberika , 2019.
- https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/travel-dehydration-509326
- https://healthline.com/nutriton/ketogenic-diet-101
- Coutinho, Luke. Dry Fasting Miracle. EBURY PR, 2020.