dr Jason Fung says anything 50 cal and below doesn’t break a fast. The thing is, you do what works best for you. I personally wouldn’t go up to 300 cals but if that’s helping you commit, then why not. Maybe in a few weeks, you’ll be able to do less.
I switch to half and half for my coffees during a fast which is about 40 cals.
I see this type of confusion so often, can we just sticky this somehow or at it to the FAQ?
OP, here is the skinny. Fasting means “insulin free” regions of time. Anything you eat that triggers an insulin response (some ‘0 calorie” things will do this) technically breaks a fast. For this reason, many advocate only water, black coffee, unaltered tea as those do not trigger insulin responses.
Something people get wrong on this sub often is that they equate an insulin response with “ending a fast” and imply that all insulin responses are the same. They aren’t. If you take in a very small amount of food/caloric rich liquid (e.g., bone broth or a bit of honey in your tea, bulletproof coffee, or a shot of ACV etc), you will have an insulin response but it is not the same as if you ate a “meal”. Meaning within 24 hours, if you have say 30 minutes where insulin is high enough to prevent fat burn, then okay you didn’t get a 24 hour fast, but c’mon! This is way some use “dirty fasting” effectively and I advocate everyone needs to figure out what works best for them. This does not “ruin” anything.
The last point that people make is about starvation mode and here they are loosely referencing the Minnesota experiment. If one eats enough carbs at a sever caloric deficit frequently enough to keep insulin relatively high in the bloodstream, then this will prevent the body from switching to body fat but still stay at a caloric deficit – a horrible situation. Basically, it takes eating/triggering an insulin response multiple times a day to do this.
You’re one cup of bone broth will not put you in starvation mode, nor will it completely erraticate your fat burn/weight loss during your “fasting” periods. Purists will gatekeep, but haters gonna hate. You do you. Whatever works to keep you rolling is what’s important.
Anything with calories will break your fast. Now, there are different types of “fasts” that aren’t true fasts but instead restrict calories in various ways and with various types of foods (e.g. bone broth, liquid fasts). But those don’t have the same benefits an actual fast would, and are just an extreme caloric deficit for weight loss.
Water fasting is simple, don’t eat for a period of time. Counting calories is a waste of time, calories = energy, which is bad for weight loss, but important if you are very active or doing hard labor or do tons of sports, or sick. People will always gatekeep things like fasting and sticking to certain diets. Just find what works for you, and if you eat, eat something nutritious.