Navigating Drink Choices During Your Fast

Fasting Basics and Daily Routine 0:00

Hey, Dr. David Jockers here today. I'm talking about one of the most popular questions that I get. What can I actually eat or drink while I'm fasting? And so I get this question all the time. And so as many of you guys know, I'm a huge advocate of intermittent fasting and also extended fasting. And so me personally, what do I do? I actually typically do an 18 hour fast on a daily basis, meaning I eat my meals, I eat usually two meals, sometimes like a third little snack in between. But usually I'm eating at 1:00 and roughly around 6:00 and finishing by 7:00 each day.

So an eight hour fast. I'm typically fasting from 8 pm I'm sorry, 7 pm until 1 pm the following day and then one day a week. I usually do somewhere around a 20 to 24 hour fast, just a deeper level of fasting that triggers more autophagy and cellular healing. Now during the fasting window to get the best benefits of a fast, you want to keep any sort of calorie consumption to a minimum. Certainly nothing. You know, if you consume more than about 20 calories, that will you know, it will slow down. Autophagy, right.

Meaning your body's ability to break down in scavenged or damaged cells and old damaged cellular organelles and take the raw materials and turn them into new, healthy cellular organelles. So you really want to avoid calories, you know, as much as possible. However, for some people, consuming some of the right types of calories helps them feel better during the fast and helps them be able to fast longer. And that may be more benefit than if they were to try to kind of strictly do no calories while they fast.

So we're looking at this when we're fasting, these are the things that I consume. I consume a lot of water. Okay. So we really want to be consuming at least half of our body

Water, Salt, and Electrolytes 2:04

weight in ounces of water. Daily water keeps our body moving like a river helps flush toxins out. You know, we should be peeing and pooping our way to good health. And so we want to be hydrating, well, flushing out toxins, keeping things moving like a river rather than a stagnant pond. So I'm a huge fan of drinking water. You know, a lot of good water when you're fasting. You can also add in salt or electrolytes. Salt itself is amazing. In fact, a lot of people notice if they're fasting and they just feel a little bit low energy or just not as mentally clear, just a little bit of salt, putting it on your tongue and you'll notice energy coming right back up. Right? Why?

Because salt is critical for all the electrical functions that go on throughout the body. Right. So really, we're hydro electric beings, meaning that we produce rapid amounts of energy through just water and electrolytes. Right. That's what conducts neurological activity in our body. So we can actually thrive off of water and salt for a good period of time because our body has a lot of energy reserves, meaning that we've got fat, we can burn for fuel, we've got stored sugar, that we can burn for fuel, but you got to get the water and the electrolytes.

You got to, you know, pretty much continually replace those. We can also do herbal teas, right? I'm a huge fan of herbal tea. I enjoy it myself. I drink probably one or two cups a day of some sort of, you know, good quality tea. I like kava tea for relaxation, stress relief. I like bedtime tea at night, which has things like Camomile and Passionflower, which are all GABA agonists. They help improve GABA levels, which is like the brakes on your brain, which helps calm anxiety, helps induce better sleep.

So herbal teas are fantastic. You can do green tea throughout the day. That's obviously got some caffeine in it, so you wouldn't want to do it at night.

Herbal Teas and Apple Cider Vinegar 3:56

But doing a little bit of that during the day can be fine. Ginger tea, which is great for digestive health. So a lot of different teas. Teas are great, no calories. There. You're going to do fantastic apple cider vinegar. Some people online will say, well, apple cider vinegar, if you take that during a fast, that is going to break your fast. But this isn't actually true. Apple cider vinegar doesn't have any meaningful calories in it. And it has a lot of acetic acid and enzymes that actually help support your gut microbes biome the post biotic right so we've heard of prebiotics we've heard of probiotics right?

Probiotics is good bacteria post biotics are a byproduct of bacterial metabolism. So the post biotic, it's called acetic acid that's in vinegar actually helps strengthen your gut microbiome have in the gut lining itself and prevent against leaky gut syndrome and inflammation. And so ACV is fantastic. You can take a tablespoon of that in your water. Really the only downside of apple cider vinegar unless you are very sensitive to it. The only downside is that it can damage the enamel of your teeth.

So you want to make sure you rinse it out of your mouth after you consume it. Don't take it just straight up. It's way too harsh. You know, I think anybody that's experienced that knows that don't drink vinegar straight up, dilute it in water. Right. Take one tablespoon, for example, put it in for 6 to 8 ounces of water and drink it like that. And it can have a lot of great benefits for a lot of people that are having cravings when they're fasting. They know if they take the apple cider vinegar and water, it reduces the cravings.

Why is that? Because again, the post biotic, a lot of times the cravings we're experiencing are actually coming from our gut microbiome, right from the bacteria in our gut, and we provide this post biotic. It calms them down and we no longer experience the same cravings. So apple cider vinegar works great. Lemon and lime also work good. There's very, very small amount of calories in there. I don't worry about it. So if you do like some lemon juice and water or lime juice, right. Or squeeze of lemon or lime should be totally fine.

The citric acid that's in there, the vitamin C, the the bio flavonoids that are in there, amazing for your body. Again, post biotics they help calm down the gut microbiome there are great for the skin, great for cleansing your body, great for your liver. So a lot of really good benefits there of doing lemon and lime and water. And again, you should have notice, you know, an increase in cravings or anything like that. And that's really one of the telltale signs that you're looking for if you consume something during a fast like, for example, some of the things out of this maybe list that we're going to get to next like stevia or a sweetener.

Lemon, Lime, and Coffee During Fasting 6:34

And you notice you have more cravings. Let's say, you know, a few hours afterwards, that's a sign that you had a blood sugar and insulin response and how your body's responding to that. It's saying, okay, give me more, give me more. I want more sweetener. Okay. So we want to avoid that. We don't want to get to that place. Fasting can be very, very comfortable if we're not stimulating blood sugar and insulin and stimulating this sort of craving response. So that goes hand-in-hand with black coffee, right?

Most people do great with coffee, right? When they take a little bit. And, you know, some people are faster caffeine metabolizes and others I'm a slower caffeine metabolism, meaning I can't handle as much caffeine. So I will take maybe like a half a cup of coffee and make it last for, you know, all through the morning, for example, kind of slowly sip on it as opposed to chug it. Right? Whereas other people, they can just drink caffeine in and their body, their liver metabolizes it really, really quickly.

So after a few hours, they need more, right? Or they feel like they go down, their energy goes down, their brain fog, and then they need more caffeine to pick them up. So just depends on the individual metabolism can be different. But in general, if you're drinking the right amount of caffeine and coffee for you and coffee is actually a very rich source of polyphenols, chlorogenic acid and cafe acid that are great for blood sugar stability, great for stimulating autophagy, which is one of the great benefits we get from fasting.

So coffee, believe it or not, can actually enhance the benefits of fasting as long as you tolerate it well. So drinking coffee is fine, but again, you shouldn't notice any cravings for some people drinking coffee, even black coffee will trigger more cravings. They'll notice that their energy goes down. They'll notice that they feel more fatigued, or maybe they have more joint pain or whatever it is. If you're noticing unwanted symptoms you want to avoid. That coffee in general should be a performance enhancement tool.

Should help you focus, concentrate, have more energy, more mental clarity. If you're not noticing those benefits, then coffee is not doing what it needs, what it should be doing for you, and you should avoid it. So that's the black coffee. Okay, so it is okay as long as you're doing okay with it. Now the maybe list MCT oil, stevia or any sort of sweetener, butter and cream and collagen. These are all on the maybe list. And the reason why they're on the maybe list is if doing a fast like just a water fast or just doing these things only allows you to fast, let's say 14 hours and then you just hit the wall, okay, like you and dinner at 7 pm and then at 9 a.m., you're just like, oh my gosh, I have to eat something.

Even though you're hydrating, even though you know you're following the principles I already talked about, if taking a little bit of MCT oil, which turns right into ketones, which gets across the blood brain barrier and provides a fuel source for your brain and trigger satiety, if that can help you actually have more energy, better mental clarity, and be able to fast longer without noticing hunger, then it could be beneficial for you right there. There's a benefit to that, right?

Maybe Options: MCT, Butter, Cream, Collagen, and Sweeteners 9:44

It allows you to go a little bit longer. It's going to blunt some of the autophagy, but because it's not a protein or a carbohydrate, you'll still get a lot of great fat burning, a lot of great autophagy, growth hormone signaling, stem cell production that you wouldn't normally get, you know, if you ate, you know, a standard breakfast. So adding in a little bit of MCT oil and for some people, some butter and cream. Now butter and cream, we'll have a little bit more of an insulin response, a longer chain fat.

So you get a little bit more of an insulin response, a little blunt, a little bit more of the autophagy than if you just do that like a straight MCT oil. But again, if it allows you to go longer, right. And we talk about like a fatty coffee or a, you know, a lot of people put it in their coffee. They'll do a bulletproof coffee or a fatty coffee where they have got butter. They've got MCT oil in there right in the coffee. If that allows you to fast, longer, stave off satiety or stave off any sort of cravings and allows you to go longer and tighten your eating window when you actually are eating, then there could be great benefit to that if that's your goal, right?

So that I'm open to that collagen. Now what about collagen? Because some people like to put collagen in their coffee as well. And this is this is becoming more and more common. Collagen is not going to break autophagy as much as if we ate like a lot of sugar or if we ate like a big piece of protein, right? If we had a protein source other than collagen, we would break autophagy, right? Meaning that our body wouldn't be able to undergo autophagy because we would have too much leucine in our blood.

And leucine is what stimulates muscle protein synthesis. Collagen is low in leucine, so it's possible we could do a little bit of collagen, but you aren't going to get the 100% of the effects of what you're trying to accomplish in the fast. If your main goal is just fat burning weight loss, you will still burn fat and you'll still, you know, possibly lose lose weight or transform your physique. Get rid of a lot of the fat, fat weight. Right. Or the your overall body fat percentage, you'll reduce that.

And and, you know, preferentially favor your muscle mass, which is which is a great benefit. But you won't get quite as much of that deep cellular healing if you're adding in the collagen stevia or any sort of sweetener. Stevia theoretically doesn't impact your blood sugar, right? There's no carbohydrates in it. However, a lot of us, we have this response, right, where if we're taking in anything that's sweet, our body expects our blood sugar to go up. So it goes ahead and produces insulin. Right.

And so this is a cerebral brain based response that says, okay, there's something sweet coming in. I'm going to produce more insulin, which drives down your blood sugar. And if you're already fasting, your blood sugar is probably within a healthy range or possibly even low. And so that can bring down your blood sugar even more, which can then trigger hypoglycemia seem like responses where you're irritable, you have more cravings, you don't sleep as well, you have more anxiety.

Choosing the Right Fasting Approach 12:54

So you really have to be careful here with stevia. So these are the big things, okay? In general, everybody does great with water, a little bit of salt, possibly some herbal teas, particularly non caffeinated herbal teas. Most people are doing well with apple cider vinegar, lemon lime. Most people do well with coffee. But, you know, just be aware. Got to see how it works for you. And then these are maybes, depending on how your body is responding and you don't necessarily need to do like a straight water fast.

Every time you do intermittent fasting, you're going to get a lot of great benefits if you just do intermittent fasting three or four days a week, and then you may want to do, you know, a fatty coffee or a bulletproof coffee on the other day and, you know, instead of like a traditional breakfast. And so you may want to vary it up just depending on you and how you feel and what's going to work best for your schedule during the day. But this is where you're going to get the best benefits of fasting, staying with these things.

This is going to take away from some of those benefits but could be used like I've talked about strategically to help you have a longer, better, you know, just a more comfortable, fast, more comfortable period of time restricted feeding throughout the day. So hopefully this is beneficial and you guys got a lot out of this. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, now is the time to do it. Thanks so much. We'll see you guys in a future video. Be bless, everybody.