The FastDay Forum

If the soup broth is calorie neutral (i.e. calorie free), can I have as much broth as I want on my fasting day?

Hi Wickenburg52 and welcome!

Unfortunately only plain water is calorie free, but you can have as much of it as you like!

There is no such thing as calorie neutral, it's a myth.

Thanks Jemima. Point of clarification if you don't mind: my Lobster Soup Broth shows as 0 calories, no fat. Assuming I make a soup recipe with the normal amount of ingredients, couldn't I add this extra can of soup broth and still be within my calorie count?

0 calories? That is not possible. Perhaps it says "0 calories from fat"...

Nope. O and O. Here is a link to calorie counter. The figures match what is on the can.
http://caloriecount.about.com/calories- ... ck-i268109

I really don't get it. Perhaps someone else will. Even stock cubes have calories. Minimum, but they do...

BTW, I see lots of salt in it, beware of water retention!

So, it's a stock which means that it is mainly water.

It lists 1.1g of carbohydrate per serving, that's approx 4.4 kcals. That's per serving, so the total will depend on how many servings there are in the can.

It's also very high in salt, which will give you a temporary weight gain as your body stores water while it rids itself of the salt.

It's entirely up to you. If it works for you then that's great. This way of life is all about finding what is right for you.

Very helpful. Thanks to both of you for responding so fast. Basically, if I can deal with extra salt and about 10 additional calories, I can have another can of broth. Not a bad a trade off since this much extra liquid will really make one feel satiated.

PS on the salt. I do cross-fit type work outs three times per week, lots of sweating. So the extra salt is likely a good thing.

I was just coming over to say that I just looked at the lobster broth again. It says that in 1 cup there is 1.1gram of carbohydrate but zero calories, that is impossible. There are 4 calories in 1 gram of carbohydrate, therefore there are 4.4 calories in one cup, as Jemima says.

I wonder if that shows as zero because the entry is incomplete, rather than genuinely zero as people have already realised cannot be so? The way that one of the boxes shows "--" makes it look like a glitch to me... ICBW.

There is also the problem of "unlimited". If you drink this stuff wall-to-wall, you might not get the benefits of the fasting, which implies giving your digestive organs a rest, however low the calories are!

Esmecat, many of us do this for the weight loss and not for the fasting benefits so we just count the calories and not think about anything else.
Still, unlimited broth is indeed misleading. What is unlimited?
10 cups? That's 44 calories.
50 cups? That's 220 calories.
As you can see, if you add them up they are far from zero!

Hi TML13. Yep! Exactly. And that is if the only calories are the ones that others have concluded must be in there as a minimum... Lobster tastes great, and I find it very filling. I would expect it to have quite a bit of content, even when reduced to a broth.

I may be completely off track. What is this broth like? Is it quite a thick soup, or more like a clear miso/consomme type? Broth sounds quite substantial to me, and could therefore hijack the results whether someone was trying to lose weight or gain the other fasting benefits.

Broth is similar to Bovril, or the result of diluting a stock cube in water. In other words, stock.