The FastDay Forum

I'm going to try a liquid fast tomorrow, instead of my usual one meal/coffee fast.

My thoughts are to make a green juice to sip throughout the day alongside water, and then make a soup for dinner. Probably from cucumber, celery, spinach, kale, a lemon and an apple to sweeten it up a little. I know I will lose most of the filling fibre, but that's ok, I find juices fill me up all right. And it's only one day, anyway.

For people who have done both, are liquid fasts easier or harder than one meal fasts?

Do we have any juicing fans among us?

Well as you know I'm a fan of liquid fasting. When I was having liquid with calories (coffee with milk and sugar), as opposed to zero cal water fasting which i do now, it made no difference to my weight loss. Juice fasting has to be a healthier alternative to 'coffee fasting'!

Liquid fasting definitely seems to speed up the weight loss through the further calorie deficit and the way it changes attitudes to food and hunger on non fast days.

Breadandwine is going to start a new liquid fasting thread for next week so check in and let us know how you get on! Good luck!

I'm also going to try a liquid fast tomorrow but am going to try full water fast. I will report back afterwards!

Over the years I've read a couple of times that in studies, feeding two groups of people the same amount of food but one group having their food liquidised has resulted in more weight loss for the group having liquid food. Certainly, when I was younger and doing my clandestine fasts I found that liquid of any sort, soups, hot chocolate, wine etc afforded me a better weight loss then just eating less of solid food. I thought at the time that it was my imagination, maybe not!

Can any of our lovely nerdy folk on here find anything that supports this theory?

Ballerina x

I'm doing this today! Just had water or coffee with milk no sugar so far. Am about to have a cup of miso soup for lunch and I'll just have green tea this evening. Going well so far

[wildmissus]

I remember watching an early Dr MM Horizon programme on 10 thing to know about diets and they took two groups of soldiers, fed half on chicken, rice, veg and a glass of water and the other half on the same but liquidised into a soup. They then sent them out on a training afternoon and when they came back they scanned their stomachs and the group who had liquidised food were actually fuller than the other group.

When I liquid fast I have herbal teas, tap water and sparkling water. I say do what suits you best. I find it easier to liquid fast as I don't need to think about food and I don't turn on the hunger switch. Just be careful how you break your fast - small and low carb.

Yes that's right! I remember that programme now and how it found liquids filled the soldiers up better. I've started a thread proposing a bit of forum research about how liquid fasting compares to water only and normal 5:2. There certainly seem to be enough people trying it now to allow some stats to be gathered in due course.

When I did my first liquid fast yesterday I had green tea and water only.

Nice to know I didn't imagine it, hope more work is done on this,

Ballerina x

i'm liquid fasting tomorrow as well, glad to have company

I remember watching an early Dr MM Horizon programme on 10 thing to know about diets and they took two groups of soldiers, fed half on chicken, rice, veg and a glass of water and the other half on the same but liquidised into a soup.

What do you mean by "liquidised"?

I'm asking because there are some disagreements out there between "juicers," which tend to remove most/all of the fiber from what it is you are juicing, and "blenders," which basically chew your food for you and suspend it in water but otherwise don't change the food itself.

I think a lot of the benefits of the latter type of "liquidising" of food is that many people eat too quickly and don't properly chew their food, such that digestion is slowed and much of the good stuff in your food (the vitamins, for example) flushes right through undigested while the caloric content is still metabolized.

the soldier test made a soup out of a meal for one group by sticking in a food blender so nothing was taken away. There was an explanation in terms of how the stomach responded differently to the two inputs.

32 minutes into movie at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/10-thing ... ng-weight/

Thanks PhilT -- LOL that's the one I stopped watching after the first tip for losing weight was "don't skip meals"...

It is an interesting mechanism for hunger management, though. I've heard similar things when people tell me not to drink too much water while eating (or don't drink water at all with your food), now it makes a lot more sense.

Really interesting thread - thank you everyone. I'll watch with interest to see how this all progresses.

I have noticed that if I don't eat at all on a fast day, but just sticking to coffee and water, I get less hungry. It's almost like eating kick starts the metabolism and the body just wants more food!