Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
After digging into the contents of this blog, you’re seriously thinking about starting an intermittent fast soon. One type of fast you’ve heard about is dry fasting. You have to admit, you’re intrigued. What is dry fasting and how do you do it?
Dry fasting is a form of intermittent fasting in which you eat no food nor consume any water. To get started, follow these steps:
- Make sure you have some experience with intermittent fasting, such as juice or water fasts
- Choose a soft dry water fast over a hard dry water fast at the beginning
- Consult your doctor to ensure you’re healthy enough to fast
- Ingest more salt and omega-3 fatty acids before your fast, as they last longer in your system and may ward off hunger
- Begin fasting, either in short bursts or for 16 to 24 consecutive hours
- Do light exercise
- Consume water post-fast and eat food in small quantities the next day, limiting carbs while you do
In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about dry fasting. From more about what it is, how to do it, and what kinds of results you’ll see, keep reading! You’ll soon be well prepared for a safe dry fast.
Table of Contents
What Is Dry Fasting?
First, let’s dive deeper into the definition of intermittent dry fasting we presented in the intro.
A dry fast is one in which you don’t eat food–a standard of many fasts–and you forego water as well. Since you’re not supplying your body with any calories, weight loss is a major benefit of dry fasting. However, seeing as how you’re also depriving yourself of fluids like water to ward off hunger pangs, dry fasting for long consecutive periods can be incredibly difficult.
Soft Dry Fasts and Hard Dry Fasts
There are two types of dry fasts, soft dry fasts and hard dry fasts. Both preclude the consumption of water, but a soft dry fast offers more leeway. You’re allowed to use water for non-drinking purposes in your day-to-day life.
What does this mean? Think about your daily routine. You wake up and brush your teeth. You probably shower. You go to the bathroom and wash your hands. During all these activities, you’re not drinking any water, but you certainly are using it.
Soft dry fasts allow you to do that. The freedom to carry on with your basic hygiene can make this form of intermittent fasting somewhat more comfortable, at least in that regard.
A hard dry fast is the most restrictive type of dry fast. In fact, there are fewer intermittent fasts with tighter rules than this one. All those basic hygiene activities you do, such as brushing your teeth, bathing, cleaning your face, and washing your hands are all prohibited. You not only can’t drink water, but you also can’t come into contact with water for the duration of your fast.
Since this can be tough from a hygienic standpoint, hard dry fasts are typically quite limited in duration.
Why Do Dry Fasting?
A dry fast may sound incredibly difficult, and that’s because it is. Although not for the faint of heart, there are plenty of reasons this form of intermittent fasting is so appealing to some. Let’s examine these more now.
To Lose Weight
All intermittent fasting can lead to weight loss, but dry fasting gets you there much more quickly. This fast lets you shed water weight and decrease belly fat, leading to a trimmer, better-looking you.
How much weight you lose can vary. Here’s one intermittent faster’s account of their experience with dry fasting. They went on a hard dry fast for five days, which is not recommended for beginner or even intermediate fasters. That said, through their dry fast, this person lost 14.6 pounds.
Compare that to the results of water fasting, in which you can drink water but eat no food. According to Livestrong.com, your daily weight loss on a water fast can be between one and three pounds. As the fast continues, your capacity for weight loss decreases. Now, every day, you’re only losing half a pound instead of a full one.
As a Body Reset
Have you ever wanted to hit the reset button on your body, starting with a clean slate? While we’ll get more into the benefits of dry fasts later, intermittent fasting is a great way to start your body anew in a healthy setting.
To Challenge Yourself
Do you like challenges? Maybe you’ve tried other forms of intermittent fasting, from juice fasts to water fasts, alternate-day fasts, and 16:8 fasts. You’re looking for something that’s a little more difficult and will really kickstart results for your body.
It doesn’t get much harder than a dry fast, especially if you opt for a hard dry fast. Once again, we want to reiterate that this type of dry fast is not for beginners, but only experienced fasters who know how their bodies will react and when to stop (if necessary).
For Religious Reasons
Many religions practice some form of intermittent fasting. These include Islam for the observance of Ramadan, Jainism, Buddhism, Mormonism every month, Christianity for advent and lent, and Judaism for Yom Kippur.
Most of these aren’t dry fasts per se, but one that is that’s come up a lot on this blog is Ramadan. If you’re not familiar, Ramadan is an annual Islam observance that’s 29 to 30 days. When the observance occurs changes per calendar year, but it’s typically in the spring or summer.
For each hour of daylight, which may be as long as 12 hours during the warmer season, all participants are not allowed to eat. They’re also restricted from drinking.
What Are the Benefits of Dry Fasting?
If those reasons haven’t incentivized you to give dry fasting a try, maybe this list of its benefits will.
The Results Happen Faster
We talked in the first section about dry fasting results, especially compared to water fasting. You’re likely to begin shedding weight at a faster rate because you’re putting nothing into your body.
Weight loss occurs when you consume fewer calories than you burn. Your body can continue to torch calories even when at rest, but especially during physical activity. Since you’re not adding any calories to your system during a water fast, hard or soft, weight loss should accelerate.
Fat burning may happen quicker, too. If you’ve read this blog, then you know your body has a supply of glucose for energy. This is a sugar that comes from the foods we eat. To begin burning fat, your body has to go through your glucose stores first.
If you’ve done other types of fasts before and then you try a dry fast, your glucose stores may be lower. That can lead to speedier fat burning.
Could Lower Your Chances of Developing Osteoporosis
In a study done on Ramadan fasting as published in Therapeutic Advances in Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2015, during a dry fast, production of parathyroid hormone ramps up. This hormone can boost blood calcium, the formation of bones, and reabsorption rates. Healthier bones like these may be less likely to have osteoporosis.
May Hasten Wound Healing
If you want to speed up the healing of a cut or wound, try a dry fast. Nutrients published a study in 2019 that found that as our immune system gains more activity during a dry fast, our wounds heal faster as a consequence. That said, animal testing has produced conflicting results. Some saying wounds heal slower when not ingesting sufficient calories and others say it happens faster.
Control Blood Sugar
Healthy blood sugar is one at an even level. When your blood sugar skyrockets, you’re at risk of hyperglycemia, which is typical of diabetics but can affect non-diabetics as well. Symptoms of hyperglycemia include sudden weight loss, fatigue, blurry vision, concentration issues, headaches, and excessive thirstiness.
Left unchecked, you can eventually develop intestinal and stomach issues (such as diarrhea and chronic constipation), vision troubles, cuts that don’t heal quickly, and skin infections. Kidney, blood vessel, and eye damage is likely, as is nerve damage. This can lead to erectile dysfunction, lower extremity hair loss, and insensitivity and coldness of the feet.
When your blood sugar is too low, this is known as hypoglycemia. This can be just as dangerous as hyperglycemia, with symptoms such as headaches, nervousness, anxiety, mood changes, hunger, sweating, dizziness, and shakiness.
As hypoglycemia progresses, you could lose consciousness, have seizures, blurry vision, and confusion.
It’s believed you can improve insulin sensitivity and have better control over blood glucose through a dry fast, suggests this 2014 study in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences. That can ward off both hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia.
Lessen Inflammation
When Nutrition Research studied adults about to observe Ramadan back in 2012, the scientists found that cytokines decreased the longer a dry fast went on.
What are cytokines? These are proteins and substances that can influence growth and sometimes inflammation, especially proinflammatory cytokines. While the data suggested that more studies would need to be done in this area, it’s believed that dry fasting may be able to reduce your inflammation.
Improve Cholesterol
Not all cholesterol is bad for you. High-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol travels through your bloodstream and gets rid of low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol. That’s good, because you may be able to lessen your chances of heart disease with enough HDL cholesterol.
The Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as well as other data have found that when men and women dry fasted, they both lessened their LDL cholesterol. Men also had a decrease in triglycerides and total cholesterol while women had more HDL cholesterol.
Trigger Cell Regeneration
A 2015 Cell Stem Cell report produced some interesting findings. When mice fasted for a “prolonged” period, their cells regenerated at a quicker rate. Currently, humans are being studied to see if we produce the same results, with no conclusive evidence yet.
We’d suggest there’s a good chance us people may also regenerate our cells through intermittent fasting. If you read our mega-post about autophagy, this is your body’s natural cleansing of old or damaged cells. Your healthy cells will eat and recycle the bad ones, warding off disease and turning back the hands of time.
Intermittent fasting is one way to trigger autophagy, which we’ll also have a dedicated section on later. Thus, even dry fasting should produce these same autophagic results.
Increase the Growth of Brain Cells
Speaking of cells, the ones in your brain are crucial. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, commonly abbreviated as BDNF, is a type of protein that can cause the growth of brain cells. Also, with enough BDNF in our noggins, we may spare brain cell degeneration, promote fresh neuronal development, boost the plasticity of our brains, and learn and retain memories better.
Ketone bodies, a type of molecule that comes from the liver, are made in greater quantities through an intermittent fast. To produce them, we enter ketosis, which we’ll also discuss in more detail later in this guide.
As dry fasting increases the ketones in our system, our brain tissue heals, keeping it healthy enough for more BDNF.
How to Do Dry Fasting
The above benefits have convinced you to get on a dry fast, but how do you get started? Let’s go back to the dry fasting stages we listed in the intro and elaborate more on these now.
Don’t Make Your First Fast a Dry Fast
Intermittent fasting takes a lot of patience, discipline, and a good knowledge of your body and what you can withstand. Hard fasting is difficult for even some more experienced fasters. For a beginner like yourself, going without food and water at the same time could be insurmountable.
It’s best not to put too much on your figurative plate at once. To prepare yourself for dry fasting, go on a few water or juice fasts first. Both intermittent fasts operate under a similar premise. We talked about water fasting before, but a juice fast requires you to drink only vegetable and fruit juices.
This experience, while it does delay your first dry fast, is crucial. Otherwise, you risk shocking your system and potentially putting your health at risk. If you really can’t wait to jump into dry fasting, then limit your water or juice fasts to 24-hour periods. You will have to repeat this at least four times before you should start cutting out beverages and food, though.
Also, since you’re new to dry fasting, never go straight to hard dry fasting. Allow yourself to bathe and stay clean with water on a soft dry fast a few times first. Then, if you really want to, you should be readier for a hard dry fast.
Determine How Long You’ll Fast
You don’t have to push yourself beyond your reasonable limits on your first dry fast. Shorter fasts are better until your body adjusts accordingly. There’s even research that attests to this.
Per a 2018 article in the Times of India, if you dry fast for upwards of 24 hours, it’s the same to your body as water fasting for three days. You get all the cleansing benefits in far less time.
See Your Doctor
You must make sure you’re the picture of health before starting something like a dry fast. Even if you usually take very good care of yourself, please don’t skip this checkup. You never know if any undiagnosed conditions could get in the way of your fast.
Begin Consuming More Salt and Omega-3 Fatty Acids
With your doctor’s approval, you’re ready to begin dry fasting. That said, you want to prepare your body for what’s to come before just cutting out food and water altogether. The best way you can do that is carefully choosing the foods you eat before the fast.
Although it’s usually not recommended, you should pile on a bit more salt to garnish your food. As much as a teaspoon extra should suffice. This salt allows your body to hold onto the minerals and vitamins in your system longer.
You also need omega-3 fatty acids. These polyunsaturated fats include docosahexaenoic acid or DHA, eicosapentaenoic acid or EPA, and a-linoleic acid or ALA. When you ingest omega-3s, they take longer to digest than other food sources, which may ward off the intensity of hunger pangs during your fast.
One of the best ways to get omega-3s naturally is to enjoy fish, especially salmon and mackerel. If you don’t like fish, fish oil supplements can act as a natural replacement. Avocados are a good source of omega-3s as well.
Do the Fast
Upon completing that salt and omega-3 heavy meal, you can start your dry fast anytime. Since you’re new to this, the later in the day you begin, the better. This way, you can spend most of the first day of your dry fast asleep. Also, you may find it easier to sleep with food in your system than you will on an empty stomach.
Exercise If You Can
As you dry fast, you’re free to carry on your life. Do keep in mind that as your body depletes your glucose supplies, your energy could start to plummet. Thus, you may want to plan your dry fast for a weekend when you don’t have to concentrate on school or work.
There’s nothing wrong with lying down and resting or even taking a nap if that’s easier for you. If you do have a bit of extra energy, you might want to consider some exercise. We’re not talking about lifting the heavy weights here, but activities that aren’t super strenuous. Maybe you roll out a yoga mat, do some light weightlifting, or take a walk.
If you sweat too much, you deplete your body’s sources of water even further. This can cause dehydration. If you’ve read our blog, then you know how dehydration can be deadlier than you think.
There are some perks to exercising when dry fasting that might motivate you to get up and move. You could trigger autophagy at a faster rate. It’s also possible to increase testosterone and growth hormone by exercising on a dry fast. Some fasters believe you can even ward off depression.
The key is to keep your activity confined to short bursts here. It’s okay to ramp up the intensity somewhat, but if you feel dizzy, sick, or especially parched, scale back what you’re doing or stop altogether.
Undoubtedly, the biggest and best reason to exercise on an intermittent fasting, including dry fasting, is to activate your body into burning more fat. This fat becomes your body’s energy reserves, and as you spend energy on exercise, you may lose more fat.
Stick to Water Only for the First Day of Your Post-Fast
Woohoo! You got through your dry fast okay enough, although things were admittedly pretty tough at times. That said, dry fasting is something you think you’d do again. The question becomes now that you’re off your dry fast, what should you eat and drink?
While it may be tempting to jump right back into your pre-fast diet, please refrain. Like you can shock your system by taking too much away, you can also do some damage by adding too much quickly.
Stick to water only for the first few hours, maybe even the entire day depending on when your dry fast ends. Pour a glass that can hold roughly 470 milliliters of fluid and begin drinking. Don’t gulp or chug the water down, but rather, take slow and concerted sips.
Then, wait an hour. If you’re feeling alright, you may eat, but if not, that’s okay. Repeat the above, but incrementally. Overdoing it on the water will cause bloating, making you feel heavy and sluggish. You could also undo some of your weight loss.
You want to stick to an hourly schedule of water consumption, consuming 470 milliliters each. Within three hours, maybe four, you could want to eat again, but if not, don’t push yourself.
Slowly Acclimate to Foods
Okay, you’re feeling ready to eat now. What do you reach for? Like you didn’t guzzle water post-dry fast, you don’t want to scarf down a heavy meal, either. Stick to light foods in small quantities. Foods like dried apricots, figs, or raisins are all great choices, as are some fruits and even unsalted nuts.
That first day, those foods are all you should eat. By the second day, you can start increasing the quantity of what you’re eating, but make sure you avoid carbohydrates and sodium at this point. Low-carb and low-salt foods are okay, but anything more will build up your water retention and put the pounds back on.
Once you’re on your dry fast, how long should you stretch it? The answer varies for everyone.
One area that may dictate the length of your fast is your experience with intermittent fasting. Your first dry fast shouldn’t be any longer than 16 hours. If you can only do 12 hours, that’s fine, too. Like we said before, schedule bedtime in that first 16-hour span so you’re asleep for eight or nine of the 16 hours. That makes it easier to get through.
After a few successful dry fasts, you can work your way towards fasting for 24 consecutive hours, but it will take time to get there.
How you feel can also influence your fasting length. If you’re sick or dehydrated, then you’ll have to break your fast sooner to restore your fluids. By following the above directions though, you should be able to avoid that so you can carry your fast to its desired length.
Your doctor’s recommendation may also play a role. He or she may prohibit you from certain types of intermittent fasts, such as hard dry fasts, or fasting for too long.
Dry Fasting vs. Water Fasting: Which Is More Effective?
We’ve discussed water fasting a few times in this article already in relation to dry fasting. To recap, water fasting is a type of intermittent fast in which the consumption of water is allowed. You can also use water to bathe, wash your hands, brush your teeth, and for any other reasons.
Water fasting is easier because you’re consuming something, even if the water is a non-caloric beverage. By continuously sipping all day, you may feel slightly less hungry than you would by omitting water altogether.
While it’s true that both dry fasting and water fasting involve consuming zero calories, there are differences between them. With water fasting, since you’re not quitting water, there’s no chance for that water weight to come off. This can limit your results.
Remember also what we said earlier in that article cited from Livestrong. If you’re on a multi-day water fast, your greatest weight loss occurs at the beginning of the fasting period. While many intermittent fasters will lose a pound a day, some will shed upwards of three pounds.
Water fasts are supposed to last 72 consecutive hours at most, although you can go longer by doing start-stop fasting. Sticking to those 72 hours, let’s say you lost a pound a day. Seventy-two hours is three days, which means only three pounds could be lost.
If you lost three pounds a day instead, that’s nine pounds lost. That’s more like it, right? Yes, but it’s not quite so cut and dried.
That Livestrong article also mentions that your weight loss capacity doesn’t stay the same. Maybe you shed one to three pounds for the first 24 or 48 hours of your water fast, but then you’re only dropping half a pound a day.
Thus, while you could lose nine pounds during a three-day water fast, that seems to be the best-case scenario. It certainly won’t happen to everyone.
Since you’re losing weight by not supplying your body calories, burning fat, and dropping water weight, the pounds that can come off through dry fasting are a lot more. Some fasters have mentioned having to take precautions to make sure they don’t lose too much weight too quickly.
Other fasters have said they’ve lost as much as five pounds a day on a dry fast. While yes, you should only dry fast in 24-hour consecutive periods, if you’re healthy, nothing is stopping you from dry fasting two or three times a week.
Theoretically, the weight loss could be upwards of 15 pounds or more. Of course, you’d have to watch your diet closely in between fasts to avoid putting on too much water weight.
Of course, it’s not all about weight loss. If you want to clean out your body, something we’re about to discuss in detail in the upcoming two sections, which is the better intermittent fast? To answer that, we refer you to the Times of India link from before.
The article noted that only a day of dry fasting is the same as three days of water fasting in terms of cleansing the system.
While it’s more extreme and difficult, dry fasting does promise better results overall.
How Long Does It Take to Reach Ketosis on a Dry Fast?
Ketosis is a desirable state to be in when intermittent fasting. While we’ve touched on the concept throughout this guide, we haven’t yet clearly defined it. In case you’re not familiar, ketosis is a state of metabolism that occurs when your body lacks glucose.
By intermittent fasting or reducing carb consumption to 50 grams or fewer, you cause your insulin to decrease. Your system’s fatty acids from fat reserves are sent to the liver. There, they become ketone bodies. These ketones are your substitute energy source without any glucose in your system.
Being in ketosis then triggers weight loss, keeping your goals on track during your dry fast.
How long will it take your body to reach this point? You need your serum glucose levels to deplete 20 percent before your liver makes ketones. Some fasters can enter ketosis in 12 hours and others in 24 hours.
Like dry fasting accelerates weight loss, it also speeds up ketosis. You may only have to wait 12 hours to begin using your body’s fat sources for energy.
How Long Does It Take to Induce Autophagy on a Dry Fast?
Your body does a lot on an intermittent fast, autophagy included. Again, we’d like to redirect you to the extensive post we recently did on autophagy if you missed it.
As a refresher, autophagy is the body’s process of consuming old and/or damaged cells either partially or in full. The remaining cell is healthier, which can lower our risk of developing diseases. You can even lead a longer life through autophagy.
Like ketosis, autophagy kickstarts when your body has little to no glucose to use for energy. That means it’s possible to trigger it through intermittent fasting as well as cutting or lowering carbs. It may take as little as 12 hours for the body’s source of liver glycogen to drop to nothing. Other sources suggest 16 to 24 hours or longer.
If you have little glucose in your system to start, you may be able to begin autophagy sooner on a dry fast just like you can trigger ketosis faster.
We’ve made it no secret throughout this extensive guide that dry fasting is not easy. It’s not recommended for new intermittent fasters or those who have had a hard time with water fasting. It requires a lot of willpower and perseverance, and even then, it’s still not easy.
Here are a few issues you should anticipate experiencing yourself during a dry fast.
You’re Hungry
This is the big one. At least on an alternate-day fast, you know you get to eat tomorrow. A 16:8 fast lets you consume food every day, while even water fasting allows you to drink water so you don’t feel quite as peckish. Okay, it’s more like ravenous.
There’s no way to get around the hungry feeling on a dry fast. You just learn to live with it. Some people find this easier than others.
You’re Thirsty
Besides hunger, you will start to experience dryness in your throat and an overall feeling of thirst. You’d love to sip on something, but you can’t. If you’re on a soft dry fast, you can moisten your mouth with water when you brush your teeth or shower, but you can’t swallow it.
It’s one thing to feel a little thirsty and another to be dehydrated, and it’s a very thin line to walk. Please make sure if your thirst progresses to dehydration that you stop your dry fast immediately.
You Have Little Energy
Low energy is true of any intermittent fast. By cutting or even wholly eliminating calories, you’re no longer providing your body glucose to use as fuel. Leftover glucose stores can get you through for a while, but once those are gone, you may feel even more exhausted than you did at the beginning. Exercising is tough, and even walking around your house to do things like dishes or the laundry can leave you ready for an extensive nap.
Sleeping more may help, but even falling asleep can be difficult when you’re hungry.
How to Build Muscle While Dry Fasting
Water weight might not be all you shed while on a dry fast. It’s also possible to lose your musculature to some extent. That’s because as your body begins pulling fat sources for energy, it sometimes sucks up muscle proteins as well.
While a reduction in muscle mass would be more pronounced for a longer fast, you should still be careful.
What if you want to build muscle during a dry fast rather than lose it? Is it possible? A 2017 report in the European Journal of Sport Science sought to answer that very question. The researchers found 18 participants to join a long-term study. They were all younger men willing to train with weights over eight weeks. None of them did any weight training before the study.
Some of the men followed a time-restricted diet while others ate regularly. The ones in the time-restricted program could eat for only four hours four days weekly.
The researchers then compared which group had more muscle mass at the end of the eight weeks. The men who ate a normal diet were stronger and had five more pounds of lean mass. The intermittent fasters were also stronger. While their lean mass hadn’t changed, it hadn’t decreased, either.
Building muscle requires an excess of calories, even more than you’d burn. Also, you need a good amount of protein, which isn’t guaranteed during an intermittent fast. For those reasons, we’d have to suggest you refocus your goals here.
Rather than focusing on putting on muscle during a dry fast, make sure you’re keeping up on your exercise so your muscle mass doesn’t deplete. Then, when you’re not fasting, devote your time to building muscle.
Is Dry Fasting Safe?
Compared to many other types of intermittent fasting, dry fasting has its detractors. This isn’t unwarranted. The extreme nature of dry fasting can indeed lead to more severe side effects than 16:8 fasting, alternate-day fasting, or water fasting.
The main side effect is dehydration. Each day, we’re supposed to consume at least eight glasses of water, each eight ounces. This maintains our basic hydration needs. When you cut not only some of that water, but all of it out of the equation, your risk of dehydration increases.
A prolonged dry fast could lead to serious dehydration symptoms, among them fainting, irritability, confusion, sunken eyes, fast breathing and heartrate, dizziness, skin dryness, and trouble urinating. By this time, you’re considered in need of emergency medical treatment. Without it, death is possible.
Other potential serious health issues that can arise with dry fasting include kidney stones, urinary tract infections, and–in the most life-threatening cases–organ failure.
If you live in a very warm environment, you take medications, you’re pregnant, or you’re breastfeeding, then don’t dry fast. Also, as we’ve said before, you should always see your doctor for confirmation that you’re a safe candidate for intermittent fasting before you start. That’s the best way to improve your health during a dry fast rather than put yourself in danger.
Conclusion
Dry fasting is considered the most extreme form of intermittent fasting. You cannot drink water, nor can you eat. On soft dry fasts, you can bathe and clean yourself with water, but not on a hard dry fast.
In a “no risk, no reward” fashion, dry fasting may allow you to enter ketosis and autophagy faster. You could also see more weight loss as you shed water weight, something you don’t do with other types of intermittent fasts.
Since abstaining from water can cause dehydration and possibly even organ failure in very serious cases, you need to limit how long you dry fast. Good luck!