Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
Not only can a cold beverage hydrate you during an intermittent fast, but it can provide a feeling of fullness as well. That can make the difficult hours of your fast more bearable. Are you only stuck drinking water on a fast, or can you venture into other beverages as well? Which drinks would break your fast?
Like you cannot eat significant calories and remain in a fasted state, the same goes for drinking as well. The only permittable beverages to drink when intermittent fasting are:
- Black coffee
- Black tea
- Green tea
- Apple cider vinegar
- Bone broth
- Water
In this article, we will talk more about why the above beverages don’t break your fast and which ones absolutely will. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll know just which drinks to reach for and which to avoid when intermittent fasting. You won’t want to miss it!
Which Beverages Can You Drink When Intermittent Fasting?
The following beverages are safe for almost every type of intermittent fast. Yes, that includes water fasts as well. Despite the name, you are allowed to venture outside of water and consume the drinks on this list if you want to change up your fasting diet.
The only type of intermittent fast in which you can’t drink these beverages is a dry fast, as you’re abstaining from both food and water when fasting.
Black Coffee
Your days of ordering a Frappuccino from Starbucks piled high with whipped cream are over for now, but that doesn’t mean you have to forego coffee entirely. If a morning cup o’ joe would be a comforting way to start your fasting day, then switch to black coffee instead.
Made with instant coffee or brewed coffee grounds, black coffee is named such because of its rich, distinct black color. It also omits most of the extras that people mix into their coffee, among them condensed milk, sugar, creamer, or regular milk.
One cup may fill you with two to five calories, which shouldn’t be significant enough to disrupt your fasted state. Just make sure you don’t gulp down cup after cup of black coffee, as all those calories can indeed break your fast.
Black Tea
If you’re more of a tea lover than a coffee drinker, we have a few varieties of tea that are all fine to consume on an intermittent fast. The first is black tea, which is known for its oxidation. In tea production, oxidation is a process where the tea leaves are air-dried for a better aroma, flavor, and color.
Since black tea is the darkest tea, it’s the most oxidized. It also has a lush depth of flavor, which can be either sweet or savory depending on the amount of time in oxidation. Another fun fact about black tea: it holds onto its flavor for years at a time without the taste fading one iota. The same cannot be said for green tea. After about a year, green tea’s flavor begins degrading, so you have to drink it fast.
Like black coffee, black tea has trace amounts of calories per cup, about two. It’s completely sugar-free and fat-free, but of course, it does contain caffeine. This could give you the extra little jolt of energy you need to get through your day when not eating.
Green Tea
The other type of tea you can sip on during your intermittent fast is green tea. The Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub species, is the source of the tea leaves used to produce this colorful, flavorful, healthful tea.
Despite its name, green tea is sometimes more yellow and sometimes even brown, which is normal. Depending on the variety, the tea may taste more like seaweed or grass. It can also have a sweet flavor or a toasted one.
With 2.45 calories per cup, a single serving of green tea per day can break up the monotony of drinking water on a fast. Further, according to Dr. Jason Fung, green tea benefits your fasting in the following ways:
- The catechins in green tea–especially epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG–may ward off brain and heart disease, help you lose weight, and lessen inflammation.
- Green tea catechins may also affect the hunger hormone ghrelin, lowering it so you feel less hungry on a fast.
- Your body could absorb fewer carbohydrates with green tea catechins, which may help in preventing the development of type 2 diabetes. Lower carb absorption can also boost weight loss efforts.
Apple Cider Vinegar
Apple cider vinegar is certainly an acquired taste, and of all the allowable beverages on this list, it’s probably the least pleasant to drink. That said, it has a slew of health perks that do make it worth incorporating into your liquid diet on an intermittent fast.
These include:
- Better heart health: According to a 2010 study in the journal Lipids in Health and Disease, rabbits that ingested apple cider vinegar as part of the study had lower triglycerides and cholesterol, which may lower their risk of heart disease.
- Weight loss: This Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry study on nearly 200 obese people tracked whether those participants lost weight if they drank apple cider vinegar. Two daily tablespoons of the stuff led to an average weight loss of around 3.7 pounds while a single tablespoon caused an average weight loss of approximately 2.6 pounds.
- Lower blood sugar and higher insulin sensitivity: In this classic study from the American Diabetes Association, it was found that not only can your insulin response increase and your blood sugar decrease through the consumption of apple cider vinegar, but your insulin sensitivity could jump between 19 and 34 percent when consuming the vinegar with carbs.
Bone Broth
More commonly referred to as stock, bone broth is the base ingredient for sauces, stews, and soups. It’s made from a variety of sources, among them wine, water, vegetables, seafood, meat, or animal bones, sometimes even a combination of these.
For the sake of minimizing calories on your intermittent fast, we recommend you stick to vegetable broth or bone broth only. Also, it’s best if you make the broth yourself. Canned broths tend to have a lot of preservatives, salts, and even hidden sugars in some instances that are calorically heavy. Consuming these will certainly break your fast.
The same is true of bouillon cubes. These may be convenient since you just toss them in a pot and then wait, but they also contain a lot of unwanted ingredients, especially when on an intermittent fast.
Water
Of course, you absolutely cannot go wrong with water. It has no calories, no sugars, and no fats. It may not boast much of a taste and it lacks caffeine, but it’s a safe beverage to consume for the entirety or for part of your intermittent fast.
If you are on a water fast, stick to between nine and 13 glasses of water a day, with the former recommended for women and the latter intended for men.
Even if you’re not drinking water, try to get into the habit of sipping your beverage more slowly. Gradually enjoying your beverage will make it last longer and may fight off hunger pangs longer.
Which Beverages Should You Avoid When Intermittent Fasting?
You do have lots of drink options to avoid breaking your intermittent fast, but there are many more beverages you want to refrain from. This list is fairly comprehensive, although it does simplify beverages by category.
If you have any questions about whether it’s a good idea to consume a certain beverage, we recommend checking the calories on the nutritional label. If these are anything more than two or five calories per cup, then you’re going to break your fast by drinking the beverage.
Here’s what to stay away from.
Juice
Fresh, homemade juice you squeezed yourself is far healthier than the store-bought stuff. It has more nutritional compounds, minerals, and vitamins as well as fewer added sugars and processed ingredients.
That said, juice is still high enough in calories that unless you’re juice fasting/cleansing, it will break your fast. A glass of orange juice is around 112 calories with nine grams of sugar; while it can be less than that depending on brands, it’s still too much to drink on an intermittent fast.
Apple juice isn’t much better. A glass of the stuff is around 120 calories with 27.2 grams of sugar. Pineapple juice clocks in at 140 calories per glass and a whopping 34 grams of sugar. Grape juice can have even more calories, around 154 per glass. The beverage is also loaded with 37.6 grams of sugar.
Diet Soda
Diet soda cuts all the calories, so surely it’s a safe beverage for intermittent fasting, right? Nope, and it’s not necessarily for the reasons you’d think.
Since diet soda has no sugars, you may wonder how it tastes sweet. Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are used, which can trigger your insulin to get to work. When insulin levels are low, our bodies can burn fat more easily, so anything that creates that insulin response, such as diet soda, can limit your fasting results.
Regular Soda
We’re sure this one is a no-brainer, but we had to put it on the list anyway. Whether you call it a soft drink, soda, or pop, an average can of cola contains 150 calories, 39 grams of sugar, and 39 grams of carbohydrates.
Not only does drinking soda break your intermittent fast, but it can wreck your waistline as well. Countless studies have proven the link between soda and weight gain, and now it’s even believed that diet soda can put on the pounds as well.
Sports Drinks
When you sweat, your body loses electrolytes. Sports drinks are a common way to refill your electrolyte count, so you might assume you can continue drinking them on your intermittent fast. Yet if you look at your bottle of Gatorade, you’ll see that 20 fluid ounces of the stuff are about 140 calories. Worse yet, you’re getting 34 grams of total sugars and 36 grams of carbs as well.
Even the lower sugar varieties of Gatorade still contain about seven grams of sugar and eight grams of carbs. Since those sugars and carbs become glucose that your body has to break down before it can burn fat, your intermittent fast won’t be very successful if you sip sports drinks.
You can get electrolytes from water, although admittedly not as many you do from sports drinks. To make up for that lack, either drink bone broth or stir some Epsom salt or Himalayan pink sea salt into your water.
Regular Coffee
As we said in the last section, black coffee is a fine beverage choice when fasting. Any other types of coffee with added sweeteners and milk will have to be avoided until your fast is over, though.
Just take a look at the nutritional value of a latte to see why. A 12-ounce latte has 120 to 200 calories, a 16-ounce latte 160 to 260 calories, and a 20-ounce latte between 210 and 340 calories. That big drink also contains 27 grams of carbs, which will destroy your intermittent fasting progress.
Carbonated Water
Unless it’s tonic water, carbonated water does not contain calories. That goes for sparkling mineral water, seltzer, and even club soda, too. Like diet soda though, in this instance, it’s not so much about calories or lack thereof that makes carbonated water bad for intermittent fasters.
This 2017 article in Cookbook says that drinking carbonated drinks without having food in your system can seriously harm your stomach’s mucus membranes. This disrupts the amount of blood the stomach receives and also negatively impacts digestion.
Stay away from the bubbly drinks until your fast is over, then. You’ll be glad you did!
Protein Shakes
It’s a great idea to ingest a protein shake ahead of your fast to keep your muscles in good shape in the hours and days ahead. The protein in the beverage could help retain your muscle mass, as your body may begin burning muscle proteins with fats once it goes through its glycogen supply.
You can also reach for a protein shake a few hours after your intermittent fast, but what about during the fast? You’ll want to leave the shakes be for a few days, and the reasons for this are twofold.
First, let’s look at the nutrition facts for a typical protein shake. You may ingest as many as 150 calories, five grams of sugar, and eight grams of carbs. While that’s not necessarily egregious, the higher calorie count is certainly enough to break your fasted state.
Also, the powder in these shakes can cause the insulin response we described above, prohibiting your fasted state.
Alcohol
We had to save what may be the worst beverage for last. That’s alcohol.
This is one of the most nutritionally empty drinks out there besides maybe soda. An average can of beer at 356 grams is 154 calories. It contains 14 milligrams of sodium, 13 grams of carbs, and few sugars. Cocktails tend to be far sugarier than beer, and they have a lot of calories to boot.
Alcohol can hurt your health in many ways. Let’s look at these now.
- Potentially higher cancer risk: A 2013 study published in Risk, Prevention and Screening found that women who drank more alcohol may have a higher chance of getting breast cancer. It could be due to hormonal changes caused by the alcohol or even because alcohol may be carcinogenic, but more research is needed to connect the dots.
- Possible heart problems: When you drink alcohol, you tell the liver to increase its triglyceride production. More triglycerides increase your risk for heart disease.
- Gastrointestinal tract issues: The contents of alcohol can cause ulcers and inflammation of the gut wall, potentially affecting how well you can absorb nutrients.
- Weight gain: In a classic study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a connection was discovered between drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eating fattier foods, in that one seems to encourage the other. This overeating can cause weight gain if it happens too frequently.
As if that wasn’t enough, the calorie content of alcohol means drinking it breaks your fast. Also, consuming alcohol can prevent your body from burning fat. A study published in 2003 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (not the same link as above) with nearly 20 adults proved as much.
Some of the participants ate a meal and drank alcohol with it while others had a meal with carbs, fat, and protein. The ones who consumed alcohol experienced less fat burning even five hours post-meal.
Going beyond even those reasons, an intermittent fast can make you feel tired, dizzy, and a little cranky. When you add alcohol to this, whether you drink to excess or not, the above side effects may be exacerbated. You’re then at risk of potentially hurting yourself if you were to get dizzy and fall or you try exercising in this state.
Conclusion
If you’re intermittent fasting, you’re safe to drink a variety of beverages besides water. These include bone broth, green and black teas, black coffee, and apple cider vinegar. Any soda (diet or otherwise), alcohol, sports drinks, juices, and sugary coffees should be avoided, as they all will break your fast.