Dry Fasting: How Does It Make You Lose Weight

Last updated on April 17th, 2024 at 03:10 pm

Intermittent fasting has become increasingly popular due to its potential health benefits and effectiveness in managing weight. Among the most commonly practiced approaches are alternate day fasting, where individuals alternate between days of reduced or no caloric intake and regular eating days. The 16/8 intermittent fasting method limits eating to an 8-hour window daily, coupled with a 16-hour fasting period. Similarly, the 5:2 diet involves consuming a normal diet five days a week and significantly reducing calories to about 500-600 for two non-consecutive days.

Beyond these well-known methods, other variations are gaining traction. For instance, 22/2 intermittent fasting prescribes a 22-hour fasting period followed by a 2-hour eating window. Fat fasting focuses on consuming primarily healthy fats during the fasting period to stimulate ketosis. Eat stop eat entails fasting for 24 hours once or twice a week. Additionally, there are methods like the 15/9, 20/4, 18/6, and 14/10 intermittent fasting, which prescribe different fasting and eating windows.

Moreover, OMAD (one meal a day) condenses all caloric intake into a single meal within a one-hour window, allowing for a 23-hour fasting period. With these diverse options, individuals can tailor their intermittent fasting routine to fit their lifestyle and health objectives.

In this comprehensive guide, we will discuss one of the types of intermittent fasting – dry fasting.

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Now, let’s talk about dry fasting. First of all, I want to let you know that what I’m going to talk about in this article is very, very serious and should only be done with the help of a doctor. In all honesty, dry fasting is very intense, and it works. But I want you to know that there are definitely some risks involved. This article is just for informational and educational purposes. 

What is Dry Fasting and its benefits

Dry fasting, where an individual abstains from both food and water for a set period, has gained some attention in health and wellness circles. However, it’s important to note that dry fasting can be risky and isn’t suitable for everyone. Here are some potential benefits and considerations:

1. Cellular autophagy: Some proponents suggest that dry fasting may promote cellular autophagy, a process where the body removes damaged cells and components. This could potentially have benefits for cellular health and longevity. However, while there’s some evidence to support the idea that fasting in general can trigger autophagy, more research is needed specifically on dry fasting. (1)
2. Weight loss: Dry fasting may lead to rapid weight loss, as the body uses stored glycogen and fat for energy when no food or water is consumed. However, much of the weight lost during a dry fast is likely to be water weight, which can be quickly regained once normal eating and drinking habits resume. (2)
3. Mental clarity: Some individuals report feeling increased mental clarity and focus during a dry fast. This could be due to a variety of factors, including changes in hormone levels and metabolic processes. However, others may experience the opposite effect, feeling fatigued, irritable, or unable to concentrate without sufficient hydration. (3)

Dry fasting VS Water fasting

With dry fasting, we don’t eat or drink anything. With water fasting, you still drink water. The main difference between a water fast and a dry fast is that you don’t drink any liquid, specifically water. Moreover, many people don’t know that in terms of autophagy, three days of water fasting is the same as one day of dry fasting. And as far as cleaning the cells as a whole goes. 

See, a Russian doctor named Dr Filonov and Oh did a lot of research on dry fasting. I would even say he was one of the first to do a lot of research on dry fasting. (4)

2 Types of Dry Fasting

We also need to know that there are two types of dry fasting: a soft dry fast and a hard dry fast. You can still take a shower, wash your face, and brush your teeth during a soft, dry fast. In a hard, dry fast, you don’t have any contact with water, whether it comes through the skin or you eat it. Even when water comes in through the skin, we still absorb it. 

What is a Hard Dry Fasting?

In this article, I’ll talk completely about the hard dry fasting. In terms of it, dry fasting gets rid of toxins faster because your body has to start using everything from cells to start making energy, not just from food but also from water. See, your body goes into a bit of a panic mode as soon as you start to get even a little bit dehydrated. It makes more catecholamines, like epinephrine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline. It gets even more stressed out and tries to find a way to get more water.

So, it takes any cell that is even a bit useless, which means it takes cells that aren’t useful. And it starts to break them down so it can eat them. But it also starts to separate them to get water. You see, when we fast, our bodies do something called “autophagy.” 

Potential Side Effects of Dry Fasting

Dry fasting, a practice where one abstains from both food and water for a specific period, has gained attention for its potential health benefits. However, it’s essential to be aware of its potential side effects to make informed choices.

1. Dehydration: Dry fasting can lead to severe dehydration, which may result in dizziness, weakness, and dry mouth. Prolonged dehydration can be harmful.
2. Electrolyte Imbalance: A lack of water can disrupt the balance of electrolytes in your body, potentially leading to muscle cramps and heart palpitations.
3. Fatigue: Without energy from food and water, you may feel tired and weak during a dry fast.
4. Kidney Strain: Dry fasting can put extra stress on your kidneys, which may be risky for those with kidney issues.
5. Rapid Weight Loss: While some see this as a benefit, excessive weight loss during dry fasting can be harmful and lead to muscle loss.
6. Headaches: Headaches are a common side effect of dry fasting due to dehydration.

Dry fasting can have both positive and negative effects on the body. Consult a healthcare professional before attempting it, especially if you have underlying health conditions, to ensure it’s safe for you. Staying hydrated and starting with shorter periods of fasting is often recommended to minimize potential side effects.

Here is the list of all the potential side effects that you might experience while fasting:

• Excessive keto fatigue
• Nausea and headaches due to low blood sugar
• Feeling weak
• Persistent dizziness
• Having a slow thyroid
• Hair loss due to a lack of nutrients
• Kidney Stone
• Keto Flu and Cold
• Diarrhea
• Sleep disturbances such as nightmares and insomnia
• Experiencing brain fog
• High cholesterol
• Gout

To know more about the solution to these potential side effects, you can read our blog post below.

What is Autophagy?

Autophagy is the process by which your body recycles cells to get energy. It takes old cells that aren’t being used and recycles them into new cells or processes them and gets rid of them. This happens so much faster when you don’t eat anything because your body needs to burn more calories. So, in the end, only the strong cells are left because the body eats up all the weak ones.

So, now that you have these strong cells that have survived, it seems like a natural thing to do. When it’s time to stop fasting and go back to your normal life, you have a lot of strong cells that can divide. It’s like survival of the fittest but inside your body. You now have a world of strong cells that can do their best, and then you drive fast again and recycle. The body can make its water, which is the next thing we need to talk about. 

How does our body make its water during dry fasting?

We live in a world where we always feel like we need to buy something. But the truth is that our bodies can make many things by themselves. Even water is a part of this. If you look at how water is made up at the molecular level, it’s pretty easy to understand. You have hydrogen, and you have oxygens. Pretty darn simple. Now, things get really interesting when we look at fat in the body. Most of the fat our bodies store is saturated fat. Saturated fat has a lot of hydrogens in it. So, when your body is dehydrated, like when you’re dry fasting, it takes the fat and releases the hydrogen.

The hydrogen goes into your bloodstream, and when you breathe in oxygen, you create water. It’s like magic, and it’s the purest, most metabolically efficient water you could ever have. Not only is it perfect on a molecular level, but it’s also perfect for your body on a molecular level because you made it. It might look easy to understand when you drink water from the tap or from a spring. But besides hydrogen and oxygen, so many other things are going on. It’s not exactly pure because your body has to detoxify before you can drink it. When you make your own water, on the other hand, it is very, very pure.

Why does we keep urinating during dry fasting?

So, even when you’re dry fasting, you still have to go to the bathroom. When people fast and don’t drink much water, they don’t understand why they keep going to the bathroom. But even if you don’t drink much water, you still have to go to the bathroom. Well, it’s just because the body now has this clean water from metabolism to flush out the old, dirty water. So you go through a process where you recycle cells and dirty water that could have been flowing through your body. 

Now, in theory, your body will burn more fat when you’re dry fasting than when you’re doing anything else. This is because it will continue to get energy from the hydrogen in the fats. As the number of people who need water grows, water becomes limited. Your body needs that hydrogen so that it can combine oxygen from the air with it to make water. So, the longer you dry fast, the more hydrogens from that saturated fat your body has to get rid of. 

Is dehydration good for your body?

Last but not least, there’s something else that only happens when a person is dehydrated. I’m going to say for the record that being chronically dehydrated is not good. I’ve always emphasized how important it is to stay hydrated and what that does for your body in a lot of articles and videos. But in the short term, dehydration can do some pretty interesting things to your cells, fluid inside and outside of your cells and the space between them.

A vacuum is formed when there is an imbalance between the fluid inside and outside of the cell. So, if your cell is hydrated, but the rest of your body is dehydrated, you’ve created a vacuum where you have more volume inside yourself than outside the cell. This causes the cytoplasm, which is the liquid part of the cell, to dump some of its liquid waste, like a vacuum, into the rest of the body.

Like I said before, now that you’ve made your own water, you’re getting rid of it. So you’ve gotten rid of any bad cells by killing them, reusing them, and letting them go out of your body. And you’ve gotten the toxins out of any cells that are just a little bit bad and gotten rid of them. So you’ve not only gotten rid of dead cells, but you may also have saved cells that were almost dead. So it’s pretty cool that they made that vacuum. 

The relationship between water and inflammation 

The last thing I want to discuss before I end this article is inflammation. Have you ever been to a swamp with lots of water and lots of mosquitoes? The swamp dries up after three months, so there are no more mosquitoes. Well, that’s very similar to how inflammation in your body needs water to work. I’m not saying that you don’t need to drink when you walk around.

But suppose you want to reduce inflammation temporarily. In that case, there’s no easier way than to get rid of water since inflammation and all the inflammatory responses in your body need water to start. So, if you go on a short-term fast where you don’t drink water, these inflammatory responses and the inflammation in your body almost go away. Now, be aware that when you do start to drink water, there can be a rebound effect. But for a short time to get rid of pain or to give your body a new start, it might be best to try dry fasting. 

I said at the start of this article that it was educational, but I don’t want anyone to try dry fasting and then say it was dangerous for them. Because I’m telling you straight out that this is just for learning, and you need to do your own research. But, as always, I’m here to tell you what really happened. I’m here to tell you what the facts are. I’m here to give you the inside scoop on things that other people don’t always want to teach you, but as always, have a healthy and great day. 

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