How often do you fast? Also, for how many hours at a time? If your answers are, often and for more than 72 hours, I would say you have an eating disorder and you need to seek professional help. However, if you are someone who goes on a fast once or twice a month, and for limited hours, you are probably on the right path. I said ‘probably’, because there are a few more factors that decide whether fasting is healthy for you or not.
So, how about a 48-hour fast? Is it okay to go on without eating for that long? Well, it’s definitely under 72 hours, so it must be alright. If that’s the case, how often can you do a 48-hour fast? How would one benefit from it? Are there any side effects? Also, can everyone do it? Find answers to all these questions as you read this article.
How To Do A 48-hour Fast?
A 48-hour fast is when you stop eating or drinking anything for forty-eight hours straight. Fasting could either be dry fasting or water fasting. If it’s water fasting, you can consume water in between but not food. Water fasting is usually practiced by people who want to lose weight, as part of detoxing, or for health reasons. On the other hand, dry fasting is mostly followed for religious reasons. If you are dry fasting, you can’t consume any fluids including water.
Normally, those who opt for a 48-hour or 72-hour fast usually do water fasting. The process involves no complicated steps but you simply abstain from eating anything for two days while consuming zero-calorie drinks between hours.
Usually, people start a 48-hour fast in the evening, after dinner. Then they give themselves a break from eating for two days and break the fast, again with dinner, on the third day. Although you may have a tendency to do it more often, perhaps once or twice a week, especially after seeing the benefits, it will cause more harm than good. Ideally, you need to space out these 48-hour fasts to one or twice a month to receive the full benefits without the downsides.
48-hour fast benefits
A forty-eight-hour fast can benefit your health in many different ways. Be it in terms of your health markers, body weight, or cellular repair, the fast, if done properly, will resolve several of these issues effectively.
- Cell repair and recycling: When you fast for long hours, the body accelerates the process of destroying damaged or dead cells and replacing them with newly generated ones. Although it is an ongoing process, it will be at its maximum potential around 48 hours, which in turn will help reset the body during this fasting window.
- Insulin sensitivity: Insulin sensitivity measures the sensitivity of cells toward insulin, where people with increased insulin sensitivity don’t need as much insulin as those with low insulin sensitivity to lower blood sugar. A 48-hour fast significantly improves insulin sensitivity, which is vital in restoring a normal metabolic rate.
- Weight loss: A 48-hour long fast will make the weight loss process easier and more effective with improved insulin sensitivity and boosted metabolism. On top of these, within 48 hours, the body switches to ketosis, a process where instead of glucose, fat gets burned to produce energy. This reduces the amount of fat stored in different parts of the body, both subcutaneous and visceral.
- Improved brain function: Fasting provides mental clarity. It protects against neuroinflammation and enhances cognitive functions including focus and memory.
Downsides of 48-hour fasting
Although it is mostly beneficial, a 48-hour long fasting comes with a few downsides as well. Check out the list below to see what they are.
- Fatigue and dizziness: Not eating anything for forty-eight hours will definitely take a toll on your energy levels. You will feel exhausted and unable to engage in any activities that involve increased physical movement. At times, you might even feel dizzy and if it doesn’t go away after a few seconds, you might even fall unconscious.
- Binge-eating: Fasting increases cravings. With each passing hour, you might long for food, and when the hours end, you might try to satisfy all your cravings by binge eating. Binge eating could easily develop as an eating disorder and will reverse all the benefits you received from the 48-hour fast in the first place.
- Lack of sleep: This is one of the common side effects of fasting. Even though you are tired, your hunger might interfere with your sleep, constantly waking you up in the middle of the night craving for something to eat.
- At-risk categories: No matter how beneficial the 48-hour fast is in general, it is not suitable for certain categories of people. It won’t benefit those who have an eating disorder and might pose potential health risks to pregnant individuals and those with highly fluctuating blood sugar levels.
Tips to minimize side effects
You can safely do a forty-eight-hour fast if you are cautious about the side effects and take certain measures to reduce the risks.
- You can engage in other hobbies such as watching a movie, reading, or taking a walk. This will help you focus somewhere other than your hunger.
- Pay attention to the signs shown by your body before it shuts down and break the fast before 48 hours if necessary.
- Stay hydrates. Drink water with electrolytes, sparkling water without added flavor, plain coffee, or green to to stabilize your body without taking in calories.
- When you break the fast, don’t overeat or eat too fast. Maintain moderation, eat something easily digestible, and more importantly, eat slowly.
Conclusion
A 48-hour fast is when someone abstains from eating or eating and drinking for two full days. This method of fasting is usually adopted by those with weight loss goals, those looking to detoxify their body, and the ones trying to optimize their health markers. Although fasting is of two kinds, one where you drink only water and one where you don’t consume anything including fluids, 48-hour fasts are more often water-based. People on a 48-hour fast can drink water, coffee, or green tea without additives to replenish minerals without added calories.
Fasting that lasts as long as 48 hours comes with several health benefits. It will put your body in ketosis and help you lose weight faster. Fasting for 48 hours straight will also have an impact on insulin sensitivity and metabolic rate, bringing them both back to normal. The process also improves cognitive functions and mental clarity, and most importantly, promotes cell repair and regeneration.
48-hour fast comes with certain health risks including dizziness, headache, lack of sleep, and overexhaustion. It could lead to overeating and eating disorders, if not mindful. Also, it is not recommended for certain risk groups including pregnant women, people with hypoglycemia, those taking medication for hyperglycemia, and individuals with eating disorders. In short, a 48-hour fast has benefits and drawbacks like anything but it’s the approach that decides the outcome you receive.
FAQs
Fasting occasionally is good. However, fasting for more than 24 hours straight is not for everyone. Although it might be harmless to some, it could pose potential health risks to others.
A 48-hour fast effectively supports cell repair. It also improves insulin sensitivity while assisting weight loss.
Weight loss depends on several factors besides the quantity of food you are consuming. However, with a 48-hour fast, you should ideally lose weight somewhere between 1 to 2.5kg.
Regardless of how many hours you have been fasting, you need to break the fast by eating something that is easily digestible. It could be soups; vegetables or meat, fruits, or smoothies.
Yes, you can. However, opt for something low-impact and doesn’t last for hours. High-impact exercises or workout sessions that last for long hours while your body is weak might cause certain undesirable consequences including cardiac arrest.
Staying hydrated is important during a fast. As per expert recommendations, you need to drink 2 to 3 liters of mineralized water while fasting to replenish the lost electrolytes and minerals.
