You sleep poorly, get tired quickly, feel heaviness in your stomach, micro-inflammations appear on your face … Perhaps recently you have leaned on not the most healthy food or abused alcohol, which means that it is time for a fasting day. But will it hurt even more?
The practice of fasting days or short mono-diets has been known in medicine for a long time. The principle is simple: within 1-3 days you need to eat only one specific product (rice, cottage cheese, apples, kefir, eggs, etc.). It gives the body the necessary nutrients, but does not overload the digestive system, allowing it to rest. In addition, slags and toxins are removed along the way. To stimulate the process, it is recommended to drink water and green tea.
Apple of discord
Many nutritionists call apples (ideally organic) the best product for a mono-diet: they are rich in iron, antioxidants and fiber, which improves digestion.
Another popular detox to this day is the grape mono-diet. In 1928, a book by a South African nurse, Joanna Brandt, Cure Cancer with Grapes, made a lot of noise. The author allegedly recovered from stomach cancer with the help of a grape diet. Today, most experts doubt the plausibility of this story. Moreover: a large amount of grapes can simply be harmful. By itself, it contains too much sugar and not many vitamins, and it also causes fermentation in the stomach. So even one fasting day on grapes can lead to digestive problems.
Does the gut need rest?
Nutritionist Jean-Michel Lecerf says fasting days are a bad idea: “It’s absurd to think that our digestive system needs to rest. For example, the pancreas, an organ involved in digestion, uses only 10% of its resources. Of course, the stomach and intestines do not have to work 24 hours a day, but their need for rest should not be exaggerated. They do it at night while we sleep. The main thing is not to eat before bed. The fasting day theory is based on the idea that food poisons us. But that’s not the case.”
The specialist reminds that you need to eat at least 15 different foods a day in order to supply the body with the necessary nutrients, vitamins and trace elements.
A few words about the benefits
At the same time, some useful aspects of fasting days are beyond doubt. For example, they reduce inflammation in the digestive tract and normalize the balance of intestinal microflora.
“During a fasting day on fruits, we get polyphenols, antioxidants, mineral salts that give energy, as well as prebiotics. These are food components that are not digested or absorbed in the upper gastrointestinal tract, but are fermented by the beneficial microflora of the large intestine, stimulating its growth and vital activity,” explains Jean-Michel Lecerf.
However, after a couple of days, if you eat as horrible again, everything will return to normal. Do not expect a miracle to happen to the body in 24 hours.
stress factor
Even one unloading day is stressful for the body, so you should not go on a mono-diet if you have an emergency at work, you are sick or very tired. In addition, nutrition affects the synthesis of the sleep hormone melatonin. Fasting with an intake of less than 300 kcal per day for two days to a week reduces the concentration of melatonin in the blood by about 20%, so it can be difficult to fall asleep during fasting days.
Another negative factor of the mono-diet is that after its completion, people with eating disorders often begin to eat everything in a row, sometimes unconsciously rewarding themselves for patience and suffering, and also anticipating the next hungry days.
In a word, nutritionists do not recommend giving up a balanced diet even for one day, unless there are good reasons for this. If you still decide to try a mono-diet, do not forget about a few rules.
- Food on a fasting day should be enjoyable. Choose a product according to your taste preferences. If you do not like rice or cottage cheese, do not choke on them all day.
- It is important to exclude heavy physical and psychological stress, avoid stressful situations. It is better to think of something to your liking in advance.
- On the evening before, do not eat up for the future, and after the completion of the mono-diet, try not to catch up, otherwise you can not reduce, but increase weight.
- A fasting day is not a complete rejection of food, but a calorie restriction of the diet. Eat the entire daily norm of the product not at once, but divide it into 4-5 meals. This will speed up the metabolic processes.
- And the main rule: do not get carried away fasting days. They will not be a substitute for a healthy diet on other days.
About the Expert: Jean-Michel Lecerf is a French dietitian, endocrinologist and diabetologist.