We Did a Five-Day Water Fast—With an Unexpected Result

My bride Julie and I came across an article in the newspaper in early June extolling the virtues and health benefits of a five-day water fast. As the author explained, a water fast is actually the opposite of how it sounds. You don't fast from water, but rather you fast from everything except water for five full days. Everything, for five days.

At first, I thought it was a little bit crazy. I can get a bit "hangry" if a meal is late, so it seemed like a dicey proposition. I'd heard about fasts before, but oftentimes they are for short periods of time, or fasting from certain things that we worry might have some sway over us, like sugar, soda, and alcohol. In years past, our family had chosen certain items to give up during Lent, but none of those activities came close to preparing us for our fasting adventure.

What drew us to try this was the glorious description of all the healthy benefits one could derive from the fast. The author of the article, Emma Roberts, is a health coach, but she cautioned readers to only try the fast if healthy.

Given our level of fitness and her description of the benefits, including ridding the body of old damaged cells through autophagy, we decided to take the plunge and give it a go.

Fortunately, we made one positively fateful decision; we would start the fast on the day our boys went to visit relatives in Florida, and completion of the fast would coincide with their return. Neither of us could envision anything but pain and self-pity were we to do this fast while our boys were eating all around us.

Day one of the fast dawned and I was already concerned before I even left for work. I don't normally eat in the morning, but I already felt hungry. I assumed it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but I spent most of the day fighting hunger pains. Julie had it even worse.

She started the day with a headache and bouts of dizziness. It was only later in the day that we both realized we were probably experiencing caffeine withdrawal. As expected, I experienced some "hangriness" throughout the day, as well as some muddled thoughts, but all in all, it wasn't terribly difficult.

Fortunately, I had hidden all my office and car snacks the day before, so I had minimal temptations. By the end of the day, we were exhausted and in bed extremely early. We were also already sick of water.

Days two and three were very similar. Random hungriness, but manageable. We tried to avoid talking about food as much as possible. We drank as much as possible, but strangely the water seemed to be causing acid reflux and indigestion.

Unfortunately, Julie was seized by intense lower back pain the evening of day two and by the end of day three, I had the same. The article had indicated that the author experienced a breakthrough on day three, so we were anxiously awaiting that.

It did not come. At the end of the day, all we had was mutual back pain, which seriously impacted sleep quality. Not a great combination given our exhaustion level.

We woke on day four with serious concerns about our mutual back pain; were we actually doing damage to ourselves as opposed to gaining all our hoped-for health benefits?

It turned out that the back pain was most likely the result of toxins being purged through our kidneys, as well as a phenomenon of discs shrinking in our spine due to dehydration.

We committed to a structured water consumption plan, which was quite the challenge given our disgust with more water. Not quite the euphoria we had been expecting.

This day ended up being one of our longer ones, since the end was in sight. We found ourselves talking more about the foods we were going to eat, which only added to our misery.

This was compounded on the evening of the fifth day when the sons returned and we received wonderful descriptions of all the meals they had on their trip. One last night of fitful sleep brought on by our aching backs.

The article we read suggested breaking the fast slowly by drinking broth before eating. At 6 a.m. we each had a cup of broth, which we drank like a cup of coffee.

It turned out to be a hideous experience and I'm sure neither of us will ever look at broth in the same way. By the end of the day, both of us were back to regular meals, but our desire for coffee hadn't returned and I found myself avoiding my normal candy treats.

I once saw a shirt at a triathlon that read: "That sounds terrible, what time do we start?" I kind of feel that way about the fast.

We both disliked the experience, but we'd do it again. While we never felt euphoric, we both felt slimmer and more healthy after finishing. Going into an extended state of ketosis seemed to burn some lingering fat that no amount of running could help with.

I would estimate that I lost about 5 pounds through the fast. I don't think Julie lost any as she was already following a very strict diet.

We have yet to return to our pre-fast coffee consumption patterns. In fact, we haven't had any caffeine in a month. We didn't expect this as an outcome, but it has been a nice exercise in clearing our systems of an addictive substance.

If we end up doing this again, we'll definitely plan ahead in terms of increasing water intake before we start and weaning off caffeine a few days ahead.

We didn't do a good job the first couple of days. We drank, on average, six ounces of water per hour on the first day, and then increased to 12 ounces on days two and three, when we were home. After doing some research, we increased to 32 ounces per hour on days four and five.

No matter the planning, we don't expect it to be any more fun the second time around. While I can't recommend this fast for everyone, especially from a medical standpoint, I can say that we are glad we ran across the article and then jumped in with both feet.

If the new stem cells we supposedly generated keep our minds clear in old age even for an extra day, it will have been well worth it.

Brian Burtram is a director at a private university in North Carolina and spends his free time training with his wife, Julie, for half marathons and triathlons.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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