Introduction
Welcome to the Dry Fasting Club and the beautiful world of dry fasting, I’m Yannick Wolfe and I hope to be able to guide you on your dry fasting journey. Today we will address the topic of juicing.
Before we continue, it’s important to note that the information provided here is done to the best of my experience and research, however, it should never be taken as medical advice. You should always speak to a medical professional about your decision to attempt fasting in the first place. Please treat this information as entertainment only.
I’d also like to let everyone know that if you are interested in fasting, specifically dry fasting; make sure you join the Dry Fasting Club’s discord group. It’s where you’ll find expert fasters that can answer most of your questions. As well as like-minded people that are also on the fasting journey. The link to the discord, as well as references to the topics discussed will be in the notes. Ok, let’s get started.
Why even listen to me?
Well for one, I’ve performed dozens of extended dry fasts, with an 11-day one being my longest. I’ve also healed myself from a post-viral syndrome disease that some call Long Covid and coached a few other long haulers with a near-perfect success rate.
Preparing for a dry fast is structured
Preparing for a dry fast involves taking certain steps before beginning your fast. There’s a lot of common sense that comes into play here.
Water and minerals
You’ll want to drink plenty of water to make sure you are well-hydrated. This also includes eating a well-balanced diet with lots of fruits and vegetables so that your mineral supplies are well stocked up.
So, Without these, you can drink a lot of water but you just end up peeing most of it out. Electrolytes are very important. There’s nothing better than natural electrolytes found in whole foods, so let’s do our best to try to skip all the different supplement pills.
Detox
Detoxifying is another hugely important step, and it involves a lot of things like detoxifying organs, lowering your amount of sugar you eat, caffeine, and also nicotine consumption. Being able to start the fast with less of these addicting substances circling in your blood, will lead to an easier fast.
Having a healthy level of vitamins is always a good step and may require the use of a multivitamin to top the levels off. It’s really tough to build up good vitamin levels if your previous diet was terrible, but it’s much better than nothing.
Juicing
This is also where juicing a few days earlier comes in. Even though the key is the electrolytes, you have to also make sure that you’re getting a lot of liquid in the form of water. You’ll want to fill up your inter and intracellular water reserves so you are not starting from a deficit.
Mental preparation
After all of this, there’s another aspect to preparing for a dry fast and it’s preparing mentally for it. Believe it or not, many people fail at this part. Mentally preparing for hunger, boredom, thirst, and pain is very important.
The journey will test you, and you must be ready for it.
You need to make sure you set realistic goals and expectations as well since dry fasting is a huge endeavor and doing it incorrectly can be dangerous. You will want to be able to monitor your heart rate, and feelings of weakness.
Why you should prepare for a Dry Fast?
Imagine you’ve decided to start a dry fast. You stop eating and drinking and you’re now on the third day of the fast. For some odd reason, you don’t feel right. You’re experiencing weakness, irritability, unpleasant sensations, and maybe even pain in some parts of your body.
You may chalk it all up to toxins being released from your cells, and the ever-increasing metabolic acidosis. What you may not be aware of is that your intestines and colon are impacted, and are causing a lot of excess symptoms too.
Enemas
Cleaning your intestines and colon is one of the most important things you can do to prepare for a dry fast. I say this because even though cleaning them is crucial to feeling healthier overall, dry fasting is an activity that truly puts a halt to digestion quickly and aggressively. Even when you water fast, which is the second most powerful form of fasting, you still hydrate your body, and in return your intestines and colon as well.
This is why things like the phoenix protocol which encourages enemas during the fast, are frowned on by a lot of dry fasting experts, including Filinov. With dry fasting, it is a complete stop. That’s also one of the reasons the healing and autophagy is several times stronger. Because it’s so strong in healing, it also means that the preparation should be considered more important than on any other fast.
Absorption
Another thing is absorption. Nutrient absorption is affected by having feces and sludge deposits on the intestinal walls. This may not seem like a big issue during your dry fast, but it is a key issue when you are trying to hydrate and fill up your nutrient stores before a fast and it will become a critical issue when you are refeeding and wanting your body to work at maximum capacity for absorption.
Pathogen clearing
So on the topic of intestinal wall deposits, Pathogens can live off of your fecal matter. It’s pretty gross, but you can find fungus like Candida, bacteria like E.Coli and Mycoplasma, viruses like Noro and Rotavirus, and more. Why leave them potential food and hiding places when you want them to die off during your dry fast?
By cleaning your bowels, you will speed up this die-off, and if you are doing dry fasts that are shorter than 7 days, then you will not be getting to full pathogen-clearing levels. When you hit those high numbers, your body gets to a level where those pathogens finally die from dehydration.
There’s a reason the extremely long dry fasts are needed for a lot of very advanced chronic illnesses. You need to kill off the pathogens that may be hiding in your bowels and your mucus. So it becomes quite obvious why you’d want to clean the intestines up for both situations. Short dry fasts and especially long ones.
Extra hunger
Not having a clean intestinal tract can also lead to extra hunger during the fast. It’s true that the first few days are usually the hardest when it comes to hunger because your body has only just stopped eating and the glycogen stores are still being used up. But with a clean intestinal tract, you can limit that hunger, and then eliminate it by day 4.
On day 4 or 5, you get to a state where the sight and smell of food does not disturb you at all. You are immune to it. You can watch others eat and not even be hungry. But, if you have a contaminated intestinal tract, the appetite can become a bit of an issue.
Obviously looking and thinking about water and juices may still irritate you, but it is much less of an issue if you have prepared your body well before the fast. Just so you are aware, once you start hitting those high numbers, you do eventually start dreaming and thinking about water.
Liver and Colon Cleanses
In this episode I skip discussing enemas in detail, because they are not part of my dry fasting preparation. From experience coaching and consulting others, most people are extremely put off by the idea of performing an enema, even though enemas do help make the dry fast more bearable.
Knowing this, my preparation focuses on cleanses that require you to ingest rather than inject juices and supplements. The cleanses focus on natural and supplementation laxatives, detoxification, and hydration.
Colon cleanses
Colon cleanses are important for a variety of reasons.
- They can help to flush out toxins and waste that has built up in the large intestine. Think of it like clogs in a drain. Water still goes through, but it’s not as fast as it could be. Cleaning the gunk out can lead to improved digestion and regularity.
- Cleanses can also help to reduce symptoms of certain digestive disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome, and can help to reduce inflammation in the gut, which can lead to improved overall health.
- Additionally, colon cleanses can help to enhance the absorption of essential nutrients. With that gunk cleared out, your intestine and colon walls are able to better absorb what they need, which helps with energy levels and everything else.
Liver cleanses
Now, the liver. The liver is your main detoxification organ. If you’ve never taken care of your liver or never done liver cleanses, then chances are you have a tired, toxic liver. Some things that slowly chip away at your liver and cause damage and toxicity are things like:
Drinking too much alcohol, having lots of tattoos (yes, I also only learned this crazy fact recently), too much fat, too much sugar, too much processed food, breathing polluted air, and not getting enough sleep. Basically, our liver is constantly under attack, and it would seem irresponsible to not take care of it with some good old liver flushes.
During a dry fast, your body is detoxing to its maximum ability, so it’s pretty apparent that you need to really dial in your liver capabilities if you want things to go smoothly. Think of your liver as a type of funnel, that can handle a certain amount of toxins at a time. If you’re fasting and in turn, cleaning out large amounts of toxins, it’s like pouring in multiple bottles of liquid into that one funnel. It will overflow.
Being able to remove even one bottle of toxins from the equation can be the difference between a failed or successful fast. There’s a reason a lot of fasting experts make a big stink about doing liver cleanses before undertaking extended fasts. It is very important. It makes the fast easier, it makes the fast more efficient, and it puts you at less of a risk of complications.
Juicing - the key to your next successful fast
Not only do you need to hydrate before a dry fast. You also need to think about emptying your bowels of solid waste. This is important so that the solids don’t get stuck in your bowels when your digestive system goes into hibernation. You also need to think about topping up on minerals and trace elements before you jump into an extended fast. You don’t want to be entering a dry fast with deficiencies in certain areas.
Your body uses minerals and electrolytes to balance the body’s pH system This is why you also need to think about preparing your body for the high metabolic acidity that comes with deep ketosis. Metabolic acidity is what triggers things like the acidotic crisis. Eating an alkalizing diet before the fast makes sure your body can handle the acidity better. Eating an alkalizing diet after the fast also helps in rebuilding your body.
What makes a diet alkalizing?
Well, there are many different viewpoints on this topic. Some people swear by baking soda and other supplements. Some people swear by citrus fruit. Some by apple cider vinegar. But ignoring all the different options and ideas, it’s pretty common knowledge, that most fruits and vegetables are alkaline-promoting foods while dairy, eggs, meat, grains, and processed foods, are more acid-promoting foods and should be stayed away from before the fast and shortly afterwards as well.
Eating carnivore diets too quickly afterwards is not recommended, even though some carnivore fanatics swear by it. It doesn’t matter if you are anti-carb or not, the easiest macros to digest go in the following order are carbohydrates, followed by protein, followed by fats.
Deficiencies
Let’s talk about nutrient deficiencies. Remember this: It is possible to be deficient in almost every nutrient. With our soils becoming more and more depleted of nutrients and minerals, it translates into less nutrient-rich foods.
You need to eat a lot more of them to get the required nutrients, but at the same time these fruits and vegetables are bred to have higher sugar content, so you will also be ingesting larger amounts of sugar than our ancestors did.
7 super deficiencies
We also eat toxic foods that fill our bodies with toxins that make absorption harder. No matter what you do to combat these unfortunate problems, it is important to be aware that there are 7 super deficiencies that most of the world population is affected by.
These are iron, calcium, vitamin A, B-12, vitamin D, Iodine, and Magnesium.
Do juices target these? Fruits and vegetables target MOST minerals and vitamins, but some like b-12, iron and vitamin D call for things like dairy, meat and eggs. If you’re deficient in these, you’ll want to really look into adding milk kefir into your prep. I highly recommend it as a necessity for exiting an extended dry fast too.
Best Juices for Liver AND Colon Cleansing
Let’s go through three juices that are the most important for my dry fasting prep:
🥕 Carrot Juice
- 4 Carrots
- 1 apple
- 1 inch Ginger
- one lemon peeled
- Honey, (optional)
- Once the juice is ready, dilute it with high-quality water for a 1:1 ratio.
Why it works?
Carrot juice is extremely sweet nowadays with the carrots that have been bred over the years to increase their natural sugar content. Soil is also depleted, but no matter what carrots will always be a good source of a lot of vitamins and minerals and along with lemon and ginger produce an amazing cleansing effect.
- Lemon has always been a staple for liver and colon cleanses as the citric acid really helps with a laxative effect, is antimicrobial, and helps decalcify organs. Citric acid kills bacteria, mold, and mildew.
- Citric acid also helps with energy metabolism, the absorption of minerals, and the prevention or treatment of kidney stones.
- Now as for Ginger, it contains a compound called Gingerol, and it benefits gastrointestinal motility which means it helps speed up everything. Ginger is another one of nature’s healthy laxatives. Let’s not forget that ginger has Anti‐inflammatory, antioxidant, antitumor, and antiulcer effects. If you can handle the taste, you should add ginger to all your juices.
🍎 ABC Apple-Beetroot-Celery Juice
- 1-2 apples
- 1 pear Optional (add a pear for additional sweetness and minerals)
- 1 beet
- 5 celery stalks
- Once the juice is ready, dilute it with high-quality water for a 1:1 ratio.
Why it works?
Beetroot and celery are my favorite vegetables for their liver-cleansing ability, and a multitude of vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. I believe these two are critical in your juicing regimen. Beetroots and celery have long been used to treat a variety of digestive disorders. I’m sure you’ve heard of drinking celery juice as a morning health drink. It works. Both these vegetables also help with the liver, bile, and gallbladder.
- Apples and pears add a sweet tang to this drink that makes it much easier to drink for those that truly hate juicing vegetables.
- Apples, Pears, and all fruit have a surprising amount of vitamins and minerals, and different ones have different concentrations and types. Take pears for example. Did you know they taste sweeter than apples, but actually have less sugar? This is because they are less acidic and easier to digest. That’s why they’re so common in baby food.
- Pears also have vitamins A, C, and folic acid. They also contain minerals like calcium, iron, iodine, potassium, copper, magnesium, manganese, sodium, phosphorus, selenium, and zinc. They also have a purging effect and stimulate the metabolism, particularly the liver. Crazy right, we really take fruits for granted when it comes to our health.
Some will argue that meat has most of what you need, but that is beyond this episodes scope as well. However, I will remind you that meat is harder on your digestive system, and is acid-forming so it does not have a good place in pre or post-extended fasting preparation.
🍋 Orange Lemon Juice
- 2 navel oranges, peeled, pips and pith removed
- ½ medium lemon, peeled, pips and pith removed
- 2 cm fresh ginger
- ⅛ teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1-2 teaspoons honey, optional to taste
- Once the juice is ready, dilute it with high-quality water for a 1:1 ratio.
Why it works?
Lemon juice once again is a key component of liver cleanses. In this juice, we also include honey and turmeric.
- Honey has always been a great medicinal sweetener. Not something that should be eaten daily in large quantities, as it’s still a simple sugar, but definitely better than most other simple sugars out there.
- Honey which is liquid includes water and a lot of trace minerals, enzymes, and medicinal compounds (if it is wild honey).
- Turmeric also ensures the natural and smooth flow of the ‘bile duct,’ a liver cleanser.
- Turmeric prevents alcohol and toxins from turning into harmful compounds that can damage the liver. This combination is very powerful and cleansing.
How I juice?
So, the goal should be to mix and match fruits and vegetables, while keeping to a core of powerful liver-cleansing ones. Personally, I am still exploring and experimenting with different fruits and veggies. The 3 juices mentioned above are staples in my preparations for a dry fast.
I prepare by doing at least 3 days of pure juicing with also supplementing iodine, and making sure I also drink magnesium citrate each evening to help top up this critical electrolyte, while also stimulating additional laxative effects. Not to mention that taking activated charcoal during the week leading up to the fast can be hugely beneficial by lowering the overall toxicity levels in the body.
This means you get to enter the fast with a less toxic body, which is a massive advantage. This translates to fewer headaches, fatigue, and other uncomfortable feelings. When juicing make sure to dilute the juices with at least double the amount of water. So if you have 1L of juice after you get through all the fruit and veggies, make sure you mix it with 1L of water for a 1:1 ratio. This is how you make sure that you are focusing on rehydration.
The Wolfe Juice Prep Protocol 2.2
A 3-day juicing preparation protocol that includes juicing to cleanse the bowels and liver, hydrate the body, and detoxify the body in preparation for an extended dry fasting period.
I call this one the speed run prep, and believe it’s close to the bare minimum to be able to say that you’ve actively prepared for your fast. But even doing just 2 days, or 1 day is better than jumping into an extended dry fast without any preparations.
The Wolfe Juice Prep Protocol, which as of this writing is at version 2.2, includes Juicing as the main component. The juice is diluted at a 1:1 ratio, meaning that you double it up with water each time. It may not be as sweet or delicious when diluted, but it’s important to overhydrate during the prep, and not to add additional sugar.
📌 Kefir
The Milk Kefir is added for variation, so you get a little bit of fat and protein while drinking something different than juice. This fat and protein is so well digested by the probiotics, it’s the ultimate gentle food for your digestive system, while packing a nutrient punch.
The fat content allows for a better absorption of the multivitamin. I recommend a whole foods multivitamin, I use a brand called megafoods, but you should be able to find something you like. You want to interweave some activated charcoal and magnesium citrate.
📌 Charcoal
The activated charcoal helps detoxify the blood a little bit before the fast, kind of like helping you start with a cleaner engine.
📌 Magnesium citrate
Magnesium citrate is both a laxative and a magnesium top up. I prefer this to potassium citrate because I believe magnesium is more needed, and is one of the top worldwide mineral deficiencies. If you can balance your magnesium, your potassium usually automatically balances itself. The citrate gives it the laxative effect, so it makes sure you really get those bowels clean at the same time. Remember that it will relax your body, so you may get more tired, that’s why I take it later at night. But, you should not take it right before bed, because you will most likely need to run to the washroom.
📌 Iodine
I also add iodine into the juices at 9am and 9pm. Iodine can stain your teeth, so adding the 4 drops into the juice makes it so diluted you have nothing to worry about. Iodine is one of the biggest deficiencies in the world as well, and unless you have hyperthyroidism, then I believe everyone can benefit from this.
The table
Ok, Feel free to copy and print the Wolfe Juice Prep Protocol found below.
How do most people prepare for a dry fast? (Reddit poll)
So, after running a poll on both the Reddit dry fasting group and the dry fasting club discord group, it came as a BIG surprise that way more than half of everyone who attempts to dry fast does so with no preparation.
As I thought about this a little bit more, I came to the realization that I also started on my fasting journey just by jumping into fasts. In fact, I went so far as to have huge cheat meals before jumping into fasts, because you know, hunger is scary! What does this tell us?
Following proper procedures
Well first off, it shows that there are not enough people following proper procedures when it comes to dry fasting. This probably means that there are even fewer people following proper procedures when it comes to water fasting since that’s the first stepping stone on the fasting journey. This kind of blows my mind and at the same time signifies that we really are the few bold enough to attempt something like food deprivation. This is uncharted territory. Not in the sense of exploring something unexplored, but rather uncovering something lost to the ages.
Let’s not forget that fasting is mentioned in all religious texts dating back thousands of years. There is a reason one of the most distinguished doctors of ancient times, Hippocrates said, and I quote:
“Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness.”
We as humans are very flawed when it comes to learning from our predecessors. For some reason, we seem to be destined to repeat mistakes that have been made by parents, grandparents, and historical figures alike. But we know that this is not right. If we sit down and truly think about it, we know that age-old wisdom exists for a reason.
That common knowledge is one of humanity’s greatest weapons. So many old traditions have been proven effective by science. Would humans have been writing about fasting since ancient times if there wasn’t something remarkable about it? There’s a reason the most educated philosophers and doctors of the past talk about fasting. There’s a reason that ancient religious texts all talk about fasting.
Poll from Dry fasting reddit group
So how does this relate to the polls indicating that most people don’t even prep for a dry fast properly?
It means that there’s not enough consistent information out there telling people to prepare for it. It means that people want a fast solution without all the work. And It means that fasting is so powerful that even doing it without any prep is almost always better than not doing it at all.
What we have right now, is the privilege of being able to research and learn all about it. And We should use everything we have at our disposal to 1. prepare our bodies for the fast, and 2. To do everything we can to exit the fast properly.
A few words at the end
Well, we’re near the end of the episode. As always, references are in the show notes. If I’ve convinced you to try a day or two of dry fasting, maybe I’ve saved you some money on groceries. If you would like to support this podcast and my work at exploring dry fasting topics, you can donate and buy me a coffee. Leaving a 5-star, like or comment goes a long way. If you’d like to give me any ideas on how to improve the show, or any comments, in particular, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email at yannick@dryfastingclub.com.
That’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for listening, and make sure you join our discord group. Good luck on your dry fasting journey!
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9029818/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/malnutrition#bottom-line
https://www.healthline.com/health/fecal-impaction#prevention
https://www.kent.co.in/blog/detox-your-liver-with-these-nutritious-and-tasty-cold-pressed-juices/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23472655/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12848208/
https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/nutrition-effects-of-iodine-deficiency
http://nhp.gov.in/global-iodine-deficiency-disorders-prevention-day_pg
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/citric-acid
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341159/
https://vitalp.com/en/from-the-garden/fruits
https://www.livescience.com/60503-tattoo-ink-body.html
https://lifespa.com/health-topics/liver-gallbladder/apple-beet-celery-juice-recipe-liver-gallbladder
