How to break a fast — your plan

You fasted: 24 to 36 hours · A full day without food.

Something liquid and warm first. Wait half an hour. Then a modest meal.

How well this is known: The quiet gut is real physiology; that a liquid first course helps with it is practice, not a measured result.

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Something warm and liquid

Sip it rather than drink it. And be clear about what the liquid is doing: what governs how fast the stomach empties is the calories delivered, not whether they arrive as a drink. A 500-calorie smoothie is not gentle because you drank it. The reason to start with a mug of broth is that a mug of broth is small.
- Bone broth one mug, sipped over 20 minutes
- Vegetable broth one mug, sipped over 20 minutes
- Miso soup one small bowl
After 20 to 30 minutes

A small, soft first course

Soft, cooked and modest. This is the course people skip, and skipping it is why the meal after a 24-hour fast so often ends in an hour on the sofa. Gastric emptying does measurably slow after a day without food, which is the physiology this step is built on — though the study that measured it had fourteen people in it and two of them went the other way.
- Soft-scrambled or boiled eggs one or two
- Plain yoghurt or kefir a small pot
- Avocado half
- Steamed or cooked vegetables a small bowl
After a further 30 minutes

A normal meal, at about two thirds the usual size

Two thirds is a rule of thumb and nothing more — nobody has measured the right first-meal size after a day of fasting. It is here because the failure mode people report is always too much, never too little.
- Chicken or turkey with cooked vegetables a normal plate
- Oily fish with vegetables a normal plate
- Eggs with vegetables and toast a normal plate
- Lentil or bean stew a normal bowl

Avoid at first

A sugary drink or dessert as the first thingThe one avoid line that applies at every band, and not for the reason usually given: the longer the fast, the BIGGER the glucose rise from the same carbohydrate, because a fast lowers insulin sensitivity rather than raising it. It is a spike, not a crash. Nothing about it is dangerous in a healthy person; it is simply the most pointless way to spend the first thing you eat.
Eating until you are full because you earned itThe hunger after a long fast overshoots what you need, and it does not stop being hunger when you have had enough. Stop while you could still eat more.
AlcoholOn an empty stomach after a long fast it arrives faster and hits harder, and it is a poor first thing to ask a quiet gut to process.
A large raw salad, or raw cruciferous vegetablesRaw fibre is the hardest thing there is for a gut that has spent a day doing nothing. Bloating and cramps, reliably. Cook them and they are fine.
Deep-fried or heavily processed foodHard work to digest at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.
A large portion of nuts or seedsDense, fatty and full of fibre. A handful in a meal is fine; a bowl of them as the first food is not.
A big glass of milk or a large serving of unfermented dairyLactose tolerance is a spectrum, and a large dose of it as the first food after a day is how people who did not know they were at the sensitive end find out.

Portions are rules of thumb, not measurements. No study has established the right first-meal size after any length of fast, and this sheet says so rather than printing a figure it cannot defend. What is reliable is the direction of the error: people overshoot. Stop while you could still eat more.

Never skip, delay or adjust medication to protect a fast. If a medicine needs food, the food wins. Nothing on this sheet is medically reviewed; every guideline figure on it names the guideline it came from.

getfasted.app/tools/how-to-break-a-fast — every length, with the reason behind each step. Not medical advice.