How to break a fast — your plan

You fasted: 36 to 48 hours · A day and a half to two days.

The same sequence, slower, and spread the day rather than the hour.

How well this is known: Practice again. What is established here is only the direction of travel: the longer the fast, the more carefully clinics reintroduce food.

Minute 0

Something warm and liquid

Add salt to it. Sodium losses over a day and a half of fasting are the commonest reason people feel awful in the hours after a long fast, and a salted broth or soup fixes two things at once.
- Bone broth one mug, sipped over 20 minutes
- Vegetable broth one mug, sipped over 20 minutes
- Miso soup one small bowl
After 30 minutes

A small, soft first course

Keep it to a few mouthfuls more than feels sufficient. Cooked rather than raw, soft rather than fibrous.
- 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 1 to 2 hours

A modest meal

About half of what you would normally eat, with protein in it. The rest of the day is where the food you missed goes.
- 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
Later the same day

A second normal meal

Several hours after the first, not straight after it. Anything from the list above, at an ordinary size. The gap is the instruction, not the menu.

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.
A large, fatty mealFat slows the stomach down. That is useful when you are eating normally and unhelpful when the stomach is already slow.
Making up the missed calories in one sittingThe day is the unit past 36 hours, not the meal. Spreading the food out is the single most useful thing on this list.

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.