How to break a fast — your plan

You fasted: 48 to 72 hours · Two to three days.

A slow first hour, small meals across the rest of the day, and a full day back to normal.

How well this is known: The meal sequence is practice. The refeeding criteria below it are guideline-grade, and they are two different kinds of claim on the same page.

Minute 0

A salted broth or soup, sipped

Twenty minutes on one mug. This is the step that gets rushed, and rushing it is the whole problem.
- Bone broth one mug, sipped over 20 minutes
- Vegetable broth one mug, sipped over 20 minutes
- Miso soup one small bowl
After 30 to 60 minutes

A small, soft course

A few hundred calories at most: soft protein and something cooked. Not a plate.
- 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 2 to 3 hours

A small meal

Half-sized, and stop while you could still eat more. Include salt.
- 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
The rest of the day

Two or three more small meals

Anything from the list above, in small servings a few hours apart. Small and spread out beats one large meal every time, and the following day is when you go back to eating normally — not the same evening.

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.
Going straight back to your normal trainingGive it a day. Hard training on the first day back stacks a second demand on top of the one your body is already dealing with.
Caffeine on top of the first mealCoffee lifts colon motor activity within minutes, which is not what a gut coming back from three days needs on top of food.

Refeeding risk — the criteria clinicians work from

This checklist is about the state you were already in, not about the length of one fast. Read it before you fast rather than before you eat again. Any one of the first list, or any two of the second, and this belongs with a clinician rather than a web page.

Any ONE of these

BMI less than 16 kg/m²
Unintentional weight loss greater than 15% within the last 3 to 6 months
Little or no nutritional intake for more than 10 days
Low levels of potassium, phosphate or magnesium before feeding

Or any TWO of these

BMI less than 18.5 kg/m²
Unintentional weight loss greater than 10% within the last 3 to 6 months
Little or no nutritional intake for more than 5 days
A history of alcohol abuse, or drugs including insulin, chemotherapy, antacids or diuretics

Stop and get medical help if, after you start eating again, you become confusion, or difficulty thinking clearly; breathlessness; a racing or irregular heartbeat; fainting, or feeling close to it; swelling in the legs or ankles after you start eating again. None of those is a symptom to push through.

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.