Water, still or sparkling, most teas and black coffee are the only things you can drink or eat without breaking a fast.This article isn’t about telling you that eating candy, drinking coke or having french fries will break a fast.This article will be about foods that are sometimes advised to have when doing certain types of fasting, like vegetable broths, herbal tea, lemon juice, etc.The gray area, foods that could potentially break a fast but even science isn’t clear about it.Basically what types of food have calories, could raise blood sugar and technically break a fasted state and prevent autophagy.If you’re an intermittent faster and you add lemon juice to your water some times or have bulletproof coffee because it makes you feel great, don’t read this article and suddenly think that those are bad for you.That’s a lot of liquid absorption, but you’ll quickly see that it’s really important to stay hydrated all the time, water will help you prevent dizziness, fatigue and, logically, dry mouth.Those are safe when fasting, providing you don’t put sugar or cream in them, but I know you’re intelligent people and I won’t even mention it!The main hypothesis on how that works is that GTC might stimulate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity.Meaning if you’re looking for berries in the wilderness and get jumped by a bear, your body will release adrenaline, boost awareness and energy expenditure to help you choose as quickly as possible between fighting the bear or running for your life.It’s mix caffeine and catechins, which are also found in green tea, are proved to improve weight loss.A review study even showed that white tea can help increase your metabolism to up to 5%, which could be equal to around 100 more calorie expenditure a day.Black tea promotes the production of short-chained fatty acids in the intestines and, by altering the microbiota, increases hepatic AMPK phosphorylation.APMK, for AMP-activated protein kinase, is an enzyme that plays an important role in the metabolism, activating glucose and fatty acid uptake to be used as energy.Most of us are, in one way or another, addicted to caffeine, but not to the point of drinking coffee all day, messing up your blood pressure and heart rate, among other things.This article/study, done on a very small sample of patients, seems to show that coffee intake had no impact on ghrelin or leptin levels.For example, regular coffee intake can reduce the risks of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease according to this study.Improve overall brain functions in the long term, decreasing risks of age-related mental illness.If you’re going to be very strict about your fast, if you’re the kind of rock-solid guy that doesn’t move an inch on its principles and want the real thing, those foods aren’t for you.Either they contain a certain amount of calories or the science is not perfectly clear on their effect on a fasted body.Generally, lemon juice is added to water to give it some taste, and it is known to have many beneficial effects for the body.Drinking water is a huge part of a good fast and that added taste could help you get enough.Drinking water is a huge part of a good fast and that added taste could help you get enough Of course, it’s an excellent source of vitamin C .When on a prolonged fast, you won’t be getting many vitamins and while vitamin C stores won’t deplete in a week, it’s still a welcome addition Moreover, lemons also are a rich source of magnesium, potassium, and calcium , which are essential minerals and very important when fasting.Apple Cider Vinegar, ACV for short, is becoming quite popular when speaking about diets, especially fasting and keto.Depending on whether or not you like the acidic taste of ACV, but I found that with some lemon and salt it actually helped to drink more water.And ACV can help a great deal too, it is known to kill off the bad bacteria in the gut , preventing bacterial overgrowth.Like fasting, again, ACV promotes lower blood sugars and decreases insulin levels according to this study.It could prevent fat storage, this study on obese diabetic rats shown acetic acids was protecting them from further weight gain.As much as I would like to say drinking diet coke or adding stevia caps to your coffee breaks a fast… there seems to be no evidence that it does.I even wrote a complete guide on artificial sweeteners, concluding they’re very bad for you, yes, but they won’t break your fast.Like sugar coming from beet, stevia leaves go a long way before ending up in caps or even powder form.Of course, drinking a diet coke won’t be the same as adding some stevia powder to your morning coffee.This study showed that while the reward center was fully activated in the brain when having glucose, it wasn’t with artificial sweeteners (in that case, sucralose).Meaning your brain will actually crave for food and sugar, increasing appetite because you’ll give him sweetness, associated with calories and carbs, with none of those.Those can take many forms and could include caffeine, green tea extracts, as well as BCAA, B Vitamins, amino acids and, of course, some artificial sweeteners.I’m not going to give you an exhaustive list of every variation you can see on the market, but I’m gonna tell you about what to look for in pre-workouts to know if this specific recipe might or might not break your fast.I won’t be able to cover all the ingredients and, pre-workouts being highly processed, there might be some stuff in them that could break a fast or prevent autophagy which I wouldn’t even be aware of.List of ingredient and nutritional values of this G Fuel pre-workout from Amazon, you can see there are no fat, no sugar, but carbs and calories: a no go.But they don’t always state the number of carbs or calories per serving and sometimes it can be quite difficult to know if a pre-workout will break a fast or not.When looking at this one from Red Leaf or this one from PRO SUPPS, it seems that they both don’t contain any carb or calorie, and none of the risky ingredients I’ll mention.But some of the added flavoury stuff leaves me doubtful on whether or not it would break a fast (beet juice, soluble dietary fibers, etc.So most of the time, fatty acids are added to the mix in order to help your body absorbs those vitamins.Of course, carbs will raise insulin levels, kick you out of ketosis, break your fast and prevent autophagy.Contrary to most other amino acids, those three are broken down in the muscle and they seem to play a major role in energy production during exercise, according to this study.Isoleucine and valine are more specifically used to regulate blood sugar levels and producing energy.They can also play a big role in overall energy, reducing the production of serotonin, which is, in short, the counterbalance to dopamine, in the brain when exercising.Amino Acids when ingested, according to this study, raise insulin levels and reduce fat oxidation.Actually, the most popular American brands of cigarettes, such as Marlboro, Camel, or Kent, have added sugar in them, according to this study.Since you’re not ingesting the sugar but inhaling it, it shouldn’t be breaking the fast, but again, the science on the subject is scarce.If you’re going to be smoking, I would advise you stick to rolled cigarettes with organic tobacco, or plain marijuana joints, which shouldn’t break a fast either.In any case, for a complete view of smoking when fasting, check out my article in which I dive deeper into it.But the main idea here is to add some sort of good, ketone rich fat to a coffee and blend it.It will help to put your body into ketosis , meaning relying on energy from your fat stores.I’ve having BC in the morning for a while (I stopped recently) as an intermittent faster because it isn’t as relevant to this type of diet.That it might stop autophagy , even though it depends on your health, exercising practice, age, type of fat you get in your coffee, etc.But it’s a very clear possibility That it could prevent you from losing weight at first since you’ll get some energy from the coffee’s ketones.Most of these being simply dehydrated plants and herbs in hot water, you shouldn’t be concerned about it breaking your fast.So basically, some of these infusions containings some types of chunks of fruits that could provide some fructose which would technically break a fast.and improving gut health Supporting weight loss by helping you feel satiated.It’s a fair question, but it has a pretty obvious response: it’s protein powders, it has calories, it triggers an insulin response., it breaks a fast.As I mentioned above and in my article on artificial sweeteners, diet soda won’t break a fast.But depending on the type of vitamin (fat-soluble like K, A), as I stated above, the supplements could have added fat for absorption that couldn’t be taken on an empty stomach.Sparkling some on your daily coffee shouldn’t have a huge effect on your metabolism, but again, it technically breaks a fast.Most of them simply have added artificial sweeteners, so like gum or diet soda, it shouldn’t break a fast.But simple cucumber slices infused in water, or some mint, shouldn’t break a fast