Benefits

Before commencing your water fast, prepare your body with a 4-day colon cleanse then 1-3 days of juice before. Ideally you’ve been eating healthy raw food for one month before the fast. Feel free to jump back to the dashboard and take those paths first.

It is extremely important that you are supported by someone who knows what they are doing and you are completing the specific daily protocols. Any extended water fast needs to be monitored by an expert.

We’ve included the specific daily protocols in the materials for this section. Please make sure you schedule them into your day every day. This can really mean the difference between a bad experience and a good experience, and we want you to have a really good experience. 

I always believe we are the experts of our own body. I can’t tell you what is or isn’t right for you. I can only share my experience and the experience of the people who have attended my clinical fasts over the last 7 years. Tyler considers an extended water fast anything beyond 7 days.

If a 7-day water fast feels too much, try 3 days. Or start with intermittent water fasting. This is when you only take in caloric nutrition during a certain time of the day. To help you get used to fasting, I would recommend eating clean raw foods or even gently cooked living whole foods for two meals a day, for example 12pm and 6pm. That’s going to give you a 18-hour window of water fasting to promote low levels of ketosis and detoxification, as well as promote the process of autophagy that I talked about.

This can literally transform your relationship with food. You’ll find you’re actually hungry - as opposed to eating out of habit or boredom - and you’re really looking to nourish yourself with those amazing flavors. Then, it’s just like, “OMG, this is amazing!”. 

When we go through this process of fasting and begin to eat again, it’s important we first feed ourselves mentally, energetically, emotionally, and then physically. When you go slow and involve all of your senses and all of your energy bodies, the process of eating becomes really orgasmic.

What you choose to eat afterwards will either help you maintain that amazing feeling of lightness and vitality or it will make you feel tired and heavy. If you start overloading your body with junk food or processed foods, you will probably feel sick. We don’t want that.

I believe the best way to break a water fast is to really go into a fresh fruit market and look at what’s in season. Let your body tell you what it is attracted to.

Maybe it’s mango, avocado, or tomato. Whatever your body needs, I think the most optimal way to do this is to pick one food and focus on it. Sit there and look at its shape, size, and color. Does it remind you of an organ of your body? For example, the tomato reminded me of a heart with its 4 chambers and coincidentally, tomatoes are good for the heart and circulatory system.

Then cut it really slow so the fresh smell escapes and you start salivating. This process of salivation is really important because it creates the enzymes needed to break down that food. Now, take that food, close your eyes and put it in your mouth and really just chew that up and feel the sensations. This is the moment when you may feel some gratitude, have an intention or think about the kind of healing or beautiful things you want to attract in your life. This is the process we do on all of my fasting retreats and it’s absolutely amazing.

Once you do this, you can eat more, just do it a bit slowly and really satiate yourself. You can have five small meals a day but focus on simplicity until your digestive system is getting full and you start to have bowel movements again. This may be a bit funky for the first couple of days, but don’t freak out. Your digestive system (by the way, there is 30 feet there) needs to be filled back up before you start having solid bowel movements.

If you start to feel sick, don’t panic – just cut it back and slow down the whole process of reintegration.

For an ultimate cleanse – four extended 10-day water fasts per year is one of the best ways to repair your body, reset your hormones and enjoy clear consciousness, energy, and clarity. Following the seasons is a good way to remember.

I vote your victory!

This is when the toxins in our bodies are at their highest and the habit of eating is still strong. You’re likely going to get the most hungry and irritable without food. But this is temporary and we’re going to support you through this as best we can. I find staying busy, drinking lots of water, getting into the sun and breathing deeply with the 7 Rounds of 7 really helps.

It is common in the first wave of cleansing, especially if you’ve never fasted before, to experience headaches, dizziness, nausea, bad breath, glazed eyes and a heavily coated tongue. Don’t worry, this is the brilliant intelligence of your body healing itself. It will pass.

This is when your body switches from using carbohydrates for fuel to burning fat, so our brain basically feeds on the ketones which stops us from getting hungry. There’s a lot of science that shows how much this process helps the brain rebuild itself.

Our body then produces embryonic-style stem cells which have the ability to heal and repair damaged and weak tissue and other conditions. Awesome right?!

This is another amazing part of fasting and really highlights the superb intelligence of our bodies. Because our brain still needs proteins and amino acids, our body starts breaking down the accumulated and unwanted material in our bodies.

Tumors, cysts, skin tags, hernias, fatty deposits and other abnormal accumulations are literally dissolved and used to maintain our muscle mass and brain/body function. If someone’s had a tumor or something growing it’s because of excess foreign proteins in our body. Fasting is the best way, I believe, to clear your body of these excess proteins.

Because your digestive system can finally rest, your immune system goes into the sole mode of protecting muscle mass. Whereas if you’re eating, the body is too busy digesting food and doing all of its usual functions, it doesn’t allow that to happen.

Fasting also triggers regeneration of an old damaged immune system. Old immune cells that are no longer needed, such as damaged cells, are recycled and our entire immune system resets itself within 3 days.

This is really good news for people who have been diagnosed with certain stages of cancer. And I’m not saying that this fast “will cure you of cancer”. What I am saying is, what most people aren’t aware of is our immune system contains cancer-killer cells. It’s constantly breaking down and killing cancer. The problem is when our systems get loaded down by the foods we eat, the environmental toxins, stress and different things, it all gets too much. So when you fast and rest, you give your body the chance to reset and rebuild its armies.

Before long, you’ll be back to your busy lifestyle so I really recommend you give yourself this time to rest. Move slowly, appreciate nature. Stop to bear witness. Bury yourself in the sand and invite your youthful curiosity back into your day. Science has shown that a water fast has the ability to regain youthfulness, so be young in mind, body and spirit!

Remember to practice the 7 Principles of Health: Air, Water, Sunshine, Whole foods, Exercise, Passion, Relationships.