hey wellness warrior i recently did a three-day water fast and before i got started with this
fast i thought to myself it would be really cool to have some clinical data from this fast using
research grade body composition scanners this way i'd be able to know exactly how much fat i lost
or even how much muscle i lost so that's exactly what i did
and i'm really excited to share with you the results because they even surprised me
let me first help you get an understanding of exactly how i fasted so you can understand how
i got such crazy results now i fasted for three days eating no food that was for 72 hours during
that time i didn't drink coffee i didn't drink tea none of that i only drank water the only
other things that i added in with that water were apple cider vinegar which i drank two tablespoons
in the morning and two tablespoons at night and i also would use electrolyte powders and i can't
stress enough how important the electrolyte powder is because you want to make sure that
you're keeping your electrolytes up otherwise you will have a total lack of energy and feel really
lousy i'll put in the description more about the electrolytes i used during the fast i worked my
normal hours seeing patients i saw patients for 11 hours each day while seeing patients i am
very physically active so needless to say i took a break from exercising while i was fasting because
if anything i needed more rest i did not need more physical activity i want to point out though if i
was doing a desk job and i knew i had a lot of office work that i was going to be doing
during that three-day water fast and not a whole lot of physical activity i would make a point
to do at least a 30 minute brisk walk a day in order to get better results while fasted the
next thing i did was use a research grade body composition scanner in order to determine the
changes that would happen during my fast i did one prior to starting my fast and then i did one
after they look like this and they tell you a ton of information on your overall bodily health now
it tells you things like weight the fat percentage on your body your fat mass your muscle mass
your bmi even things like your metabolic age and how much visceral fat is on your organs now let
me share with you the shocking results that i got from my three-day water fast let's first
talk about weight loss i went from 183.6 pounds to 181 pounds now i know what you're thinking
come on like 2.6 pounds that's not worth eating no food for three days but there's a few things
that we have to take into consideration here the first is that i don't carry an excessive amount
of body fat on my body so therefore i'm just not going to see a huge drop in weight loss during a
three day water fast and the second thing to consider is that the devil is in the detail
let me give you an example there was a study back in 2016 on obese adults and what they
did is they took one group and they had them do zero calorie fasting two days a week and then
they were able to eat regularly the rest of the week then they took another group and they would
have them calorie restrict every day of the week and they did this for 24 weeks and the results
were incredibly eye-opening in terms of weight loss the group that was doing fasting barely
outperformed the group that was doing calorie restriction but here's where fasting really shine
the group that was doing fasting lost two times more fat around the belly and they also lost a
total of six times more fat mass on their body than the group that was calorie restricting now
let's go ahead and go back to my results now we mentioned before i didn't lose much weight almost
like the people in those studies didn't really lose a whole lot of weight but what happened to
my fat percentage this is where it gets really interesting i went from 17.6 body fat to a 14.3
percent body fat this means that just a three day water fast i lost 3.3 percent body fat which is
really incredible most doctors would tell you that that would be impossible to do in a healthy way
now my fat mass is also interesting to look at i dropped from 32.2 pounds of fat mass on my body
down to 27.8 pounds of fat this means i lost 4.4 pounds of fat from my body in total and when
we look at my trunk right around my core area i went from an 18.1 percent body fat down to a 14.4
body fat which means i lost a lot of belly fat during the fast the data shows that i had an
increase in both muscle mass and also bone mass so though i didn't lose a ton of weight i saw a
huge shift in body composition and this is a really good thing all of these changes were
positive because we don't want all that excess body fat but we do want to have an increase in
muscle mass good amounts of lean muscle and also strong bones when we look back at the 2016 study
i just mentioned it was so incredible because the group that was fasting two days a week they lost
six times more fat than the group that was doing calorie restriction what was even more incredible
about this is that the group that was doing calorie restriction when they lost weight it
was in the way of both fat and muscle mass but the fasting group they only lost fat and they maintain
muscle mass and this is so important because while fasting you actually get this huge boost of growth
hormone in your body and it helps you maintain both bone mass and muscle mass many years ago
when i first started fasting i was very concerned that i was going to lose all my muscle mass and
you know i was going to come back to the gym and feel lethargic and weak and i'd just be really
upset over it but the fact was is every time i do a three day water fast i come back stronger which
is still surprises me to this day but what about your metabolism because you will surely destroy
your metabolism if you're doing a three-day water fast and you're not consuming any food right
well i can't tell you how many times i've heard that from people but the facts are very different
if we look at the 2016 study one of the things that it shows us is that the group that was doing
calorie restriction they in fact were destroying their metabolism but the group that was doing
fasting two days a week they were actually able to increase their metabolism two and a half times
more than those who were doing calorie restriction so here's what happened to my metabolism during
the three day water fast my bmr which stands for basal metabolic rate and that is basically looking
at how many calories your body burns throughout the day just as a living human body right how many
calories it takes for your brain to operate your heart to function and all your organs to function
right that doesn't even include the physical activity you have throughout the day my bmr
increased from 2001 calories per day all the way up to 2053 calories per day so i saw a 52
point increase in my bmr which is significant for not eating food for three days the body
composition scanner also grades your metabolic age and it's very often that when we do a scan
with a patient that they'll have a metabolic age that's 20 years past their real age now when i
started this fast i had a metabolic age of 26 which is already far below my actual age so i
was already proud of that but after the three day water fast my metabolic age dropped down to 18
which is truly incredible the results are truly insane and to be honest they surprised me quite
a bit but they shouldn't because the research shows us time and time again that one of the
best ways to improve your metabolism is to do a good water fast we have seen in the research
that it helps you lose fat maintain muscle mass it helps you improve your insulin sensitivity helps
you break through a weight loss plateau so that you can get on the right track and start losing
body fat again now another incredible result from the three-day water fast was looking at the amount
of visceral fat on my body now if you don't know what visceral fat is it's that fat that's on your
organs it's very unhealthy and pretty much every disease risk factor is increased if you have high
amounts of visceral fat it doesn't matter if it's cancer heart disease or diabetes it's bad news now
as we look at this scan here what it does is it ranges you from zero to thirty zero being very
very good no visceral fat which is very hard to get to all the way up to 30 which is very bad now
when i started this fast my first scan showed that i had a five okay zero is perfect i was at a five
by the time i ended the fast my visceral fat went down to four okay which this is awesome
because that means that it decreased disease risk factors in my future now the body composition
scanner certainly showed me many improvements in metrics across the board in my clinical data
however i also experienced a decrease in many symptoms i was facing i was starting to have some
autoimmune flare-ups which i've dealt with many times over the past several years and doing the
fast helped me get that under control also i was having some different symptoms of gut conditions
that were showing as well and doing the three-day water fast allowed my gastrointestinal system
to rest and those symptoms have all went away showing a lot of really good improvements in my
overall health but what does this all mean for you well if you want to decrease your fat mass
decrease your fat percentage on your body decrease your visceral fat improve your
muscle mass improve your bone mass and really shift your body composition to a healthier state
well even improving your metabolic age then a three-day water fast is going to be a really
great solution to accomplish those goals i'm dr zyrowski and i hope a three-day water fast
is in your future if you like this video i think you'll really like this video next