A new fad diet making the rounds on wellness influencer Instagram won’t actually help you lose weight. And it could cause dehydration, urinary tract infections, kidney stones, organ failure — even death.
It’s called “dry fasting.” It goes beyond what most of us would consider fasting — abstaining from solid food or liquid calories — and requires consuming no water or liquids of any kind for many hours or even days at a time.
Instagram and other social media sites have provided a glossy new platform for extremely dubious health and nutrition claims. Posts about dry fasting often tout the need to “heal” or “rest” or “reset” your kidneys, or “boost” their filtration. In practice, what dry fasting will do is make you look a bit more toned, because your body is using up the water in your cells for energy.
Even more dubious claims suggest that dry fasting forces your body to burn toxins, or fat, or inflammation, or tumors. It does not. When you stop feeding your body calories, it breaks down muscle and fat. The toxic byproducts of that breakdown process build up in your system, requiring extra hydration to flush them out.