Yesterday I broke my five day dry fast, and I’ve never dry fasted for five days before. Nobody, and I mean nobody talked about how terrible the recovery is. I rehydrated with coconut water and sodium bicarbonate, and then had some water with lemon in it as well as added a little salt to it for electrolytes. Sipped these things at 8 oz. slowly every hour/ half hour.
Anyways last night my pee was so acidic, I thought I had a UTI. I could barely pee (Felt like there was no pressure onto my bladder, aka urinary hesitancy.) and my left kidney felt dull. On top of that, it was burning every time I pissed, and of course the piss was dark yellow. So I came to reddit originally asking if anyone else experienced this before. Luckily a user on here named Dry_Hard recommended that I drink more water until I can piss normally again.
I did that and my stream no longer burned, and I could pee more steady. Alright, now we’re here on day 2 of recovering. I’m still having urinary hesitancy, I feel like an old man in his late 50s right now. There is absolutely no pressure on my bladder what so ever, It’s like I have to force pressure on it to pee. On top of that, I’ve been leaking slowly from my urethra. So not liking that at the moment, don’t know if its normal or not.
However, I’ve been able to eat some foods now, ate fruit early in the morning, slowly transitioned to chicken noodle soup (only ate the chicken and veggies, neglected the noodles for now) and then went into a salad 2 hours later. My stomach is working fantastically.
I’ve lost quite a bit of weight during this process (15 pounds) and regained at least 7 so far. Only good thing I can say that came out of this fast, was it did heal a skin condition (I suffer from eczema), so im thankful for that. But i’m pretty sure the urinary hesitancy is just my body still rehydrating and recovering.
That’s been my experience so far, I feel like there’s little research out there about this topic and if you choose to dry fast, take pre-caution as the refeed may be brutal and frightening at first.
Sounds like you made the refeed brutal for no reason. Just hydrate and eat something mineral rich. There is no reason to micro-manage how much you drink and what your micros look like. If you aren’t literally chugging and binge eating you won’t have any problems.
Every time I dry fast, by the third day, I get that acidic urine. I goes away for me after a couple days but it does make fasting a little harder.
Did you do anything to prepare for the fast beforehand like drink ACV or baking soda?
Thanks for the feedback. Things like this are really valuable to know. As you say it’s the kind of thing no one talks about. p.s. I’d be interested to know in a week or two whether you still feel the same about not wanting to do another 5 day!