I have been doing IF for years now and want to start doing 3 day fasts. I take a daily medication that I usually take with a small spoonful of full fat yogurt to ease GI distress and improve absorption. I cannot stop taking these meds. Honestly I’d rather not eat anything but will a small amount of yogurt take me out of autophagy?
I remember that Dr. Jason Fung who wrote about IF for his patients wrote about what breaks a fast and what not - in a blog post or in a FAQ, I’m not sure and have no time to look it up. I think, if you take medication with a small amount you should be fine. Fung writes somewhere that you can take your coffee with a small amount of Cream/coconut oil without breaking your fast if you cannot drink it black. So I guess a little bit (like 1-2 spoonfull?) should be ok.
Another thing I read was to take the medicine with one or two leaves of lettuce, almost no calories but something in the stomach so it isn’t irritated.
I just rewatched Jason Fung on fasting. He said coffee and tea are OK if fasting for weight loss but not OK when fasting for autophagy. I was surprised. I’ve been doing 72s for autophagy. I’ve been drinking green tea. I have seen others say coffee and tea can speed up autophagy. If I were you, I would go with the small amount of yogurt. I’m definitely not an expert, but I don’t believe the body begins over from scratch whenever you have a calorie.
What probably matters most is the slippery slope, but as long as you keep traction any impact on autophagy is likely less than the impact of not taking your medication as prescribed. But I note an earlier response to the effect that we really don’t know much about autophagy, and I upvoted it.