Taking various supplements is part of a lot of people's wellness routines ~ including my own. However, if you have started your Intermittent Fasting journey, you're probably wondering if your supplements can be taken during your fast. Turns out, a lot of supplements can be taken during a fast while still seeing results.
But that's not necessarily the case with gummy vitamins.
Let's dive into it.
Do Gummy Vitamins Break a Fast?
Whether or not something breaks a fast depends on your goal with Intermittent Fasting. The two main goals with Intermittent Fasting can be boiled down to gut health or weight loss (or both).
From a gut health perspective, anything other than water and electrolytes has the potential to break a fast. This is because Intermittent Fasting helps to turn on the gut cleaning process called the Migrating Motor Complex. This system flushes out left behind food and bacteria that can cause bloating or gut issues. Anything that requires digestion will turn off this benefit of Intermittent Fasting.
Because gummy vitamins require chewing and contain any type of energy value, it will break a fast if your goal is primarily gut health.
From a fat burning/weight loss perspective, it's important to remove anything that could spike the storing hormone insulin during the fast. One of the main perks of Intermittent Fasting is that it helps to naturally lower insulin (the storing hormone). When this is low, it turns on fat burning (lipolysis). This can help reduce hunger while burning internal fat as fuel.
This also means you have a bit of flexibility with what you can have during your fast without it ruining your results.
In our Complete Intermittent Fasting Bundle, we follow the "One Gram Rule" with what can be used during the fast. Essentially it means that you can consume small amount of pure fat foods (such as heavy cream or half and half in your coffee).
This is because fat does not spike the storing hormone insulin and therefore will help keep the body in a fat burning state.
However, both carbs and protein do spike insulin and therefore can't be used during the fast.
Psssst... curious how long YOUR Intermittent Fast should be? Take my FREE Intermittent Fasting Schedule Quiz by clicking the button below!
Taking a look specifically at gummy vitamins, most if not all contain fairly significant amounts of sugar ranging from 2-6 grams of sugar per serving.
And if you're taking more than one type of gummy vitamin (such as a multivitamin, ACV gummy and a probiotic) then this can add up to 6-18 grams of sugar or higher.
Needless to say, this amount of sugar will break a fast and therefore gummy vitamins should only be consumed during an eating window.
It's also because of this sugar level that I usually recommend sticking to supplements in capsule form. Most supplements in a capsule contain zero grams of sugar or protein and therefore can be used during a fast.
Unlock the Intermittent Fasting tips, meal plans and recipes that have helped thousands of men and women around the world with the Complete Intermittent Fasting Bundle!
100+ recipes, 8 weeks of meal planning, science-backed Intermittent Fasting tips and so much more!
Head over HERE to get started!
❤️ Autumn
Autumn Elle Nutrition