Celery is a very low calorie food so does it impact your Intermittent Fast? Today, we're diving into whether or not eating celery will break your Intermittent Fast.
Does Celery Break a Fast?
One of the main perks of Intermittent Fasting is that it naturally lowers the storing hormone insulin during the fast. This dip allows fat burning mechanisms to turn on. When looking at whether or not something breaks a fast, you need to consider if the ingredients of that food/drink will raise the storing hormone insulin. If it does, then it will stop this fat burning process and "break" the fast. If it doesn't, then you might be in the clear.
The foods that spike insulin are protein and carbs. But how much protein and carbs breaks a fast? There's not a specific number of grams that will apply to every single person. But as a good rule of thumb, in the Complete Intermittent Fasting Bundle that has helped thousands of men and women around the world, we go by the "One Gram Rule". This means having no more than a combined one gram of protein and/or carbs.
One medium stalk of celery contains:
.55 grams carbohydrates
.07 grams fat
.28 grams protein
When you combine the grams of protein with the grams of carbs, you get .83 total grams. This is clearly under the one gram rule and theoretically shouldn't break a fast. But how you consume that one stalk of celery will make the difference.
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Chewing is the other major factor that needs to be considered. This is because during the fast the body turns on the gut cleaning process called the Migrating Motor Complex (MMC). When the MMC is turned on, it flushes out left behind food and bacteria that can cause bloating, making it an excellent natural gut health tool.
However, the MMC is always turned off by food (regardless of what the food is). But even the act of chewing can also turn off the MMC.
If you were to juice this one stalk of celery and sip on it during your fast, you wouldn't really be consuming enough carbs/protein to raise insulin and you wouldn't be chewing, so you're likely in the clear. However, if you sip on a juice with more than one stalk of celery, then you're getting into iffy territory.
But if you eat one stalk of celery, then that's something entirely different. This will activate digestion processes that turn off gut cleaning and can break a fast.
Therefore when using celery during a fast, you want to make sure you stick to no more than one celery stalk juiced, not eaten.
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Autumn Elle Nutrition