How Long Can I Stay on a Liquid Diet?
“How long can I stay on a liquid diet?” Doesn’t this question give you the main character energy of a sci-fi Netflix series where people are stuck in a space station after World War Three? Jokes apart! The question is really crucial for a person to know before he or she decides to go on a liquid diet.
Let’s read this blog till the end and figure out whether it is biologically possible for a person to just rely on a liquid diet for days, weeks, or even months. This is going to be very interesting; hence, let’s dive straight into the topic!
How Long Can Somebody Stay on a Liquid Diet?
Whenever it is a matter of your health, there is no authentic way other than asking for a doctor’s advice. Therefore, let us only rely on the doctor’s suggestions and take their advice as a guiding light in this matter.
According to the Clevel and Clinic, one should only take a liquid diet for no more than five days. Thus, it is crystal clear that you cannot extend your fluid diet to a week or a month. It would be silly of you to stick to fluid meals for even a week.
Although liquid diets are planned to supplement you with all the nutrients that your body needs, they can never be a permanent substitute for solid food. Otherwise, you may feel malnourished, or your gut might regress due to persistent underwork.
Depending on liquid food for longer periods may lead to certain medical conditions that you would never want to go through. Here are the potential risk factors of sticking to the diet for an extended period of time:
- Malnourishment: Liquid diet can help you lose weight, but excess of everything and anything creates chaos. Here, too, extended liquid diet can lead to medical conditions that are associated with nutritional deficiencies.
- Swallowing Disorders: Yes! There is a disorder like that where you are unable to swallow your food, which is also a potential risk of a fluid diet.
However, if you get your diet chart precisely planned by a dietitian nutritionist and consume gelatin-protein-rich meals with low-residue supplements, you may stick to the fluid diet for a longer period until you are sick of only slurping shakes and smoothies or you feel the following symptoms:
- Swear weakness
- Stomach pain or bloating
- Difficulty swallowing your body
- Dizziness
- Constipation
- Disturbed stomach
What should a Liquid Diet Contain?
It goes without saying that a liquid diet will only contain food items that are in their liquid form at room temperature. Now that we know how long we can stick to the liquid diet let us figure out what it should include.
The fluid diet is either followed by a person who is aiming to shred off some weight or by a patient who is about to go under anesthesia or has been through a surgical procedure. The patients are advised to only rely on liquid food and shift to solid food gradually after the surgery. It helps the patient retain normal body energy levels and also helps the gut system to heal.
Here are the food items that one can consume while they are on a fluid diet:
| Beverages | Soups |
| Water, coffee, or tea (no milk or non-dairy creamer) | Chicken or Beef bouillon/broth |
| Soft drinks/Sports drinks (ginger ale, cola, Sprite, 7-Up, Gatorade) | Low sodium, fat-free |
| Strained fruit juices with no pulp (apple juice, white grape juice, lemonade) |
You can also ingest pulp-free popsicles that are made from fresh fruits or vegetables. While you are on a liquid diet, you may lose as much as one to two kilograms of your body weight each week.
However, it is crazy to follow the fluid diet plan for two consecutive weeks. That way, you will only be doing obsessive dieting, and it will harm your body’s physiology, and we bet you don’t want that.
That is why, when you follow the diet for weight loss, you must only do it for a maximum of five days and no more. Otherwise, the results may contradict your expectations, leaving you regretting your choices.
Wrapping Up
We now know that the right and medically approved time to stay on a liquid diet is no more than five days. However, there can be people who might not be able to cope with it for even five days, and they might start getting sick in three or four days.
The threshold of a person can vary depending on their unique build and physiology. Therefore, the exact time to stay on a liquid diet may vary according to your body’s threshold. If you are manifesting the above-mentioned symptoms, you should drop off the idea of a fluid diet then and there!
