7 Day Water Fast Results: Before and After
The before-and-after photos are what made the video travel. That's the part LADbible ran, the part UNILAD ran, the part that got shared. So let's talk about what those photos actually show — and what they don't.
The before and after is in the video: 14 minutes, filmed daily across all seven days.
The visible change was real. The explanation is boring.
Yes, I looked noticeably leaner after seven days. Yes, the photos are unedited. And no, it was not seven days of fat loss.
Here's the honest breakdown of what comes off during an extended water fast:
- Water. The biggest chunk, especially in the first 72 hours. Every gram of stored glycogen holds roughly three grams of water with it. Burn through the glycogen, the water goes too.
- Whatever's in your digestive tract. Not glamorous, but it's several pounds and it's the reason your stomach looks flatter almost immediately.
- Sodium and the bloat that comes with it. No food means no added salt. A lot of what people read as "fat loss" in a before-and-after is actually just de-bloating.
- Some actual fat. Real, but the smallest slice of the pie by a wide margin.
- Some muscle. Nobody puts this in the thumbnail. Extended fasting without protein means your body breaks down some lean tissue too.
So the photo is true and the implication is false. It looks like a week of fat loss. It's mostly a week of dehydration and an empty gut.
What happened when I started eating again
Most of it came back within about a week of normal eating. Not because I binged — because the water came back. You refill glycogen, you refill water, the scale moves back up. That is physiology working correctly, not failure.
This is the single most important thing I can tell anyone who found this page after watching a before-and-after video: the photo is a snapshot of the most dehydrated moment of someone's week. That's why it looks dramatic. It isn't a sustainable state and it was never meant to be one.
What actually lasted
Almost nothing physical. But two things stuck, and they're the reason I don't regret doing it:
My relationship with hunger changed. Before the fast, I treated hunger as an emergency. After going seven days, a normal three-hour gap between meals stopped registering as anything at all. That recalibration has lasted years.
I found out how much of my eating was scenery. Boredom, habit, the fact that it was noon, something to do with my hands while I edited. Take food away completely and all of that becomes visible. You can't un-see it.
What I'd tell someone who wants the same results
If your goal is the before-and-after photo — you can get most of that look with three days of low sodium, high water, and no processed food, and it'll cost you nothing medically. The seven-day version is not seven times better. It's the same visual effect with substantially more risk.
If your goal is fat loss that stays, extended fasting is one of the least efficient ways to get it. A modest calorie deficit you can hold for two months will beat any single dramatic week, and you won't spend day two with a headache and cold hands.
If your goal is to find out what it's like — that's the honest reason I did it, and it's the only reason I'd say was worth it.
The mistakes
There were several, and one of them was genuinely dangerous. I wrote those up separately: the things I'd do differently.
Keep reading
- What Happens to Your Body During a 7 Day Water Fast — the full day-by-day account
- Water Fasting Mistakes I'd Avoid — seven things I got wrong
I'm a YouTuber in Charleston, South Carolina. These are my own before-and-after photos from a fast I filmed day by day — the video has 1.8 million views and was picked up by LADbible, UNILAD and MSN. More about me.
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