Does Vitamin D Break a Fast?

If your goal is gut health, then vitamin D will most likely break your fast. If it’s weight loss, then it probably won’t.

Does Vitamin D Break a Fast?

Whether or not something breaks a fast depends on your goal with Intermittent Fasting. If you’re looking for the gut health perks of Intermittent Fasting, then anything other than water and electrolytes will likely break a fast. However, if you’re looking to achieve a weight loss goal, anything that causes insulin (the storing hormone) to spike will break a fast.

With this in mind, vitamin D will very likely break a fast if your goal is to improve gut health. Intermittent Fasting helps to improve gut health by activating the gut cleaning process called the Migrating Motor Complex. This flushes out left behind food and bacteria that typically causes bloating and GI distress. When you eat/drink anything other than water or electrolytes, this has the potential to stop the Migrating Motor Complex. Because of this, you might want to keep your vitamin D intake to your eating window with a gut health goal in mind.

However, if your goal is weight loss, vitamin D won’t break a fast. Typical vitamin D supplements come in capsule form and are packaged with an oil – usually olive oil. Pure fats don’t spike the storing hormone insulin. This means that the body stays in a fat burning state. But it’s important to note that vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. This means it needs to be eaten with other forms of fat to be best absorbed by the body. So even though you can take vitamin D during your fast, you might want to hold off until your eating window when you can get better absorption.

Pssst – wondering which Intermittent Fasting schedule is best for YOU? Take my free Intermittent Fasting schedule quiz!