Fasting in the Mountains: Why Altitude and Quiet Deepen the Fast

The essentials

• Fasting in the mountains at Tannerhof means walking, looking, settling down, giving the body time, and learning to eat again.
• Bayrischzell lies in the Upper Bavarian Leitzach valley, with a view of the Wendelstein and between the Wendelstein and the Sonnwendjoch.
• Studies on time in nature show that twenty to thirty minutes outdoors measurably lower stress hormone levels.
• Movement is part of Buchinger fasting therapy: moderate aerobic and moderate strength training, slower than usual.
• Landscape and medical guidance stand as equals and deepen each other.

My hideaway in the mountains

People who travel to the mountains to fast rarely come only for the method. They come for distance and a different view from the window. They come for a morning that runs not through appointments but across an alpine meadow, along a mountain stream, up to the next ridge or back down. At Tannerhof this becomes my hideaway in the mountains — a retreat that gives the fast room without filling it.

Naturhotel Tannerhof offers Body Detox as medically guided Buchinger fasting. The method stays clear: the conscious, time-limited abstention from solid food and stimulants. Instead of meals, herbal tea, mild vegetable broth, freshly pressed juices and plenty of water carry the day. The mountain setting does not change the method — it makes it more physical, more visible, easier to live.

Bayrischzell sits in Upper Bavaria, southeast of Munich, in the upper Leitzach valley. From Tannerhof the view opens across alpine meadows and orchards up to the Wendelstein. All around: mountains, the slender hut towers on the slope, forest and weather beyond. It is a landscape that does not try to impress but carries. That is what matters when you fast.

Why the mountain rhythm deepens the fast

Fasting is more than a diet. It is a therapeutic method, a cleansing on several levels, and a meeting with oneself. In this meeting the surroundings matter more than people often assume. People who fast notice more closely. A herbal tea in the morning tastes different, the midday soup becomes the right appointment, the view into the valley carries weight. The body gets little — the senses get more.

The effect of time in nature is now well studied. A widely cited study by Hunter and colleagues (Frontiers in Psychology, 2019) measured cortisol in city dwellers before and after time outdoors. The result: a nature experience clearly lowered the stress hormone cortisol, most effectively within a window of twenty to thirty minutes. A review of Japanese shinrin-yoku, mindful forest bathing (Antonelli et al., International Journal of Biometeorology, 2019), reaches a similar finding: time in the forest measurably lowers cortisol in the short term compared with urban surroundings.

These findings describe no mountain miracle and no altitude promise. They simply show what many fasting guests at Tannerhof have long felt: that the surroundings take part in the stress experience. When the body is already winding down in the fast, here it meets a place that is doing the same. Alpine meadow, mountain stream, wide view. Nothing more is needed — and it is enough.

Movement that fits the fast

In the mountains, movement is not a loud programme. It grows out of the landscape. You walk slowly, feel your pulse, turn back or keep going. The right measure does not come from ambition but from the fasting day itself.

Movement has always been part of Buchinger fasting therapy — the Guidelines on Fasting Therapy, published by the German Medical Society for Therapeutic Fasting and Nutrition (ÄGHE), list movement in fresh air as part of the treatment. At Tannerhof this translates into a quiet rhythm: moderate aerobic and moderate strength training alongside yoga, Feldenkrais, Tai Chi, Theraband training and breathing therapy. Summit tours and hiking are possible, only slower than in the everyday eating life — the body nourishes itself from within. New athletic peak performances are not on the schedule; the measure follows the fast, not the other way round.

People who want more structure find in Hiking and Fasting the combination of Buchinger fasting and guided mountain walks in the surrounding terrain. For everyone else the paths at the house are enough: Tannerhof sits on roughly 16 hectares of its own grounds, with alpine meadows, a mountain stream and access to the tours around Bayrischzell. A fine one is the Seeberg loop — the magazine describes it as Favourite Hike: Seeberg Loop, with a wide view to the Wendelstein and into the Leitzach valley.

What happens while walking is easy to describe. People who otherwise live in their heads notice during a fast that walking is not a side matter. It sorts. It brings the breath into a rhythm. And it leads through a landscape that helps the slowing down, instead of working against it.

What happens in the body

So that the experience does not stay a mere feeling, a look at what happens medically helps. During a fast the body works on two levels at once, which are often mixed up and can be clearly distinguished.

The first level is fat burning. As quickly available carbohydrate stores decline, metabolism shifts more strongly to fatty acids and ketone bodies — according to ÄGHE documentation roughly within twenty-four to seventy-two hours after the start of the fast. The body increasingly draws energy from its own reserves.

The second level is autophagy, the actual goal of fasting. It does not mean fat burning but the body's own recycling and cleansing processes at the cellular level: cell components are broken down, used and re-ordered. Cleaning happens everywhere — cellular, in connective tissue, in the gut, in liver and kidneys. Both processes run together during the fast but describe different mechanisms.

The ÄGHE publishes the Guidelines on Fasting Therapy as well as studies on fasting therapy. They place fasting as a medically guidable method, among others for rheumatic conditions, allergies, autoimmune diseases, asthma, migraine, type II diabetes, high blood pressure and depression. Whether therapeutic fasting fits in an individual case always belongs at Tannerhof to medical clarification — never to a blanket promise. Weight loss may be a side effect but is not the core.

Landscape and medical guidance — as equals

At Tannerhof three things belong together: the method, the medical guidance and the landscape. The method gives structure, the medical team gives safety and individual direction, and the mountains give space. None stands above the others. Fasting in a moving landscape is much more intense — and a moving landscape only unfolds its full depth with experienced guidance.

Medical guidance during fasting is not strictly required, but useful. At Tannerhof therapeutic fasting is always medically guided, because three generations of physicians have been at home with fasting here. The doctors at Tannerhof are fasting experts. The medical appointments form a quiet arc: on the first fasting day after arrival comes the intake consultation; if needed a follow-up; at the end a closing consultation.

The intake consultation is holistic. It includes history-taking, physical examination including bioimpedance analysis and a medication review — and beyond that the questions of why someone is fasting, what goals matter at Tannerhof beyond the fast, what is happening in life right now, and what fasting experience already exists. First the conversation, then, where suitable, the start of the fast, often with Glauber's salt, the classical optional tool for the fasting start, or another individually agreed method. Every person is different; the individual stands at the centre.

The accompanying treatments are tailored to fasting, and the spectrum is deliberately broad. It includes medical history-taking and examination, follow-up consultation and closing consultation, bioimpedance analysis, IHHT altitude training depending on the programme, Kneipp alternating affusion, hay flower wraps, aromatic wraps, mud and warm packs, magnesium-rich detoxifying baths, fasting massage, detoxifying massage with king's oil or acidosis massage, lymphatic drainage, foot reflexology and breathing therapy. Plus sauna and mental accompaniment such as psychotherapeutic coaching, nature coaching or art therapy. The booking and stay logic stays simple: the length of stay is booked before arrival, and from the intake consultation onward the duration and course can be adjusted together with the accompanying physicians, including extension.

Water, warmth and mountain views

Movement at Tannerhof also includes water. The BadeHarpfe (2025) combines a Finnish sauna, a panoramic relaxation room, an endurance-and-strength fitness area and the outdoor natural pool. The pool is 25 by 5 metres, stainless steel, naturally purified and heated from April to October; in winter it is used for ice bathing. It looks out between the Wendelstein and the Sonnwendjoch — a bath with a mountain backdrop, in a fasting week a quiet highlight of the day. Sweat-laugh-dive.

The BadeHarpfe takes up an archaic alpine wooden building principle and translates it into new alpine architecture: much wood, much light, the view always outside. This too belongs to fasting in the mountains. When the surroundings do not demand too much, slowing down becomes easier. The Lufthütten from 1905 stand small and close to nature, the hut towers slender on the slope. It is grown simplicity, no slick effect — and exactly therefore a good frame for a method the house has carried for generations.

The transition back

A fasting week does not end with the last fasting day. The breaking of the fast, which still counts as fasting time, begins at Tannerhof at midday with a small bowl of faster's broth and then the apple, raw or steamed, chewed very consciously. After that comes the rebuilding over roughly one third of the fasting time, with easily digestible vegetables, fermented foods and fibre. People who jump back into the old everyday quickly take away part of the transition from the body. That is why rebuilding belongs to the fast itself.

In the closing consultation it is discussed how nutrition can look afterwards, with an evaluation of the change and recommendations for everyday life. If a lasting change is wanted, Schlanke Tanne Low Carb can follow, the in-house low-carb form. It carries the fasting experience into everyday life, with good protein, vegetables and more conscious pauses, for example as intermittent fasting — the in-house recommendation for holding the benefits of compact fasting in daily life. More at Therapeutic Fasting and Schlanke Tanne.

So what remains from fasting in the mountains is not just the memory of a beautiful week. What remains is a body memory: how little is sometimes enough, how clearly a soup can taste, how different a path becomes when it does not simply lead from A to B. Perhaps that is exactly the old Tannerhof thought in present form: Be essential.

Fasting in Bayrischzell

People looking for fasting in the mountains find at Naturhotel Tannerhof a place where landscape and medical guidance work as equals: Buchinger fasting, medical team, the Fasterstube, broad treatments, measured movement, Lufthütten, hut towers, and the BadeHarpfe with a view between the Wendelstein and the Sonnwendjoch. More on the concrete framework and online booking at Body Detox, more on the link between walking and fasting at Hiking and Fasting.