Therapeutic Fasting – How Often a Year? Rhythm and Experience

Key points at a glance

• Therapeutic fasting cannot be prescribed, only recommended: for healthy adults, one to two fasting periods a year are a proven rhythm.
• Many people fast seasonally, for instance a week in spring and one in autumn, because the course of the year offers natural caesuras.
• First-time fasters and regular fasters approach the question differently – the rhythm grows with one's own experience.
• Between fasting periods, intermittent fasting and the Schlanke Tanne Low Carb, the house's own low-carb way of eating, keep the effect alive in everyday life.
• Which rhythm suits you personally is discussed at the Tannerhof in the closing medical consultation – always individual, never by a fixed scheme.

How often therapeutic fasting makes sense in a year

The question of frequency is understandable, for a fast needs to find its place in the year. At the Naturhotel Tannerhof we understand the answer as a recommendation, not a rule: how often you fast is your decision, ideally together with the medical team. For many healthy adults, a rhythm of once or twice a year has proven itself, and this is precisely the range that keeps appearing in reputable fasting sources.

Fasting after Buchinger is the conscious, time-limited abstention from solid food and stimulants – more than a diet, a therapeutic method, a cleansing on many levels and an encounter with oneself. Anyone wishing to see the medically supervised framework at the house or book it online will find it in the Body Detox programme, and the method itself on the page on fasting after Buchinger.

There is no fixed annual number, and that is not a shortcoming but the heart of the matter. Every person is different, and the right rhythm depends on health, prior experience and stage of life. The Buchinger Wilhelmi fasting clinic puts it this way in its recommendation on regular fasting: fast once a year for five to thirty days, and beyond that give the body a small metabolic reset now and then, roughly every two to six months. That is not a timetable but an orientation – the exact frequency remains an individual decision.

Typical rhythms: once or twice a year

When guests ask for a point of reference, once or twice a year is the most common. For healthy adults this rhythm is as a rule well tolerated and reliably brings back the positive effects of fasting without overtaxing the body. Some stay for years with one fasting week a year, others settle on two fixed dates, one in spring and one in autumn.

This orientation helps, but it is no measure for everyone. Which rhythm fits depends on your own concern:

• Once a year – a conscious caesura that returns year after year and takes a fixed place in the calendar.
• Twice a year – usually in spring and autumn, when the course of the year invites a change anyway.
• More often, in shorter phases – possible with medical supervision, for instance with a health concern or a clear personal goal.

What matters here is the duration in relation to the frequency. A longer fasting period of several weeks belongs, by common fasting practice, rather once a year, while shorter fasting weeks can be repeated well. At the Tannerhof we recommend five fasting days and upwards, because otherwise the changeover gets little room; for a fasting week with build-up, a good week of time comes together that you should take for yourself.

Seasonal fasting: spring and autumn

Seasonal fasting has a long tradition, and it still carries today. Many people deliberately place their fasting week in spring or autumn – in the transitional times, when the course of the year marks a change anyway. Spring stands for a fresh start after winter, autumn for a pause before the darker season. Both moments fit well into a yearly rhythm of one to two fasting periods.

At the Naturhotel Tannerhof each season has its own appeal. In spring the alpine meadow opens, the mountain brook carries meltwater, and the clear, pure mountain air carries the new beginning. In autumn calm settles over the Leitzach valley, the view towards the Wendelstein grows clearer, and the fast finds a particularly quiet setting. Mein Versteck in den Bergen – my hideaway in the mountains – means the same in every season: a place where the essential moves back into the foreground. When in the year you fast is your decision – both are lovely.

First-time fasters and regular fasters

How often someone fasts also depends on where they stand. First-time fasters and long-standing regular guests enter the fasting week with different questions, and that shapes the rhythm that feels right for them.

The first rhythm

For first-time fasters it is at first not about frequency but about the first time at all. Here a week is a lovely size: about seven fasting days plus two to three build-up days, around ten days in total. This first experience is the foundation for everything that follows. From it grows a sense of how one's own body reacts to fasting – and whether it should become a recurring rhythm. Often it is precisely the closing consultation at the end of the first week in which the question of the next time first comes up.

The grown rhythm

Regular fasters and returning guests often already know their rhythm. Some have come once each spring for years, others have found two dates a year for themselves. For them the frequency is agreed individually with the medical team, which knows their course over time. Experienced fasters typically report that the adjustment days become easier each time and that inner calm sets in more quickly – fasting becomes more familiar without losing its depth. The longer and more regularly someone fasts, the more clearly it enters the year as a recurring matter of course.

What fasters experience between fasting periods

The question of how often has a quiet flip side: what actually happens between two fasting periods? This is where it is decided how much of the fasting week remains in everyday life. Therapeutic fasting sets two processes in motion in the body at once – the switch to fat burning and autophagy, the cellular recycling for whose discovery Yoshinori Ohsumi received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016. Both effects carry beyond the fasting week, yet they fade if everyday life simply continues unchanged afterwards.

That is precisely why at the Tannerhof we recommend not letting the effect rest until the next fasting period but keeping it alive in everyday life. This changes the question of frequency: anyone who eats consciously between fasting periods needs the compact fast less as a pure reset and can experience it more as a conscious caesura. Two of the house's own paths carry the fasting experience into everyday life.

Intermittent fasting as a bridge in everyday life

Intermittent fasting is not Buchinger, and it is not meant to replace it. Fasting after Buchinger is compact fasting over several days; intermittent fasting, for instance in a 16/8 rhythm, is the house's own recommendation for carrying the benefits of compact fasting into everyday life. Instead of several fasting days in a row, here there is a longer daily eating pause, often overnight – a quiet, everyday-friendly rhythm that keeps the fasting effect alive between two large fasting periods.

The Schlanke Tanne Intervall is the Tannerhof way of doing this. It combines the principle of the daily eating pause with the Schlanke Tanne Low Carb, the house's own low-carb way of eating, and so turns fasting into a recurring everyday habit rather than a one-off event. So the inner calm of fasting remains noticeable even when the next fasting week is still months away.

The Schlanke Tanne as everyday nutrition

The second path leads through the food itself. After the build-up, at the Tannerhof we recommend staying at least one further week in the Schlanke Tanne – as a transition between the fasting week and accustomed everyday life. Anyone who likes makes more of it: the Schlanke Tanne Drei and the Schlanke Tanne Intervall are intended as a permanent way of eating in everyday life, to make the fasting effect lasting.

The Schlanke Tanne Low Carb is not abstention into emptiness but a way of eating differently without diminishing the joy of eating – with protein, vegetables and good fats. When the gain in pleasure and joy in life, rather than abstention, stands in the foreground. Which follow-on nutrition suits you does not belong in a general formula but in the closing medical consultation, in which what has changed is evaluated and how everyday life can look afterwards is discussed. It is often precisely here that the personal fasting rhythm for the coming year becomes tangible for the first time.

What matters medically for the rhythm

Behind the question of frequency stands a well-documented body of evidence. The guidelines on fasting therapy come from the Medical Society for Fasting and Nutrition (ÄGHE), a society of doctors that gives therapeutic fasting a sound professional basis; further studies on fasting therapy can be consulted there. They place its use under professional supervision among others for rheumatic diseases, high blood pressure, the metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus type II – and emphasise individual adaptation over a rigid scheme.

How well repeated and longer fasting is tolerated is shown by a large observational study by Wilhelmi de Toledo and colleagues from 2019, published in PLOS One. It followed 1,422 people over fasting periods of four to twenty-one days after the Buchinger method. Severe or lasting adverse effects did not occur, physical and emotional well-being rose markedly in all groups, and 93.2 per cent experienced no hunger during the fast. This supports the experience that fasting in a measured yearly rhythm is well bearable. How often it fits in the individual case nevertheless always belongs, at the Tannerhof, in the medical clarification.

At the Tannerhof, therapeutic fasting is always medically supervised. The medical team advises and adjusts the fasting week individually, from the intake consultation on the first fasting day with history-taking, physical examination including bioimpedance analysis and a review of medications, through to the closing consultation, in which the recommendation for everyday life and the further rhythm is discussed. The accompanying range of treatments is deliberately broad: medical applications such as bioimpedance analysis and IHHT altitude training depending on the programme, compresses and packs such as the hayflower compress and aroma compress, the Kneipp alternating affusion and magnesium-rich detox baths, massages such as the fasting massage and the detox massage with Königsöl or the acidosis massage, as well as breathing therapy. For the mental side there is psychotherapeutic coaching, nature coaching and art therapy. Which rhythm fits with this emerges from this interplay, not from a fixed number.

Discovering therapeutic fasting at the Tannerhof

The Naturhotel Tannerhof has offered fasting after Buchinger under medical supervision for over 70 years, embedded in Bayrischzell between alpine meadow, mountain brook and the view towards the Wendelstein. Which fasting rhythm suits you emerges in conversation with the medical team. Anyone wishing to see the framework or book it online will find it in the Body Detox programme, the overview of method and way of eating on the page Therapeutic Fasting and Schlanke Tanne, and the methodology in detail at fasting after Buchinger.