The Bone Broth Diet: 21 Days to Support Your Weight Loss Journey

Are you familiar with the bone broth diet? If you’ve been searching for the best way to lose weight or you’ve already heard that bone broth for weight loss works, then it was probably from someone referencing the 21 day broth diet.

It all started in 2015 when Dr. Kellyann, a naturopath and nutritionist, published a book titled: “Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet: Lose Up to 15 Pounds, 4 Inches—and Your Wrinkles! In Just 21 Days”.

Now the bone broth diet is all the rage. But what exactly is it and how does it work?

What is the Bone Broth Diet? 

Think “Paleo diet meets intermittent fasting” for 21 days—and voila, you have the bone broth diet. You’re on the Paleo diet for five days and you do intermittent fasting for two days for three weeks. 

Before you start thinking, “Oh man, I can’t eat solid foods for two days in a row?!”—Relax. You don’t have to fast for two days in a row. You can spread out your fasting days if that’s easier for you, however, weight loss is more likely to happen if you fast for longer than 24 hours. That’s because around the 24-48 hour mark, your body reaches a state of autophagy. This is when your body literally starts to eat itself and instead of using glucose for fuel, it starts to use fat, hence the weight loss. 

 Autophagy is a beneficial state to reach not just because it supports weight loss but also because in this state your body gets rid of old, damaged cells, and replaces them with newer, healthier cells. It’s like turning the clock back on your body!

A Sample 21 Days on the Bone Broth Diet

How much bone broth do you drink on Paleo days?

For each day that you’re on the Paleo diet, you’ll end up drinking anywhere from a cup of broth to a few cups. If you’re someone who loves to snack, then you’ll be drinking more bone broth than others. Because guess what? You’re not allowed to snack on the broth diet! You’ll need to substitute all those sugary or salty snacks you’re normally used to with warm, soothing broth. 

How much bone broth do you drink on fasting days?

Everyone is different. If you’ve never been on a diet like this before, you’ll probably have around 5-6 cups per day. If you snack a lot, you might have even more because when you have nothing but bone broth, the urge to snack could become magnified. It happens to many people, but it’s natural when you’ve been putting a bunch of junk in your body for a very long time.  

Your body will fight you during your bone broth fast, but you just have to remember that the pain you feel from wanting to eat sugary and salty snacks is temporary. You can pull through!

Is the Diet Easy to Follow?

This diet isn’t meant to be like a typical diet. It’s not meant to be difficult to understand, strict, or hard to keep up with. It’s meant to help you lose weight more naturally using a way of eating that our ancestors used.  

Ask yourself this: before the Industrial Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution, would we have the same kind of access to food as we do now? When you think about all the ways we can get food within the next 15 minutes, it wouldn’t surprise anyone that it’s so hard to lose weight. You can get food delivered by a restaurant or through delivery apps, you can pick it up ready at restaurants or drive-thrus, or you can get it at grocery stores (and more). A lot of these options are even available 24/7. The worst part? Most of this ready food is highly processed and inflammatory. 

When you take all that away, you’re left with how hunters and gatherers used to eat. Some days or even some seasons they’d have more food, and others not so much. On the days when there wouldn’t be a lot to eat but people would still have bones left, they could make bone broth out of it and get plenty of the minerals that their bodies needed.

Benefits of Bone Broth 

Bone broth for weight loss is just one benefit of many, however, you need to make sure that the bone broth you’re consuming isn’t just your regular grocery store broth with added ingredients that shouldn’t be in there. You need high quality keto bone broth made from bones that come from farms with healthy animals that roam freely on pesticide-free soil and aren’t grown using hormones.

That’s why Broya partners with local Canadian farmers who we trust and have been growing healthy, happy animals for decades.

“I tried a combo pack, I love all four flavours. They have amazing flavour and are delicious used in recipes or on their own.”

- Carrissa

When you have a GMO-free, ethically sourced, paleo + keto-friendly bone broth like Broya, you can enjoy all of these benefits:

1. Weight Loss Support 

Glutamine (one of the key amino acids found in bone broth) helps boost metabolism and energy, so you can burn calories more efficiently.

Not only that, but bone broth is super hydrating because it’s full of electrolytes. People often mistake dehydration for hunger, so staying hydrated is a key element in healthy weight loss.

2. Promotes Smoother Skin 

When you simmer bones in water for 24 hours (like we do at Broya) the broth becomes infused with collagen from the connective tissue and bone marrow. Collagen releases antioxidants inside the body, which help boost skin health and prevent early ageing of skin. 

Collagen is also essential in supporting healthy bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles, hair, and nails.

3. Aids in a Better Sleep Cycle 

Bone broth is chock full of glycine, a naturally occurring amino acid that interacts with neurotransmitters and assists in calming down the brain and relaxing the central nervous system. 

This one-two punch helps you “turn off” for the night so you can get a restful sleep. 

4. Relieves Digestive Issues

Bone broth contains gelatin and amino acids that are super helpful for digestion. They can ease many digestive issues like constipation, diarrhea, and gas. 

Glutamine also helps to actively reduce inflammation in the intestinal barrier. This can help relieve symptoms of more severe conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Crohn’s disease, and Leaky Gut. 

The nutrients pulled from the marrow inside the bones also contain a hormone called ‘adiponectin’ that ensures smooth digestion of food and regulates insulin levels. 

And when gut health improves, so does mood, depression, anxiety, and brain fog.

5. Aids in Muscle & Joint Recovery

The glycine in bone broth also speeds wound healing and promotes recovery... 

It’s got glutathione, an antioxidant that’s critical to repairing tissue and muscle fibers... 

AND... it’s rich in proline, another amino acid that helps to build muscle, repair tissue, and decrease inflammation. 

Bone marrow also contains more vitamins and minerals than the meat itself… which end up in our bone broth to provide a wallop of nutrients like calcium, glucosamine, and chondroitin which can help to alleviate pain in stiff joints.

So...How do I do the Bone Broth Diet?

You already know that you need to 1) have high-quality bone broth 2) stick to the paleo diet. So how do you do that? 

Here’s what you can and can’t eat on the Paleo diet: 

Credits to: CookSmarts

Now that you’ve seen this graph, the bone broth diet suddenly makes a lot more sense, right? When you put together a bone broth cleanse with the paleo diet, you’re supporting gut health and weight loss BIG TIME. That’s because you’re only consuming anti-inflammatory foods.  

If you need help with figuring out full meals, I’ve got your back!

Recipe Ideas for the 21 Day Bone Broth Diet

Here are some Paleo recipes that can get you started for your first week on the bone broth diet. You’ll see that none of them include grain-fed meat, grain-based products like potatoes or corn, refined oils, refined sugars, or dairy. 

Breakfast Ideas

• Avocado Banana Smoothie
• Meal Prep Chia Pudding
• Flourless Pumpkin Pancakes

Lunch Ideas

• Italian Wedding Soup
• Paleo Chicken Broccoli
• Creamy Keto Salmon “Pasta”

Dinner Ideas

• Buffalo Chicken Casserole
• Paleo Chicken Pot Pie
• Paleo Meatloaf

Sample Bone Broth Diet Schedule

In case you needed to see what a week would look like on the broth diet, I’ve prepared a sample schedule. You’ll notice that some of the meals repeat and that’s because you’ll probably want to make a lot of some meals or even freeze them for the week after. No one’s got time to cook three times a day, am I right?! 

What type of bone broth should you use?

We always encourage people to make bone broth on their own at home because there’s nothing like the smell and taste of home-cooked broth (although some people hate the smell and would rather not stink up their home! However, if you’re in a pinch for time, you don’t have the tools or enough room at home, or you want a more convenient way to get home-cooked bone broth shipped right to your door, that’s why we’re here.