I'm trying fasting again

[obelisk]

BITG, do you aim for eating at maintenance during your non-fast days?

I've done enough dry and water fasts for health and religious reasons over the past few years that I can get through a 24-36hr fast without much issue. I eat pure carnivore (or try to) as I feel infinitely better with no brain fog and just prefer the feeling. (not looking to argue the pros and cons of carnivore, think what you all want) However, I got the flu on Thanksgiving and have been having a harder time eating closer to maintenance lately and finding it far too easy to come in way under calories on a given day.

I like the idea of a Wed/Fri water fast with 5 days otherwise. Just curious if you're aiming for maintenance, or a slight deficit or surplus with the 2 days of full fasting already in your schedule. I think some additional structure to my weekly program would be helpful. Do you aim your strength training days on the non-fast days or does it not impact you?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

BITG, do you aim for eating at maintenance during your non-fast days?

I've done enough dry and water fasts for health and religious reasons over the past few years that I can get through a 24-36hr fast without much issue. I eat pure carnivore (or try to) as I feel infinitely better with no brain fog and just prefer the feeling. (not looking to argue the pros and cons of carnivore, think what you all want) However, I got the flu on Thanksgiving and have been having a harder time eating closer to maintenance lately and finding it far too easy to come in way under calories on a given day.

I like the idea of a Wed/Fri water fast with 5 days otherwise. Just curious if you're aiming for maintenance, or a slight deficit or surplus with the 2 days of full fasting already in your schedule. I think some additional structure to my weekly program would be helpful. Do you aim your strength training days on the non-fast days or does it not impact you?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

It depends.

When I was up at 245 lbs, I was using about a 500 calorie deficit per day even on non fasting days. This worked well until I hit about 190 lbs or so, then I ended up getting "stuck" for while within about a 3-4 range for a few weeks.

As normal, when this happens to me, the answer is to up my calories, so I went back to maintenance for a few weeks, then cut back only 200 calories per day on non-fasting days and the weight started coming off again.

This is always a tough time of year for me, but I managed to hit 178 lbs and am still holding under 185 lbs even with a lot of not great eating days. Honestly with how things normally go at this time of year I am pretty thrilled by this.

I likely am probably intaking 3500+ calories at least 2 times a week, if not 3. Has basically had no effect tho since I still am getting 12-20K steps in per day, intense resistance training 4x a week and have added slam ball finishers post workouts, which is taking over for my inability to do weighted sled pulls in the winter.

If I can get thru the holidays at this weight I will be set up really well moving forward.

I have found that it takes some experimentation in regards to caloric intake on non-fast days. Also depends on your goals. Are you trying to lose fat or gain muscle? Probably a good start would be maintenance levels for 2 weeks. When you change calories you need to give it at least 2 weeks to get a good read on things, otherwise you risk driving yourself crazy and not really getting anywhere.

If you are losing weight you don't want to lose, raise it by 200 calories at a time. If it's too much lower it by 200 calories.

Then re-assess where you are after 2 weeks again. Then repeat the process if needed and you can start dialing it in a little more with 100 calorie increments, etc.

In general, I fast on days I am off from lifting.

Hope that helps...if there is something I missed, let me know and I can re-answer.

 

[Obee1]

Can you just list the equation names you used? Mifflin St-Jeor as an example? Just trying to make sense of the numbers - I don't need the entire math breakdown.

NP! Katch McArdle. But instead of height I inputted bf%. Then I added another variable which I neglected to mention. Moderate activity. The study I used was young men moderately active.

Source?

Here is a quote from the study below. The parenthesis are mine" The main thesis of this paper is that the FM (fat mass) is able to transfer energy to the FFM (fat free mass) up to a maximum rate of (290±25) kJ/kg d. In realistic energy deficit situations, the actual transfer rate is decreased by activity considerations."

I used 30 calories by converting 290 kilojoules to calories. 290= 69.3 calories per kilogram= 31.5 calories from 1 lb of fat. Then -/+25kilojoules. So using the same formula, (-) is 265 KJ.........28.79 calories per lb of fat. (+) is 316 KJ............34.2 calories per lb of fat. So I picked 30 calories because it's an easy number between 28 and 34. Although a great study, the fact that they are young healthy men I would think is a variable.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022519304004175?via%3Dihub

'm of the belief that if someone is fat (>20%BF) and/or not trained/detrained, that muscle can still be gained during a deficit (recomp). Once getting lean beyond those numbers, or if already carrying significant muscle mass, I would agree that muscle stops accruing when in a deficit.
The only caveat I have to that belief is that when steroids are involved, you can gain muscle in a deficit - even lose fat during a bulk (provided it is a lean bulk and taking Tren and/or Anavar). But pharmaceuticals are a cheat code anyhow.

So based on those variables you could be right, I don't know. A severe caloric restriction may have a person losing lean mass in 4-5 days. Tren and/or Anavar would definitely increase protein synthesis as long as the person is consuming enough protein over and above his maintenance needs and with the right stimulus. Another variable. Both sedentary and extreme workouts can induce muscle loss under the right conditions. (Food energy and rest). I think to give it a chance a person should be at a calorie deficit each week while eating in surplus around training days. To my original comment. Somewhere in my Dropbox I have a study that shows caloric restriction of a year on nonobese people. Health markers got better, they got stronger, and...................................lost muscle mass. But again, variables.

Curious on your thoughts as to Lyle MacDonald's Rapid Fatloss Handbook approach (PSMF) if you're familiar.

It works! Certainly not sustainable but not designed to be. Lyle wouldn't know me but he used to give me advice on cuts on an old forum called Cyberpump in the mid nineties. He's always had a cloud over him because he associated with Dan Duchaine and because he has only his undergraduate. He was putting into practice what many researchers were only theorizing about. Someone would tell him a scientific reason why something won't work while it's been working for him and his athletes for 20 years, and he knows why. His books may not be heavy in citations but I bet he knows them. Put more citations in his books and they would put many doctorial dissertations to shame.

 

[Obee1]

Not even a DOI number?

Dude...

You guys could be more in agreement than you think. The thing with studies is that researchers have to do their best to get published and garner headlines. This may help them get more notoriety among their peers and funding for future research. One way they do this is presenting results using absolute increases/ decreases or relative increases/ decreases, whichever fits their agenda. The statin industry is excellent at this. Say 3.7% of people taking statins died of heart attack and 4.8% taking a placebo die from heart attack. Then the absolute risk reduction of taking a statin is a paltry 1.1%. When it goes to the press it will show a 23% reduction in death if you take their statin. (Relative effect). 1.1% divided by 4.8% = 23%. So it's hard to come to a consensus sometimes when one person is arguing the absolute benefit while the other is touting relative benefit when they could both be right. I haven't looked at any of the research you guys have put up, so I could be wrong, just saying.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

I've actually temporarily stopped fasting as I was not seeing any results over the prior 2 months from it, or very minimal.

What I am learning is that fasting is a great tool to use to get you to a certain point quickly but then I think it becomes diminishing returns.

Since going back to eating daily in a 500ish calorie deficit while still carb cycling, I have found that various aches, pains and pulls that I was getting routinely have suddenly vanished, which makes me think I wasn't getting enough nutrients to repair these issues while fasting twice a week.

As I did it for over a year, there was a lot of time for these issues to creep up slowly which made it difficult to attribute these to fasting itself. I still can't say 100% with any accuracy that this was the cause but it does seem odd they improved and went away within 2-3 weeks of me eating daily again.

Also have noticed a slow and steady decrease in the scale on a near daily basis. Part of the issue I started noticing was that after fasts I would be so hungry I would go ham on food and be less restrictive. So this ended up likely having me stuck around +/- 5 lbs of 180ish for a while. Currently at 176 and expecting 175s tomorrow.

Going to stick with this til May and then re-evaluate.

 

[EyeBRollin]

Current macros:
P: 300
F: 50-60
C: 125

Why is the protein so much higher than carbs?

 

[EyeBRollin]

Satiety, Thermic Effect of Food, Steroids increase protein synthesis rate, and because losing muscle is a travesty.

Ahh. Okay. I was going to say. I don’t understand how athletic people can get by on only 500 calories worth of carbs per day. I’d feel like complete shvt.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Ahh. Okay. I was going to say. I don’t understand how athletic people can get by on only 500 calories worth of carbs per day. I’d feel like complete shvt.

Well for people on keto who have been doing it a while it's because after a few weeks your body changes pathways to preferentially burn fatty acids for fuel instead of carbs.

The body prefers carbs, but after 2 weeks or so of consistent low carbs, the cells begin to switch to "backup" mode and greatly enhance their ability to burn fatty acids instead and lessen their ability to burn carbs.

Think of it as like a hybrid engine. If you run out of gas, the electric motor takes over and runs on electricity.

However, this means that once you switch back to carbs the body will be highly inefficient at burning it for fuel and the body will store a lot of it as fat for the first 2 weeks...so when you stop keto, you have to wean yourself back onto carbs slowly or you will pack on fat quickly.

There was actual some research done on this and basically your body "forgets" how to use carbs after a period of time if you don't eat them...which isn't surprising since with almost everything else in the body, it only keeps things functioning which are needed and used on a regular basis and downregulates things that aren't.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

I would be very interested to see this research.

It's called "carb intolerance", I am trying to locate it, first heard about this while listening to one of the videos by Thomas DeLauer who does a pretty exceptional job about talking about a wide array of things and breaking down the studies on them.

Another one showed that long term keto diets can cause glucose intolerance and reduced beta cells functioning in the pancreas where the beta cells no longer produce enough insulin. This happened in as little as 22 weeks.

Obviously once the body returns to using carbs again, that functionality returns over time as new beta cells are produced. But again, showing the body stops keeping up body functions that it doesn't use regularly.

So it turns into a double whammy...

Cells do not respond to insulin efficiently AND the pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin.

Go to perplexity.ai, turn on Co-Pilot and type in "carb intolerance after keto diet" and it will give you the relevant info with links to studies.

Thomas DeLauer also has a video about it, he has a ton of content so it will take me a while to find it but I will track it down at some point and link to it.

 

[bella_gray14]

Fasting is a good option, but again, you cannot control your cravings. Also, you could face deficiency diseases, if you don't get proper nutrition over a time.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Fasting is a good option, but again, you cannot control your cravings. Also, you could face deficiency diseases, if you don't get proper nutrition over a time.

Actually you can. Many cravings are caused by feeding the wrong bacteria over a long period of time and the more you resist feeding them when they try and force you to do it, the more of them get replaced by the bacteria that you are feeding that don't give you those cravings.

 

[Lean Baby Face]

I do 1-2 meals a day and have done so for approximately 5 years now, and it works wonders for maintaining/losing weight. Also worth mentioning that I'm a low-carber myself, so my body either burns dietary or body fat throughout the day, which makes it easy to know if I'm losing weight or not; the less fat I eat, the more I know my body will use my own.

The only thing that keeps me from reaching my desired leanness are my occasional binges (which I sadly do enjoy a lot), however, the weight I gain from those is mostly bloat, water, and salt, but visually they make me look puffy and it usually takes me 3-5 days on my diet to completely rid myself of the bloat.

 

[bella_gray14]

That's nice to know. I too have replaced my dinner with some healthy salads and it has worked for me to some extent, now It is becoming a bit difficult for me.

 

[Ricky]

Peter Attia was seeing too much muscle loss on his DEXA scans and seemed to implicate some of his longer fasts for it.

I saw an interesting study on cyclists that i need to link. It involved a ton of exercise though, but essentially they managed to lose body fat but not lean muscle. I could see doing it if you have some fat you need to lose for a vacation but the amount of cycling you need to do daily would almost require a vacation before the vacation to have enough time to finish it all haha.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

I do 1-2 meals a day and have done so for approximately 5 years now, and it works wonders for maintaining/losing weight. Also worth mentioning that I'm a low-carber myself, so my body either burns dietary or body fat throughout the day, which makes it easy to know if I'm losing weight or not; the less fat I eat, the more I know my body will use my own.

The only thing that keeps me from reaching my desired leanness are my occasional binges (which I sadly do enjoy a lot), however, the weight I gain from those is mostly bloat, water, and salt, but visually they make me look puffy and it usually takes me 3-5 days on my diet to completely rid myself of the bloat.

Not a fan of low carb long term.

It's got its place in the tool box for short term fat loss, but carb cycling is far superior long term and has all of benefits with none of the drawbacks.

 

[BeExcellent]

I am a low carb/keto advocate. I'm also 55 and peri menopausal (be super happy you aren't dealing with those hormone changes...they bite.) I went from 115 to 135 in 2 years despite intermittent fasting, one meal and a couple of snacks per day, and I'm still very height/weight appropriate at a BMI of 22.5 but I liked the way I looked at the prior BMI of 18.5.

My eating and exercise habits are unchanged over the past 20 years, so I'm used to this as a lifestyle choice.

The weight gain has stopped, and I am walking on average 3 miles a day. I think walking is one of the very best ways to burn fat/maintain muscle....and interestingly one of the oddities of menopausal changes has to do with breast tissue. I do not have fake boobs. But I'd say fully 10 lbs of that gain went to breast tissue distribution. DD to F. Another 4 lbs went to my rear and the rest is evenly everywhere else. When I am strict on calorie restriction for about 36 hours, with unsweet tea, black coffee and lemon/unsweet cranberry/apple cider vinegar diluted in water removes bloat and I will trim down most rapidly abdominally.

My issue is I do enjoy a glass or 2 of wine several evenings a week and have joked with my doctor that I'm probably the poster child for the gout diet, as in a rich hight fat, high protien diet accompanied by regular wine consumption. I am never hungry (like seriously never).

I know if I went to lean skinless chicken breast with broccoli most of the time, and completely cut alcohol, I'd probably start dropping weight. My thyroid is sluggish (it always has been) and this is now medicated with T3 (because T4 supplementation was ineffective as my body just made reverse T3 instead of T3.....a most annoying issue).

Now that its cooled off I'm also doing a poor man's thermogenesis. I get in the unheated swimming pool (probably 60 degrees) for 30 minutes, submerged up to my neck and stretch. That seems to raise the sluggish metabolism I deal with. There is research which shows that cold water exposure encourages the body to convert white fat to brown fat, and brown fat is more available for the body to burn as fuel.

Part of the trouble, I think, is that each person is individual and what works well for one person may have limited use for another person.

But metabolic rate slows with age too, and that's an adjustment.

 

[Vanderdonck]

I am a low carb/keto advocate. I'm also 55 and peri menopausal (be super happy you aren't dealing with those hormone changes...they bite.) I went from 115 to 135 in 2 years despite intermittent fasting, one meal and a couple of snacks per day, and I'm still very height/weight appropriate at a BMI of 22.5 but I liked the way I looked at the prior BMI of 18.5.

My eating and exercise habits are unchanged over the past 20 years, so I'm used to this as a lifestyle choice.

The weight gain has stopped, and I am walking on average 3 miles a day. I think walking is one of the very best ways to burn fat/maintain muscle....and interestingly one of the oddities of menopausal changes has to do with breast tissue. I do not have fake boobs. But I'd say fully 10 lbs of that gain went to breast tissue distribution. DD to F. Another 4 lbs went to my rear and the rest is evenly everywhere else. When I am strict on calorie restriction for about 36 hours, with unsweet tea, black coffee and lemon/unsweet cranberry/apple cider vinegar diluted in water removes bloat and I will trim down most rapidly abdominally.

My issue is I do enjoy a glass or 2 of wine several evenings a week and have joked with my doctor that I'm probably the poster child for the gout diet, as in a rich hight fat, high protien diet accompanied by regular wine consumption. I am never hungry (like seriously never).

I know if I went to lean skinless chicken breast with broccoli most of the time, and completely cut alcohol, I'd probably start dropping weight. My thyroid is sluggish (it always has been) and this is now medicated with T3 (because T4 supplementation was ineffective as my body just made reverse T3 instead of T3.....a most annoying issue).

Now that its cooled off I'm also doing a poor man's thermogenesis. I get in the unheated swimming pool (probably 60 degrees) for 30 minutes, submerged up to my neck and stretch. That seems to raise the sluggish metabolism I deal with. There is research which shows that cold water exposure encourages the body to convert white fat to brown fat, and brown fat is more available for the body to burn as fuel.

Part of the trouble, I think, is that each person is individual and what works well for one person may have limited use for another person.

But metabolic rate slows with age too, and that's an adjustment.

Sounds like you are employing common sense. Walking is the best exercise for weight loss.

Wine does not affect weight gain much unless I drink copious amounts or it causes me to eat a lot of sh*t. Most alcohol will not affect weight gain except for beer which is high on the glycemic index. Several large scale studies show that moderate to low level drinkers are less likely to be obese than teetotalers, in fact. (This does not mean that booze is a weight loss aid of course.) Red wine has a glycemic index score of zero.

It is all about lifestyle - lots of fruits and veggies, protein and fat and some healthy starches. I don't deprive myself of the things I like but I keep everything in balance. Fasting and/or low carb diets can be a good aid toward this, whatever helps a person achieve a healthy lifestyle.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Sounds like you are employing common sense. Walking is the best exercise for weight loss.

Wine does not affect weight gain much unless I drink copious amounts or it causes me to eat a lot of sh*t. Most alcohol will not affect weight gain except for beer which is high on the glycemic index. Several large scale studies show that moderate to low level drinkers are less likely to be obese than teetotalers, in fact. (This does not mean that booze is a weight loss aid of course.) Red wine has a glycemic index score of zero.

It is all about lifestyle - lots of fruits and veggies, protein and fat and some healthy starches. I don't deprive myself of the things I like but I keep everything in balance. Fasting and/or low carb diets can be a good aid toward this, whatever helps a person achieve a healthy lifestyle.

Walking is the most underrated fat burning tool there is bar none.

 

[bella_gray14]

You are right! When it comes to losing weight, no other exercise can replace walking. As long as you have a normal and balanced diet and walk a few kilometers every day, you can easily lose weight.