Hi all. I am on week 5 of IF typically doing 16:8 with 18:6 a few days a week. I originally lost about 1.5lb a week but then stopped losing last week all together. My mom, a longtime success story with IF recommended I mix in some 36 and 24 hour fasts. I do CrossFit 3 times a week and walk at least another 3 for 3 miles each day.
Tuesday night to this morning I did 36 hours and felt ok throughout, definitely hungry at times but woke up this morning not hungry at all. Down to 253.3.
My question is, what do I do next? Eat normally today and then start a 16:8 tonight?
Thank you 🙏🏻 I’m in it for the long haul and know this is a 6-12 month investment.
After you finish a longer fast, you come back to your regular fasting schedule. You could adjust your schedule and try something else, too. IF is very flexible in that regard. Try to include these longer fasts in your weekly, biweekly, or monthly schedule if you can.
I think you need to reset your expectations and the speed at which this will happen. While 6-12 months sounds like a long haul it really isn’t. Sure you can generate quicker loss but that won’t be sustainable for most people. And you have to be careful to think that loss will be linear or that what happens in the first 5 weeks will continue that way. Some people see imitated loss with these changes other people don’t but know that any of that initial loss likely won’t continue to come off in that way. A 500 calorie deficit a day will mean a pound a week or 50 or so a year. And doing it slowly will mean you can figure out how to maintain weight with just your consumption. Exercise is great for increase caloric burn but it is not necessary for weight loss itself. The deficit is. So this is where I focused. I spent a year learning to lose weight through diet alone. IF can really help with that but it isn’t a magic pill. Used it improperly and it can create issues. So push too hard and you regress just the same as you will with anything you are trying to force.
So my advice is to really focus on that thing that controls you weight and that is yoru consumption. Figure out the diet alone. Once you get that sorted you should see steady loss with that alone. But it won’t be quick. Took me a year to lose 20-30 pounds and another to lose the next 40. But now that I did it in a slow way I am 1.5 years at my GW with no real gain. That is the goal. To find balance so that when you get to the GW you will be able to maintain that.