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Here’s my two cents, I don’t believe this is a great idea for weight loss.
Can the occasional longer fast be part of an overall healthy lifestyle, absolutely. But this is significant time of every week to be going without nutrition and only then hitting the recommended minimum. One issue this may cause is a lot of muscle loss, which is just going to lower the resting metabolism and make losing that much harder. My understanding is that ADF is traditionally full maintenance calories on the off days and sometimes even a small number of calories on fasting days.
The other issue is that this is just brute forcing your way through to a lower weight and setting yourself up for yo-yo-ing. You mention having some impulse control issues, that’s not going to go away at a now lower weight. Improving your relationship with food and thus long-term weight loss means working on that. Setting smaller goals and incorporating habits will break your through plateaus and set you up for long-term success.
Ic you have doubts, go see a doctor. Not every one has the same metabolism. My IF is that I eat at night. My husband though is different, he has digestive problems and he got tested and all and his if requires a 24 hour fast. I don’t think doctors recommended more than 24 hour food.
If you still eat too many calories in your window of opportunity, you aren’t changing your lifestyle and habits, which means as soon as you stop this fast, you will regain the weight and even faster since your body is in survival mode. I lost 110 lbs doing IF but not because of the fast but because i entirely changed my relationship with food. IF let’s you do this change more easily as you can slowly change habits and still lose weight.
My dietitian made me write down recipes that were under 10-30 minutes cooking, that mixed my old habits with my new ones. After cooking those foods really easily, getting familiar with them, they became a habit. Now i don’t even remember what i used to eat like 2 years ago.
I was able to lose 110 lbs and i can not exercise. Old car crash left me pretty immobile. I can walk around for about 20 mins and then swelling takes a hold. My dietitian and my doctors have told me that weight loss is 80% nutrition and 20% exercises and that yes, breathing exercises count since that’s how, in the end, your body gets rid of most fat, via breath.
So my fear, with such long fasting periods is that your body will try to retain absolutely everything after your fast and because the digestive system is resting for so long you might experience weight gain bloat. The best way to break a plateau is actually to stop your diet for a day or two and then start it again. Usually a plateau is either your body telling you that the weight loss has become too stressful on your body. Same as hair loss that happens to people who lose a lot of weight quickly. Or a plateau can be your body resting and balancing to enter a new phase of weight loss. If that is the plateau you get then simply keeping at it and then the body restarts the weight loss when it’s ready. For me, everytime i hit a plateau, that was my body telling me i needed a “cheat day” and on those days i would have a high protein breakfast, high fibre and sugar lunch (fruits) and i would have more complex carbs for dinner so my body had calories for a longer time. 2 days of that, i’d gain 2 lbs and then i would go back on my IF and lose over 5-8 lbs the first week. My body just needed a rest from the healing it needs to do when you lose weight and when i gave it that, it started losing weight efficiently again.