I like longer fasts. Recently I completed a 7 day fast but noticed my weight loss was slowing down by day 6. Are long fasts worth it?
It depends on your lifestyle. Diet and activity levels specifically as primary variables, then sleep and hormones as secondary variables. For example I am very physically active 5 days a week and after the first 48-72 hours the weight loss on scale from fasting becomes negligible, but of course fat is being targeted and it’s hard to really get a good estimate of weight vs fat unless you are dry fasting.
For me rolling 48s, hitting about a 3000 cal refeed with 180-220g of protein is the magic spot to progressing on my fitness and dropping overall body weight.
If you’re weighing yourself everyday of a 7 day fast and thinking it just stops working on day 6…then you need to stop weighing yourself everyday.
Level of hydration and excretion are going to be bigger variables than weight loss due to fasting and can give the impression that weight loss is changing.
Your best bet is to weigh yourself over a longer stretch of time, or to look at a 7-14 day rolling average of your weight.
Your overall weightloss slows down due to your glycogen stores gets depleted, which means you lose a lot of water weight stored in your muscles but also water weight that has been retained due to salt. As you go deeper in your fast, you burn way way more pure fat, so yes, longer fasts are great for fatloss because your body starts making metabolic water + human growth hormone spikes up to about 2000% after day 4-5, So the overall weightloss slows down, but the fat loss keeps on going more and more.