(Excuse my english as it’s not my first language)
Hi I am fairly new to IF. I am 27F 163cm (5ft 4) and my CW is 55kg (121lb) 24% body fat. Early this year I got an office job and being sedentary for work hours I ve gained 5kg (11lb) over 8months. I know I am still on the healthy side but I would really like go back to my original comfortable weight (GW 50kg 110lb 20% body fat).
I have strictly counted my calories and though it varies from day to day my daily intake usually rounds up to about 1400 to 1600. I work out 3 to 4days a week for 2 hours (1hour of lifting and 1hour of treadmill).
I have tried CICO but failed. According to my TDEE I should only be earing 1027 calories and I couldnt stick to it even for a day. Even if I do for a while, I doubt that I’d be able to maintain it for years.
Then I discovered IF and thought it was a brilliant way to lose weight without cutting my calories. Unfortunately I have done 16:8 IF for two weeks and so far the scale did not budge a single bit.
So I was wondering… does IF work without restricting calories? Should I still restrict my daily calories to TDEE 1027 kcal during IF to make it work? Does anyone do it without restricting calories? If you do still count calories how much deficit do you make?
*Edit to mention sedentary change which made me gain weight over 8 months.
Unfortunately, fasting isn’t necessarily a magic bullet. You still have to make healthy choices most of the time. That’s the lesson I’ve learned from eating literally whatever I want after my fasting periods and either not losing weight or gaining significant weight back.
The ‘base effect’ of working out, is gaining muscle weight and bone density weight, which will more than make up for any small-scale fat loss, like in your case.
In other words; As long as you are working out like this, and not gaining much weight, you are probably losing fat.