I’ve been following a strict fasting protocol for the past 2.5 weeks where I fast 4/7 days of the week and eat slightly above maintenance on the other 3 days. This is a big improvement from when I used to binge like crazy on my eating days. I’ve also fasted on and off quite a bit in the past to help me maintain my weight but right now I have about 20lbs to lose.
However, I have always consistently lost the same amount of weight per fasting day - 3lbs on the first day and 2lbs if I fast for a second day.
I followed this pattern for the first 1.5 weeks of my journey but it has slowly started to decrease from 3lbs lost per day to 2lbs, 1lb, and finally, 0.5lbs yesterday.
This is really discouraging for me and I wanted to see if anyone has experienced the same thing. I know realistically it’s probably because I have much less water weight in my system now. But I’m also worried that maybe my body is just too used to fasting now and it doesn’t work as well for me? Should I eat normally for a few days to “reset” my body? Any advice would be appreciated
This is a normal phenomenon, you aren’t doing anything wrong.
Losing .50 - .75 lbs per day of fat is the typical depletion rate while fasting so don’t get discouraged!
The reason you lose 3lbs the first day is, like you said, expelling excess water. It is practically impossible to lose 3 lbs of fat in one day, you would need to burn over 10,000 calories.
Another factor is that as you lose weight, your resting metabolic rate goes down. This will mean you burn less fat as you go down in weight, unless you up your activity levels to compensate. It will be noticeable, but not nearly as drastic as going from 3 -> .5
If you just keep at the routine you described the weight will come off :)
So. Just because you lose 3 pounds of weight, doesn’t mean you lose 3 pounds of fat. That’s what everyone seems to forget.
You poop, you pee. You lose a lot of weight from those things in the first few days. You’re only going to be losing what your daily caloric needs are. And since for most people that’s \~2000-2500. You’re going to be losing less than a pound of actual weight per day. A pound of fat has 3500 calories in it. A day of caloric needs is \~2000. Roughly half a pound of loss.
You’re not losing less. You’re just losing less water.
I’ve been doing a similar fast for the last couple weeks and my scale weight loss has slowed down a bit in the last few days. I’m pretty sure I was dumping water at the start of this cycle two weeks ago. Anyway, it’s hard to say what the average rate is because I go up during refeed and then back down during the next fast. So far though at the end of every two day fast I weigh less than I did at the end of the previous fast.
The 0.5 lbs is probably closer to your true weight loss and your body has adapted to 4/7 and doesn’t have as much water to release.
What I like to do, is to go to a TDEE calculator, plug in my height and weight, and get that number. That number divided by 3500 (the number of calories in a lb of fat), is the amount of fat I could actually burn in a day if nothing goes wrong and I don’t eat anything.
I keep a piece of graph paper, with my starting weight on the left, and each square is the weight I burn by fasting (which for me is half a lb). Every day I fast, I color in a box.
Every time I feel like “Ugh, I should have lost so much more weight by now” I count the boxes, subtract that from my starting weight, and compare that number to my scale weight. And usually, it makes me go “Oh, yeah even though I didn’t lose any weight despite fasting the past 2 days, last week I lost like 2 lbs a day. I weigh less than I should expect for the number of days I fasted, I’m just rehydrating.”