I’ve gained 5lb the past 4 months even though I consistently do IF for 18 hours daily. I eat during the same 6 hour time window, 2 meals daily.
Started IF a year ago. Lost 13lb the first 8 months of IF, but started to plateau, and now gained 5lb even though everything else is similar.
I even started exercising 3x/week - unlikely muscle gain since I’m doing light tennis. And did two 24 hour fasts to try to reset but still had weight gain.
Help, what can I do! My goal is to drop 11 more pounds.
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tldr; F, 5’1, Started at 139lb —> Plateau at 126lb —> Weight Gain to 131lb
if you are gaining weight you are eating more than you are using.
let me say that again. if you are gaining weight, you are eating more than you are using. It doesn’t matter if you’re fasting, eating pure trash or pure carrots. gaining weight ONLY happens when you maintain a positive energy balance
Fasting’s main benefits have to do with switching your body out of the fed state, during which a number of metabolic changes happen inside your body that can be generalized as your body going from “digest food” mode to “cell repair” mode. This includes burning visceral fat, removal of damaged proteins, and strengthening of metabolic pathways involved in burning fat (your body gets better at using your stored energy when you actually have to use your stored energy)
If you were losing weight while fasting, it’s because you were eating less calories. If you want to keep losing weight, either up your energy usage per day or lower your consumption. That being said, your goal really shouldn’t be to achieve a number on a scale: if the 5 pounds you gained were mostly muscle, you’re healthier now than you were at 126. your weight is just a number that really doesn’t mean anything, you should use that number to know if you’re successfully following your diet goals but it shouldn’t be the goal itself. Think about how you look, and how you feel. Keep at the exercise, and if you’re really baffled by your weight gain, try tracking calories - most people are actually pretty terrible at guessing how caloric food is, so spend a month on myfitnesspal actually measuring what you’re eating, you’ll get better at guessing calories
I lost 20+ lbs with 16-8 and have largely maintained it for the last two years. I’ve found that if I’m not diligent, my meal post-fast can be overly much. I’m also not as stringent with the alcohol and candy. Whenever I see the weight creep up, I dial down the alcohol, candy, and try to be mindful of the meal size. I’d like to enter into a phase leading to a weight loss trajectory, but I haven’t mounted enough self-loathing to kick it off.
Diets work until they don’t work; it’s called homeostasis. Your body will adapt if you always do the same thing. If you reduce your caloric intake by say 500 calories, your body will adjust to this new lower intake, creating a vicious cycle of having to cut calories more and more to get the same result.
In weight lifting it’s called muscle confusion, shaking your body up to continue to get a response and growth.
To offset homeostasis for IFing, it can be done at different times of the day and for different lengths of time. Mix it up. Maybe you might even need a cheat day to reset, lol.
if you plateau, then you wont lose any more weight on that routine. Eventually your weight will fluctuate, which is what has happened. You’ve gone up and down and will continue to do so until you increase your fasting window or decrease your eating window.
Maybe try 20/4 or 22/2 and see how it works for you. You can do it
I’ve found that doing an extended fast of a few days will kickstart my weight loss when I’ve hit a plateau. Even slightly less than a 2 day fast (40 hours) has worked for me.
Nothing else does it. Reducing calories doesn’t do it. Increasing exercise doesn’t do it. It’s interesting to read post after post saying just reduce calories. Maybe for some or even most that works. But some of us have metabolic challenges, and that’s why we’re overweight in the first place (and turning to IF or EF).