I just tried my first multi day fast. I guess OMAD is kinda 24, so every other day is 48, and every third day is 72. I ate because I worried about my (low) electro lytes and this was my first such fast. I wasn’t really hungry either.
My son (who knows everything) said I would lose muscle mass not fat. Any thoughts? Was I a little into keto? I have plenty of fat to lose. I broke the fast with a large salad and some fresh made bean, vegetable, and chicken soup. I threw in the remainder of a rotisserie chicken into the pot with a 15 bean mix plus vegetables. I think I will just eat again in three days.
Upper limit of fat loss is 1/2lb per day. That’s about 2000 cal. One meal every three days is probably the most masochistic fasting plan you could come up with. Once you get through day 3, fasting gets way easier.
Sorry, but Jr is wrong. The spike in growth hormones while fasting pushes the body the prefer fat to muscles for fuel. The most “mussel catabolic” diet is grazing 1000 cal of carbs per day. It never gives your body the chance to flip in to fasting mode.
I’m no expert, but the assumption that your body would eat muscle when there’s a supply of fat (stored energy/fuel) sounds ridiculous. Surely nature isn’t that dumb to remove your ability to gather food by taking away muscles, which we kinda needed to hunt and gather.
I think a better one in general might be regular healthy and nutritious meals along with exercise.. becuase the 2000 calories thing is for an avg human, and an avg human exercises 30 mins to an hour a day.. most ppl don’t.. therefore need less than 2k.. so I think consuming regular meals with enough nutrients and avg exercise is the best way to go..
Better yet, like terry crews does, intermittent fasting along with exercise is very good for your health
You are losing mostly water weight, but also a combination of muscle and fat. People like to spread around “fasting lore” and say that your body will burn fat before muscle, but that is not supported by scientific evidence.
In the “starvation clinics” in the 60’s where people would do prolonged fasts at the hospital they did a good job of tracking body composition changes. The first few days of a fast generated muscle and fat loss that gradually drifted toward more fat loss around day 7.
Here’s a study that shows that obese rats when fasted will die of muscle loss before they burn all their fat stores. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00260757
You really shouldn’t jump into longer fasts without medical supervision, or at least a little non-reddit research. Like you mention, there are certain nutrients you need to be consuming on a more regular basis than that, on top of which starving yourself with the intention to lose weight is a great shortcut to disordered eating habits.
The benefits of fasting are more about the the metabolic pathways your body uses in the fasted state which allow for cellular repair, clearing of mutated proteins/visceral fat, anti-aging, etc, than they do with weight loss. While certain of these metabolic changes do end up helping you preserve muscle while fasting (raised growth hormone levels) unless you’re eating enough in your one meal to sustain three days worth of caloric expenditure, this “diet” seems, very clearly, like a dangerous idea. You’re unlikely to get the calories you need in one meal, let alone the micronutrients, for three days of living
there aren’t shortcuts. if you’re interested in losing weight, start tracking your calories, learn how to know how many calories you’re eating every day, and make slight changes in that amount to change your body composition. If you want to try fasting, try actually research fasting and how to do it instead of making dramatic, potentially changes to your diet and lifestyle
When doing keto/extended fasting the first 10 pounds is water weight. Around day 4 your body switches to burning fat. Your body will absolutely not go after your muscles ir organs until you get through most of your stores. As you lose weight, you wind up with flabby skin, extra blood vessles you no longer need. Guess what? Excellent source of protien! Body will break those down first!
Check out the gains posts! Hardly any leftover flabby skin, unlike those who go for yhe surgery.
Not sure about IF.