I’m 23 years old, 6’4, 370 lb. My goal weight is 220 lb (100kg).
I want to lose 130 lb in 5 months and 11 days. I plan to do this by fasting 5 days a week (at least 3 days dry, the rest can be water if I don’t feel strong enough to continue dry) - with 2 days of re-feeding; eating vegetables and lean proteins only.
This is my weekly fasting plan. I estimate that I’ll probably lose 3 lb per day on average when fasting, not sure about how much I’d gain during re-feed though (any thoughts?)
Is this reasonable? Is it safe? Will it destroy my metabolism, or make me nutrient-deficient, etc?
(NB: I’m a well-experienced faster because of Ramadan)
You don’t really want to lose weight, you want a good looking body, which requires building muscle as well as losing some weight.
Just do the Ramadan fast everyday. Fajr to Isha. If your weight loss stalls, start working out. Building muscle is like making money but for the body. Fasting is like cutting out useless spending. You can only cut out so much until you’re ruining your lifestyle.
There are a few things wrong in this plan from my perspective.
Trying to lose 130lbs in 5 months is unreasonable you’re looking at least 1 year but ideally longer.
Losing that much that fast can results in lots of excess skin and hormonal imbalances. Furthermore you have no plans of how to keep the weight off.
Losing weight is much easier than keeping the weight off. What are your plans when you reach your target weight? You can’t use fasting to make up for the lifestyle and diet that brought you to here today. You need to change your diet and lifestyle. There are no shortcuts to that.
For every Dry Fast day you should refeed at least for two days. So if you fast 5 days you should refeed at least 10 days.
Your weight loss calculation is also way off because you assume that weight loss is constant, regular and unchangeable, it isn’t. Weigh loss is going to hugely fluctuate.
To lose consistently weight you just need a daily 300-500kcal deficit. If that’s something you found hard to do until now what makes you think you can fast 5 days a week for 5 months?
Your fasting schedule is a long term starvation plan that I highly do not recommend. It will result in malnutrition, multiple deficiencies and furthermore it’s not sustainable.
Ramadan is Intermittent Fasting seeing as you eat after Sunset which is very different from not eating at all for 5 days.
Change your diet. Review your daily calorie intake (use a calorie counter) for a week or two so get an idea of exactly how much you are really eating. Then adjust your calories. Adjust into a more active lifestyle. Intermittent Fasting might help you cut down on calories. Schedule in some occasional Dry Fasting if you want but in reasonable intervals with proper refeeds. This would be my advice. This is something you can maintain for the rest of your life thus keeping also the weight off.