So I’m doing a 20/4 intermittent fast. I’ve been trying to establish the routine, so I haven’t been worrying about staying within a caloric deficit. I’m the kind of person who can easily eat 4000+ calories in 4 hours. I definitely haven’t been doing that, but I’ve been having some fast food, and I know I’ve gone over my maintenance calories. The thing is, I’ve been doing this for 2 weeks and I’m down 5 lbs.
How is this possible? Anyone else have similar experience?
Similar experience, never count calories, eat as much as I want at dinner and nothing else. Try to keep it low carb. Have a cheat day that starts and ends with a pint of ice cream. Dropped 45 lbs in a year and have been maintaining for 9 months. Not sure how it works, but it does
Read “the obesity code” by Jason Fung. He explains very clearly why the calorie model of obesity is wrong, as you are experiencing. Basically, the obsession with the calorie is based on the flawed assumption that “calories out” is a fixed quantity, so to lose weight we must adjust “calories in”. There is a ton of research that shows this to be a very naive understanding of metabolism. This is why it is quite difficult for many thin people to put on weight. The sure fire way to make someone gain weight is to inject them with insulin. This is because insulin signals to the body to store energy. Chronically high insulin from eating too frequently, refined foods in particular, result in insulin resistance. When you become insulin resistant, your body must produce ever more insulin to manage blood glucose levels. This is a positive feedback loop where high insulin leads to even higher insulin. Your daily fasting cycles produces extended periods where insulin levels are able to fall so that you are no longer storing energy but burning stored energy. It also combats your insulin resistance so that over time your body needs to produce less and less insulin to manage blood glucose. This means that over time, your body can switch more quickly to energy burning during your fasting interval. The fact that you can pound back a huge amount of calories in 4 hours is irrelevant so long as you are not pounding back huge quantities of refined carbohydrates. Try adding more good fat to your diet and you won’t eat as much food during your eating window because fat makes you feel full faster and for longer.
Calories in/out definitely do still matter. Of course there are other factors that can affect how much you burn.
Chances are you are still eating less food than you normally do without IF. A lot of people underestimate how much they truly eat and if you cut out breakfast and still eat normally you’re gonna lose weight up to a certain point without tracking calories.
I’ve been doing this for 10 days but haven’t really lost weight yet (maybe .5 kilo). It might be because I’m doing 16:8 and it’s not a big enough difference from my normal eating patterns, to actually make a difference. I’m eating quite healthily. But I’ll keep doing it for longer to see. As I don’t want to count calories either.
People tend to think that people lose weight intermittent fasting due to calorie reduction but there’s more of a science to it. It’s reduced insulin levels that’s allowing you to tap into fat stores. Read Fast Feast Repeat by Gin Stephens or Obesity Code by Jason Fung. It’ll explain it :)
Ever since starting IF I have been losing weight even while eating pizza and cakes, which is great :D But I don’t think I’m going over my calories. According to the scale, my maintenance calorie intake should be around 1980. And, even though I’m not counting them, I’ll usually have one meal where I splurge and one that is lighter (usually “dinner”). That lighter meal + losing one meal a day should be enough to put me in a deficit. (I also have a small breakfast, so in total is 3 meals on 16:8).
I also have noticed that after one month my rate of weight loss became slower, so it stands to reason that if I managed my calories better I would be losing weight faster. Though to be honest I don’t want to do it. One of the reasons diets always fail for me is that I have to cut out the foods I love and that makes me feel like I’m losing out on something. The best part of IF is having found a diet that works for weight loss and lets me eat the foods I love in moderation.