gf has been fasting - no less than 21 hour fasts, with a 3 hour eating window. and has done multiple 36 hour fasts. this has been going on for at least 2 weeks
Her weight has essentially stayed the same.
She’s frustrated because it feels like she’s doing all this to not gain weight.
Obviously, her body is not the same hormonally as it was 10 years ago, but I would’ve expected her to lose weight slowly but steadily.
Anyone have experience with this? if so, how do you get over that hump?
she also takes a ton of supplements but I don’t wanna confuse things in this post, so I’ll post about those separately.
Thanks!
Two weeks–it takes more time than that. Keep going! I fully expect this journey to take multiple years to lose my 50-60 extra pounds. I’m at six weeks and I have not weighed myself yet. BUT… all my inflammation is gone. The waistbands on my pants are looser. I’ve run out of belt holes. I easily make great food choices now as I crave good fats and protein and fresh vegetables and fruits. I feel great. Most importantly, I have not “cheated” since the 5th of July and fasted at least 16 hours every day and mostly 20 hours a day. Never in my life has something been so easy for me, and actually worked gently to change my body.
Focus on non-scale victories and stop stepping on the scale.
Get the book, “Fast, Feast, Repeat” by Gin Stephens. She explains that it can take awhile to recover from insulin resistance. She advises not weighting for (I think) two months.
I’m 55f. Really clean fasting made the difference for me. Black coffee and plain water. Even a bit of lemon in my water slowed my weight loss to almost nothing.
Fasting is great and hugely beneficial to weight loss for a few reasons, but calories in calories out is still a factor. A person could eat a lot in three hours and a lot of people do very little movement throughout the day.
It’s all about calories, OP. Sadly in this community there are a number of people (many who will downvote this post and others saying similar things) that misinterpreted the evidence on fasting as a “miracle” or a magic way to lose weight that let you ignore calories and whatnot.
This is sadly not the case. It’s all about thermodynamics: you can only lose as much fat as the energy deficit your body has had during that period. The point of fasting is realizing that there are several moving parts in this process, most importantly insulin.
Insulin regulates the source of energy your body is using. When insulin is low, your body uses fat reserves. When insulin is high, your body uses glycogen. The important fact is that there is usually very little energy stored in glycogen, and a lot of energy stored as fat. That means that when you are in a deficit, but without keeping your insulin low (for example, in a caloric deficit but eating cereal bars every three hours), your body cannot access the energy stored in fat reserves, and the only alternative is to adjust the amount of calories it spends - reducing body heat, fidgeting, feeling sluggish, etc.
On the other hand, if your insulin is low, there is plenty (1 kg of fat is around 8000kcal) of energy stored in your body, so the CO part of CICO remains constant.
So this is what I would explain to your gf: Fasting is a way to make sure that your body is burning fat in the most efficient way possible - attaining or being close to attaining the upper bound dictated by CICO. So even if she is eating once a day, or even less than that, if she eats more kcal than she spends, she will be gaining weight.
A couple of weeks isn’t enough time to realize change. Also, be careful to eat appropriately during the refeeding window. What often ends up happening when people fast solely for weight loss is that the person won’t consume enough calories during their feeding window. This often leads to a couple of things:
Very strong cravings
Poor nutritional decisions
Metabolism slows/adapts to the low calorie intake.
Something to be wary of.
As others have said, all weight loss comes from eating less than you burn. Period.
Most people burn 1,500 - 2,500 calories per day depending on your age, sex, weight and activity level. There are plenty of websites that can give you a ballpark of your basal metabolic rate. A fitness watch will give you real time estimates as well.
It does not matter if you are fasting. If you eat more calories than you burn in a day or a week, you will not lose weight.
Knowledge is power. There are lots of good materials out there. Your GF should read The Obesity Code by Dr. Fung to get the lay of the land and should keep reading a little bit every day about weight loss, fasting, nutrition and exercise to continue to educate herself, to refine what she is doing and most importantly, perhaps, to keep her focus on this.
EDIT: some useful factoids are that one pound of body fat contains 3,500 calories. If you consume 500 calories/day less than you burn you will lose 1 lb/week. If you burn 500 calories more than you eat through exercise, you will lose 1 lb/week. Experts seem to agree that 2.5 pounds per week is the most you should lose if you want to remain healthy and keep it off. You can lose more, of course, but it will have other consequences. When you do extended fasts you lose a net of 1/2 to 3/4 pounds per day. I say “net” because the scale might say you’ve lost more than that before you refill your digestive system in the days after the fast is over.
I maintain my weight on one meal a day and have to fast for two to three days to lose weight.
Part of this is that I enjoy my carbs and I don’t always control myself well during feedings.
I’ve heard a lot of people have good results by eating keto during their feedings, but I’d rather add another day or two to my fast - personal preference.
I’m in my late 40’s M. I fast 20 hours or so a few days a week to maintain weight. So basically I can enjoy three meals a day 5 days a week and one meal a day the other two days, if I don’t do that, my weight gradually goes up until it gets to around 210-212 and then it levels off. So basically, if I’m fat and happy, my metabolism is normal. If I’m staying slim enough to fit into pants from 15 years ago, I have to fast.
Have her listen to Ep 9 and Ep 15 of The Fasting Method podcast, it’s by two women and those episodes are about Women and Fasting. It really helped me! They recommend really smart things and communicate effectively about insulin resistance being the thing fasters are trying to reverse.
ETA: deleting mention of cycle, didn’t see “50s”. But they still have good advice for post-menopausal women too!
This happened to me. I’m 40/F.
I was overeating and not realizing it. I was doing 22:2. And on my 2 days off, I gave myself permission to eat whatever I wanted, within reason. Well, I ate from mom/pop restaurants that don’t have calories listed, and as soon as I stopped eating at those places, the weight started falling off.
She’s definitely overeating. It’s not her age. And she’s not losing inches. It’s the calories. It’s always the calories.
Depends on what she’s eating in her 3-hour eating window. Just because she’s restricted her time to eat doesn’t automatically means she’s eating too few calories to overeat.
Track calories and adjust what she’s eating
Edit: first point is that its only been two weeks. Calm down when I cut I usually dont lose weight for like the first month even with caloric deficit (albeit I am trained).
At her age, her amount of metabolically expensive tissue will likely be minimal. For her to actually change weight, she should weight train (slowly and with care) and also focus on good whole meals with adequate nutrition. If all you are doing for her is sedentary activity and extended fasting, her body isn’t going to adapt to save metabolically expensive tissue like muscle. Her adipose tissue loss may even lessen.
This sub is good for people who use IF and short extended fasts in moderation, but sometimes it strays into borderline ED territory. For a fifty year old woman to experience a quality body recomposition she needs two things: Stimulus and fuel. If she has excessive body fat, she should focus on eating protein, plenty of healthy COOKED vegetables, and adequate carbs while weight training (AND I STRESS WEIGHT TRAINING. NOT CARDIO. NOT AEROBICS. WEIGHT TRAINING) 2-3 times a week (depending on how able she is, likely leaning towards 2) lots of water as well.
Fasting is good for a few types of people. Very obese people can benefit from long term MONITORED extended fasts, and for those lookong to cut around 5 to 10 pounds when they are already trained, a course of short term IF (2-3 months) can help with fat loss while retaining muscle.
Unless this woman is one of those two, I would use more conventional weight loss regiments to assist it. That is, build muscle while eating a diet consisting of many single ingredients whole foods.
2.try to keep her food keto. ( High fat / low carbs) and keep below 2k cal because of her age 50.
3.Suger keep suger low, your body won’t go to ketosis if there is plenty of suger in body.
4.Fasting isn’t a magic that will fix the issue in weeks or months. You can’t expect to repair years of unhealthy diets with a month of fasting. Give it time show your determination.
If your diet consist of high trans fat corn syrup it will take longer to reset your body those are the hardest to burn/ show results.
Best of luck
>Well, someone has to ask this question: is she fasting or just w. and has done multiple 36 hour fasts. this has been going on for at least 2 weeks
>
>Her weight has essentially stayed the same.
Well, someone has to ask this question so here goes: is she fasting or just saying that she does?
I recently started IF and i went through the same phase for 2 months. Lost nothing at all.Then i changed what I eat, and fasted for 22-24hrs. i eat less than 300 calories. This worked for me and I have lost 4kgs in a short time after 2 months
Hi OP,
I would buy some urine ketone test strips, to see if she gets in fat loss mode or not. It would also be good for her to see, because if she gets in fat-burning mode, then she doesn’t need to worry about the scale.
I would also try to track calories for a while.
If it’s not caloric intake I would look into pro and prebiotics. There has been multiple studies on Lactobacillus gasseri BNR17 and the higher the dose the better but I would take a supplement that’s already regulated that has it or talk to your PCM :)
I’m assuming that she has excess weight to lose.
In that case, some mistakes that frequently trip up people:
Drinking sweetened drinks (even if sugar-free) during the “fasting” window.
Counting calories and not eating to satiation during the eating window, aka “starving.”
Fasting too often, not giving the body a break, messing up the hormones, again “starving” herself.
> I would’ve expected her to lose weight slowly but steadily.
Weight loss often comes in plateaus and sudden drops, rather than steadily.
I’d suggest read all the info on fasting for females, on Fung site, podcast.
They do mention where if younger female, then cream with coffee, is ok hack while fasting, or for males. yet for older females, need be super strict, as with age it gets much harder.
combine with keto etc
anyway, search of his site.
and all articles, podcast, females on Fung team.
I have a thyroid issue and I found that avoiding anti inflammatory foods, even when not fasting, is key. Try the AIP plan..I decided to make it a permanent plan because it is the ONLY thing that has worked for me. If I get off track (coffee is my downfall sadly) fasting helps. A lot of it might be inflammation and water retention. That is what it was for me.