Morning all. I need some help.
I’m Male 6ft 4in - 26 stone (364lbs) and been using fasting to try and shift some weight. I do OMAD Monday to Friday. I’ll have a fasting salts drink once a day on those days just to keep my levels up. I’ll have coffee with a dash of full milk and nothing else and the occasional zero drink. I take my vitamins once a day too. I’m on long-term pain meds ibuprofen 2 times a day and co-codamol once a day.
Weekends I’ll do 16 - 8 and won’t go crazy. I generally try to stick to a keto diet.
My problem is nothing is happening. Been at this for months now and I barely lost half a stone(7lbs)
Any advice is helpful but what am I doing wrong.
Edit 1. Thanks everyone for the amazing responses. Lots to think and change here for me. I know where I’m going wrong now.
Aside from what others have said in terms of actually being in a deficit, I wonder if you need the fasting salts when you’re simply doing OMAD.
The reasoning is that you should be able to get a lot or all of your basic salt intake from that meal. If you add another fasting salt drink you may be ingesting essentially 2x the daily recommended amount of salt. As you know a high salt diet contributes to water retention.
Maybe try doing away with the fasting salt drink or put less salt in if you do not go more than 24 hours without food.
Edit: reminder that UFC fighters, all extremely lean and fit individuals, can lose 10-30lbs in like a week by losing water weight. Don’t get discouraged by the number on the scale.
There’s a lot of good advice in this thread. I just want to add some clarification.
There’s a very good chance you have insulin resistance. Not necessarily because of your weight — but because insulin resistance makes people gain weight more easily, so if you’re heavier, there’s just a bigger chance it’s a factor. I’m speaking from experience here, not judging you at all.
People who don’t have insulin resistance may lose weight more easily on shorter fasts, being less strict about what they’re eating. Then, those of us who do have it see them, and think, “Oh, ok, so I can still keep my Coke Zero and have pasta during my mealtimes and I should lose weight anyway, because those people over there have.”
But the worse your body is with insulin, the stricter you’ll have to be to see results. Like, literally… with all other factors being the same, if I fast and have a coffee with no sweetener, I’ll lose weight (even with a splash of cream). The minute I add any sweetener, my weight loss basically stalls out.
With insulin resistance, our bodies have gotten really really efficient at storing energy and NOT using it. It’s like Scrooge, pilfering away any calories it gets and being really tight-fisted about burning any of it off, unless specific conditions are met.
It may be that you have to cut all sweeteners. It may be that you have to eat strict keto for your meals, try longer fasts, and tighten up your routine on weekends.
It’s hard, and it’s not fair, but your body thinks its protecting you by keeping you from losing weight. If we lived in a world where we had to fast regularly because we didn’t have enough food, we’d be killing it with our reserves.
If it feels overwhelming, try adding one habit at a time. Cut the sweetener this week. Tighten up your keto diet next week, or the week after. Get 1% better at it every day, until your results make you so happy, you don’t miss what you gave up at all.
And don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Just judge yourself by whether or not you were true to the promises you made to yourself, and whether or not you feel good about what you’re doing.
It’s common for people to loosen up on the weekends and blow their entire week’s deficit.
At your size you will see results from minimal changes. I’d start small with getting a more accurate idea of how many calories you are consuming. In general people do better with consistency so I recommend picking a fasting schedule you can stick to 7 days a week.
Lots of people say they “don’t go crazy” when their base diet is already “crazy”. Check out the CICO sub for some tips. You can pair this approach with fasting for better results.
Broadly speaking it doesn’t matter too much if you spread all your calories out through the day or eat them all in one meal.
It’s possible to still go over your calories on OMAD. What do your meals look like? What is your activity level?
I have years of experience with fasting so I can speak on this with confidence. Do not take salts or electrolytes on Omad days, you dont need it unless you’re doing extended fasting. Do not take any milk or cream in your coffee. Black coffee only. Do not drink anything except water during your fasting window. “Zero drinks” will cause insulin responses, cravings, and it will slow your progress. You’re not fasting properly so you’re not losing fat. You must fast properly in order to reap the benefits. Good Luck.👍
When I first started fasting I had something similar. What I later realized after doing some research is that I had insulin resistance. So when you start fasting and you have that it takes awhile because your body has to correct that condition before you see results. Just keep at it and know you are healing issues within your body that need to be addressesd I am not saying you have the same issue I did but it could be.
I see a few flags I would look at. One: you say you’re on pain meds long term. Along with that, daily ibuprofen is BAD news for the body. There’s ample research on this if you google. I have to wonder what the meds are for, because if it’s anything other than a known serious injury there can be other issues at play.
Along with that, being overweight often leads to insulin resistance. You will have to do everything you can to lower insulin. Keto is part of that. Entended fasting (up to around 80-100 hours) can also help.
Two: omad Monday-Friday isn’t enough— especially if your activity level is pretty low. If you’re like 90% of Americans (assuming American) you probably don’t get a ton of exercise or incidental activity. You do still need to keep a total calorie deficit. If you’re over eating even a little, you might easily end up in maintenance level calories instead of loss level calories. Figure out your BMR, figure out what calories you need to get losses, and figure out what that looks like via cico, food scales, etc.
Side note: If you’re truly doing all the right things and still not losing, you might need to look at additional medical complications. In my case, I have Celiac and as a result my body mistakenly thought it was starving ALL the time and held onto everything it could. It probably isn’t Celiac for you, this is just an example of the kinds of medical complications that can cause weight problems and interfere with losses. Now that it’s “solved” I lose weight much more normally.
You may wish to fast for a longer period. People seem to like alternate day fasting. A person will fast for a whole day then the next day they eat 1 or 2 meals. I’ve seen people have good success with this and it doesn’t really depend on their diet.
I like to switch it up biweekly, so do omad for a while, do 16 8 for a while, try for a couple extended fasts (I suck at those but can usually make it to 30hrs), then eat maintenance for a while.
I haven’t found any good reasons or explanations for plateaus, but I have noticed that my weight loss happens at the start of something. So I give my body opportunities to “start”
I have lost and gained a lot of weight over my life. One thing I have noticed is if I take kratom or a pain med such as hydrocodone, I pretty much unable to lose weight. I will see significant weight change with fasting but as soon as I take pain meds such as the ones I mentioned, I basically lose nothing. Idk what it does to by body but it makes losing weight basically impossible. I also get vey constipated so for me maybe it’s related to my digestive system. Just though I would share in case you are taking something similar.
Other than the arithmetic thing of calories burnt vs calories taken, full milk does break your fast.
Being on a fast means you get the “boring” of things. Just tea, just black coffee, just water (some zero calories drinks might break your fast).
Are you doing any exercises to give your body a reason to relocate or burn some fat? Maintaining muscle mass is the most expensive calories-wise, if you show your body you need those muscles, stuff will happen. It could be as simple as just walking more everyday.
Good luck!!
You are doing a couple things “wrong”. Are you willing to change them?
Remove the milk from your coffee. If it’s not heavy cream, you’re getting milk sugars and an insulin response from this. That’s no longer fasting. If it’s heavy cream, it’s a ton of calories and can still trigger insulin, just much much slower since it’s buffered by the fat. It’s less of an issue, but just skip it entirely.
Drop the zero drinks entirely. They still trigger an insulin response, and if you don’t believe me, buy a blood glucose monitor. If your blood glucose starts dropping after drinking them, it’s because insulin was released but no sugar was introduced.
How many calories are you eating during this one meal a day?
Increase your fasting duration. Try alternate day fasting perhaps.
It’s probably your diet. Just because you have one meal doesn’t mean you can’t pack in 4000 calories. Same thing for keto. It doesn’t take long to get up to 2500+ calories from just fat alone.
Take your vitamins with the meal, never outside that.
One thing you might be overlooking is the ibuprofen. It will mess with your stomach,kidneys,enzymes. It can cause water retention and it restricts blood flow. I had surgery and I was specifically told not to take any ibuprofen during the entire healing process because it would prevent healing. It has been linked to a lot of serious health conditions after prolonged use. It might be look to research
Hey OP - be careful with OMAD and eating windows because you can seriously over eat super easily. There are two ways to try and combat this.
Tighten up the eating window. Do 4 hours, or even 2 hours each day. No calories outside of those hours except tea, black coffee, or diet drinks. Of course water as well.
If doing an 8 hour window, track and count calories initially to see how much you were off by. I personally don’t like this so I tighten up my eating window.
If you still have trouble after tightening up your eating window, then I would definitely spend a few days counting exactly what you eat when you do OMAD. Like I said, it’s easy to say OMAD and then cram like an entire feast down - negating all the weight loss benefits. I know from experience.
so basically, you should be around 200lbs for a healthy BMI at your height. Here are some suggestions from me:
one thing I reccomend, that helped me is to get a blood glucose monitor and track your sugar. Although people can lie, their blood never does. If your sugar spikes too much after a meal, thats evidence you ate some kind of carb.
Fasting alone does not cause weight loss. Period.
The only thing that causes weight loss is burning more calories than you eat. The. Only. Thing.
Figure out your TDEE using any number of online calculators, one of those fancy fitness trackers or the health app on your phone. Now, eat less than you burn and watch the pounds melt away.
For many people it is easier to eat less than they burn if they do intermittent fasting. Others fast for its many other benefits. Extended fasting is by definition eating less than you burn. You can gain weight doing IF if you eat 3,000 calories during your feeding window and only burn 2,000 per day.
Fun fact, one pound of body fat contains 3,500 calories. Most people burn around 2,000 calories per day. They get fat when they eat 5,000 calories per day every day. You can safely lose about 1 kilo or 2.2 lbs per week. If you need to lose 50 kilos, it should take you a year. Slow and steady wins the race.
The harder part about losing weight is keeping it off. Your body has a “default weight” which it will try to return if you let your guard down. You have to reprogram that default or “set point” by maintaining your desired weight plus or minus 1 kilo for a year. That is hard because it is boring. The scale doesn’t make big changes, you don’t have to buy new close because the old ones are dropping off you. So… build in a system of rewards for yourself. If you maintain your target weight for x weeks you can buy yourself a “Y.” Keep it off for a year, take a trip to Ibiza. Whatever motivates you.
You got this. The true key to weight loss is discipline. If you can OMAD you got what it takes.
If hunger becomes a problem, the ketogenic diet controls hunger really well. Just like fasting though, the keto diet does not cause weight loss. It’s all about Calories In and Calories Out. (“CICO”). You can increase the Calories Out with exercise. But it’s the Calories In everyone has problems with.
You got this.
Try VLCKD ( protein style). 20% weight loss at 8 weeks, and only 11% loss of Resting Energy Expenditure (compared to loss of 20+% of normal low calorie diets), which could probably be taken lower with some strength training. The changes from 4 weeks to 8 weeks are intriguing as its clear truncal(belly/organ fat) obesity and metabolic dysfunction and eliminated first. Read this study carefully https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683248/
I learned something a long time ago about weight loss: Weight loss is all about hormones and not about calories/deficits. Sure, you can lose some weight starving yourself, but that weight comes back on (and more) 99 times out of 100. Instead, learn to fix hunger and hormones and the weight will fall off, and stay off.
Also, if you’re not getting proper sleep and keeping stress levels low, you will likely not lose any weight even if you’re eating 1000 calories per day. The body is an adaptation machine.
You’re eating too much.
It’s as simple as that. You might not realize how big your portion sizes are, or how many calories are actually in things. It’s a common issue. This is why it’s important to weigh your food, because what your eyes and your stomach see as a portion size. Might not be a proper amount.
OMAD and 8/16 or 4/20 or whatever is also slow weight loss. If you want to speed it up, straight up not eating every other day will accelerate your progress massively, as will smaller meals on the days you do eat.
You also don’t really need salts/electrolytes unless you’re fasting for multiple days. It’s okay to have them, but you have to be mindful that food also has it in it, and it’s really easy to get way too much sodium if you’re not careful.
You say you eat 500 calories a day. Can you give us an idea of what you’re actually eating. Your exercise sounds good but what are you eating on the weekends. You said “mostly keto”, what are you eating that’s not keto?
You are consuming too many calories compared to how much you are burning. You need to actually calculate your caloric intake, then make sure you aren’t exceeding it with your meals. Also, as others have suggested, drop the zero drinks and fasting salts. You don’t need salt for a fast shorter than 3 days