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Why am I still so tired after 10 days on 20:4?

TIA for any help you can give me.

I’ve been on a 20:4 fast for 10 days, eating between 1200-1400 calories a day on a Mediterranean diet. I’m 65 years old, haven’t exercised in 20 years. I’ve lost a tiny bit of weight, I’d say probably only about 5 lbs, but I don’t own scales so I don’t weigh myself. I’m about 40 lbs. overweight.

I’m not consciously doing low carb, but I don’t eat a lot of carby foods either, mostly salmon, sardines, shrimp, fish with salad or veggies, occasional brown rice, a few eggs a week. I don’t eat sugar. I don’t eat fruit right now, because I’m avoiding carbs. I don’t have time to track my food, so I just mostly do serving sizes to track calories.

I’m doing this to lose belly fat because at my last doctor’s appt., he said I had fatty liver and was 3 points away from pre-diabetes. I knew I was eating way too much sugar, so I cut it out that day.

I don’t know why I’m still so fatigued. For one or two days, I had a sudden burst of energy, but paid for it the next day and haven’t really had much energy at all since then.

I do exercise, calisthenics with and without weights and also walk in place for at least 30 minutes a day. It’s just too danged hot to walk outside right now, but as soon as it cools down, I’ll be walking at least a mile or two a day.

What can I do to have more energy during the day? My eating window is 10 to 2 pm. Should I push it back some? I don’t want to have it in the evening, because I have night eating syndrome, where you don’t get hungry until after 7 at night, so I really want my stomach to be empty by 7. I could go 12 to 4, but I don’t see me pushing it any further than that. Does it really matter what time you eat?

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Answer

It can take a few weeks to switch to fat burning mitochondria. Walking should burn off your glycogen. Keep it up. If you get really impatient, fast one wholeday. So sleep, eat nothing, sleep. Then back to eating. That always takes me from 0.3 ketones to ~2.5. You should at least mentally feel good at that point. HTH

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