Yea well if a person goes back to eating a high carb/sugar diet with tons of sodium in a caloric surplus, no ** they’re going to gain it all back. But for people going back to healthy lifestyle it won’t be like that. Sure you’ll hold on to some water weight but if you go into a healthy lifestyle of exercise, low carb/sugar diet, while tracking your sodium and staying in a caloric deficit you won’t gain all that weight back. I feel like more people need to take this into account talking about weight gain after a fast.
If you make better choices post fast you won’t gain it all back. Pay attention more to how you feel, the inches lost and how clothes fit than the number on the scale.
I think a lot of people are counting water weight as weight gain. If you had no water for an extended time and drink a liter of it at once the scale will say you “gained” a pound. But it’s not a pound of fat.
My plan when I get to my goal weight is to fast during weekdays and eat on weekends. My TDEE for my goal weight is about 11,600 calories per week. Even if I stuffed my face I don’t think I could eat 5000 calories per day unless I was training for the Olympics.
Bottom line, even if the scale changes right after the fast, eat a deficit and it will balance out. I don’t think a strict diet (keto, zero carb, vegetarian) is inherently necessary for maintaining weight. I would just limit junk food and fast foods because they make me more hungry but don’t promote satiety.
Probably because a lot of people get excited at how much weight they seem to “lose” on a dry fast - experienced fasters know that a lot is water weight. It’s like a kind warning so that people don’t lose their mind when the weight returns.
At the same time, it’s also true that a lot of people gain back the weight again. Many return to old diets. It’s easy to say “I’m going to eat healthier” during a fast, harder to follow through once you taste food again.
I would argue the person will put on some 10 or so pounds of partially digested food and poop traveling through the intestines, but that should really be all the “weight gain” right there. This is to assume the person has adopted healthy eating.