Alarming weight gain

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #41

Hey Simon, I don’t know when you last checked in with me, but since March or April I’ve been doing single set to failure (McGuff protocol) strength training. That hasn’t changed much, though my arms are definitely stronger!

It’s hard to compare with last year, for instance, because for the past 2 summers I was very active biking around the city and walking a lot. I had an injury a couple of months ago so I’ve been less active, apart from the strength training. So that’s a variable.

My weight has sort of stabilized up around 83kg, though I had a scare last week with a daily reading of 84.5, so I fasted for a day and that’s seemed to help bring me back below 83 for the time being. I am interested in doing a slightly longer fast, though I remain skeptical because there is so little clinical research on fasting.

I’m a tad concerned that I’ve really fundamentally changed my metabolism and that I’ve made things a lot harder for myself in future. I am still convinced by the science, and it’s important to note that I’ve been ad libitum for 2 years and have maintained most of the initial 10-12kg weight loss. But the last 6 months of weight gain have not been encouraging to say the least.

(German Ketonian) #42

Hi @gabe, thanks for responding. I also found fasting to be incredible fruitful, when it comes to resetting your metabolism. I also had some weird weight gain from one day to the other (we’re talking 3kgs, or 7lbs, in one day!) even though my fluid (3-4 litres of water + some black coffee) and salt intake (8-10 grams) stayed the same. I have found, that somehow my organism seems to have become too adapted for my WOE and needed some switching up. Even at keto, if your metabolism gets used to the stuff you’re doing day-to-day, it will conserve more and more of the energy you’re providing it with, leading to weight gain. I have found that a 24-48 fast every once in a while does the trick for me.

#43

May want to start to get a better feel for what you’re doing. The darkside to eating to satiety which nobody talks about, is it doesn’t work right when the metabolism isn’t working right, similar to why sugar burners can’t do it, it’s a compromised system. Many people that are very active, working out etc have near no appetite in many cases (I’m one of them) If I eat to satiety many times I’ll be very hypo-caloric, which will screw me up long term obviously. Can go the other way as well.

Why do you think they’re not healthy? We know they’re great for plateau busting and undoing things like a sudden gain. Using a longer fast to accomplish a goal and get things moving again has nothing to do with lifelong maintenance. It’s a short term tool and in no way something you have to make long term commitments to.

(Nicole Sawchuk) #44

I have no advice, but in January when I started weight training, my weight went up 10 lbs and it looks to be fat as well. Than last month, I started losing a few pounds again. I think my body needed to gain the weight to rebuild muscle that had been lost in my weight loss. I am currently letting my body sit at this plateau for the time being as I just have a hunch it is healing something. But I can’t describe the frustration! With that said, I do fast. I try to do a 3 day fast once a month and frequently do OMAD and 42 hour fasts. I don’t lose much weight on them, but I feel great when I do fast. I have increased my protein consumption and have actually gone closer to a carnivore diet in the last couple months although not fully as I love nuts and I am not scared of veggies. Just haven’t been wanting them much.

I agree with @lfod14 that there is a dark side to satiety. First off, it takes ALOT of food for me to feed satiated so I will overeat especially fat! I could eat tubs of coconut oil/butter and never feel full. Which is why I have leaned to increased protein consumption. Its not heavy, but I am no longer afraid to eat it. I wish working out led me to not have an appetite, but it has been the opposite for me.

(Brian) #45

Not sure if it is relevant or not but could weather be a factor?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-body-wieght-ambient-temperature/

Our bodies do change somewhat, mostly water retention, when the weather stresses us with hotter temperatures and higher humidity levels, something that’s happening in a lot of the northern climates right about now.

I’ve noticed that despite not having changed much of anything in our diet, both my wife and myself have had a few extra pounds show up unexplained. It’s been about as hot and humid over the past few weeks as we’ve had yet this year. Honestly, I’m not worried, it’s not much. And I suspect those extra pounds will leave about like they showed up, quietly, without much ado, when the weather cools. (And the days have now started to get shorter.)

KCKO…

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #46

I put the weight on between December and April, mostly. I thought it’d come off over the summer but as I think I mentioned above, I’m not as active this summer because of an injury I have.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #47

I am quite happy to try an occasional 24-48 hour fast. Perhaps even longer. But I got into LCHF because of the science. There is just not much research to speak of, and Phinney is convinced that longer fasts lead to loss of lean tissue. So while I’m very open to new evidence, and there’s a lot of hype around fasting right now, the evidence supporting its use is mostly anecdotal plus some old studies from decades ago.

For these reasons I am cautious about using them much as a tool.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #48

I should add one thing: fasting makes a lot of sense. Prehistoric man must have starved for days or weeks, and then feasted when he found and killed an animal, or came upon a bunch of fruit or whatever. Right? Sounds completely logical. Especially because of ketosis: why else would we have evolved the ability to live off our own fat stores for weeks at a time?

But I want to emphasize: we aren’t sure of any of this. There’s no proof; it’s speculative. In the past, people have thought lots of things that seemed to make sense that turned out to be false. To wit: the earth seems flat; the brain needs glucose therefore you need to consume carbs; atoms are the smallest units of matter; dietary fat makes you fat.

None of those things turned out to be the case, even though they made eminent sense. So I’m bearish on fasting, for now.

#49

Your call, but there most likely won’t be any, any time soon at least. Not a huge line of people that are going to get money to research what the mainstream believes is starvation. I can tell you from my own acct over about a year of 1 week fasts every couple weeks that I definitely did NOT loose any strength. Quite the opposite. By day 3-4 I always started having awesome days in the gym. I always still lifted all the time 4x week. Nothing changed during my fasting weeks. Not sure whether it was cranked up ketones or the hGH bump that we supposedly get, but in any case I felt awesome. I still fast but now typically 2-3 days when I do. Weight loss is still a goal, but I’m keeping the muscle building slightly more of the goal so I’m keeping the calories and protein up for now. Not worried about loosing, more worried of missing muscle gains which is where I think the gray area becomes HUGE in keto. No shortage of jacked people maintaining with keto, but pretty hard finding people that got that way on it, which kinda sucks.

(karen) #50

I didn’t read the whole thread so sorry if this has been done to death, but Jason Fung has a lot of supportive NEW information about fasting and why it may be a better option for both retaining muscle mass and not creating metabolic slowdown, at least compared with calorie reduction.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #51

I think Jason Fung is great. The challenge is that there just isn’t much science on this subject. That’s just the fact of the matter.

(karen) #52

True. I’m fasting right now and I’d really like to know if caffeine and 5 calorie broth are impacting my autophagy … guess for now it’s an N=1. My attitude is the same as it is with keto: if I feel like fasting isn’t working, I can always stop!

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #53

This is very interesting, particularly your comment about people getting jacked on keto. Or the lack thereof. That’s a worry because gaining muscle is of critical importance to me, because I think it’s one of the major keys to unlocking the rest of my fat loss.

Fasting may be another of those keys, but I just don’t know.

(Adam Kirby) #54

If by keto you mean low carb in general there’s Ted Naiman. As far as I can tell he built his physique on low carb, was a skinny fat vegetarian before then.

#55

That’s how I look at it as well, at this point the muscle building should do a lot of the remaining fat loss for me. I’ve been lifting using Jim Stoppani programs the last year, I’ve noticed a descent difference in my lifts and physical appearance since going to them and using his brand protein blend pre workout as well as pre & post workout. Not that I’m blindly sold on his name but discloses all ingreditents and doses and doesn’t do proprietary blends which I won’t deal with. I’m a fan of real food like the next guy, but unfortunately we are at a disadvantage sadly when it comes to really putting on muscle. I’m still 100% confident I’ll get the look I want, but finding the thing that does it may take some time. I’m much more metabolically flexible than I was years ago and I’m trying to get the balls to maybe try Targeted Keto for a month or so and see if it’s noticeable in the gym. But It’s a very weird step to intentionally hit myself with 25g of dextrose, I know I’ll burn it in the gym and it SHOULDN’T cause any issues but it still seems wrong. Guess there’s only one way to find out but I’ll have to start tracking more meticulously in case it starts going the other way on me. If it does I want to catch it before it becomes a problem.

(Alec) #56

Here’s the problem: where’s the money in fasting? Pretty much zero. For anyone. Except us consumers, of both food and health. It seems that the scientific community are now pretty much the stooges of food and pharma corporations. And the Govt agencies are not supporting research that doesn’t back up their bullshit plates and pyramids.

So who is going to spend millions researching something that doesn’t pay back (to them)? I think the only ones that DO benefit, but that don’t currently seem to want to get involved, are the insurance companies. I don’t know how they operate financially, but it would seem to me that a healthier population in gereral would boost their profits significantly. Does anyone know if the insurance industry commissions research?

(karen) #57

I thought your question was interesting. Several articles I’ve read seem to point to a classic problem: special interest groups. Doctors / specialists who make a lot of money off of a particular procedure lobby to ensure the procedure isn’t removed from coverage, even if it doesn’t work. Stents, for example. So the insurance company which actually funds research into new therapy winds up with two choices: fund more research debunking old therapy and buck the lobbies, go to court and spend Much more money proving without a doubt that the old procedure is useless, or cover twice as many protocols. If they avoid doing research, they don’t have to do either. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

This vox article discussed something similar with regard to the lack of evidence-based medicine.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/28/16823266/medical-treatments-evidence-based-expensive-cost-stents

(bulkbiker) #58

They just sponsored a whole weekend in Zurich about Food…

http://institute.swissre.com/events/food_for_thought_bmj.html

Richard was there…

(karen) #59

Oh, that picture alone is worth a thousand words! Can you imagine a world where you went to an event and that was the food offering!!

(Lonnie Hedley) #60

Isn’t the idea that taking dextrose before working out is because it’s burned so fast? So carbs are known to build muscle, might as well use the one that’s going to help build gains and get used the fastest so you maintain ketosis? I think this is the idea I’ve gotten from the people who suggest this. Same for people eating a couple packages of smarties during a marathon. Boost of energy but doesn’t affect ketosis.