So I’ve been dabbling in intermittent fasting for almost two years trying to get it all under control. I’m about to turn 50, have recently had to go on beta blockers (low dose, but still), pulled off birth control pills (which helped me immensely) and I can’t seem to keep my body composition under control. I believe that I’m going to have to combine LCHF with IF in order to make this work with everything conspiring against me. Before the holidays I did about 6 weeks of alternate day fasting, with 40-46 hours 3 times a week. I could totally eat crap and the fast would erase any bloating, water weight, etc. But I believe to bring my actual body fat down (I would like to lose about 25 lbs), I know I’m going to have to add much better eating to my regime. And I know that at least low carb is the way to go. Keto makes SO much sense to me.
Well…I tried to get into it this weekend after a 66 hour fast. But with guests coming over for Sunday dinner, I made a keto cheesecake with erythritol. On my two days of eating, I ate four meals, including a salad, charcuterie plate, eggs/meat and steak/sweet potato/veggies/and the damn cheesecake. I gained 5 pounds in 2 days! I’m beside myself. With all my IF efforts I don’t know how I’m not losing weight. Then my first big weekend of adding keto and I gain! (I’ve done 3 weeks of keto two years ago…no fasting…and I lost approx 5 pounds. Also found it very hard to maintain. I feel like I have to add fasting to make this work.). I just don’t know. I’m attributing this to the erythritol. Any thoughts? First time I’ve reached out. Any thoughts would be welcome. Been lurking for a couple years, just enjoying the threads of other people. Now I’m struggling that I’m out of options to make anything work. Thanks for any thoughts.
Gained 5 lbs in 2 days...erythritol?
Welcome first of all…
I know many start out after a long fast with a smaller feed for that first meal
You can try that next time?
Change the eating window?
Just a thought
For this an n=1
Just try an Elimination…And or reintroduce later
And skip it it for now😓
See what happens
Good luck
It takes time to lose (or gain) a pound of fat (or muscle).
Short-term weight fluctuation is typically just a simple change in water retention or digestive tract contents.
When I used to work out every morning at the YMCA, it was not unusual for me to drop up to 20 pounds in a 3.5-hour session. But the next morning, I’d be at about the same starting point.
Maybe @OgreZed is right, it’s all just water weight and will disappear as fast as it came. 
On the other hand. Do you weigh and measure food portions and track macros? Do you know many carbs you ate? Your ‘salad’, sweet potatoes and ‘veggies’ could easily add up to a lot of carbs depending exactly what they were and what was in them. Even the charcuterie could have included carbs again depending exactly what was in it and how much. So there are a few known unknowns. Maybe a few unknown unknowns. Other than that, my opinion is sweet serves no useful purpose and is best lost, the sooner the better.
I can’t address the fasting. It seems like a lot. But I’ll let others more experienced advise about that.
If it makes you feel any better, I put on about 5lb (on the scales) between 23rd and 27th Dec. It was gone by 1st Jan just with 16:8 IF and low carb (not in ketosis). Think it was water retention due to carb intake, as I certainly did not bog into a 5lb meal!
Don’t let one setback de-rail you.
Did I read sweet potato?
I dunno, but I have the feeling you might be trying to do too much at once here. I was advised as a keto beginner not to try to fast until I was fat adapted, which can take 6 weeks to 3 months! I think mixing everything into the batter plus the kitchen sink is too much to keep track of. You seem so stressed out too. How about relaxing, and just getting into keto plain and simple? I am talking keto even with 3 meals a day. And the most important thing that matters is to keep the carbs below 20g, andbascially the ratio around 60% fats and 35% proteins. If you can just wrap your head around that, the rest might fall into place? And keto isn’t a quick fix. Its for the long haul. Consider losing 25 lbs in 6 months instead of 6 weeks.It is way more livable.
Make sure you are under 20 grams of carbs. If you are eating sweet potatoes then you probably are not. What was the carb intake of the cheesecake you made? Whenever I come off of a fast and refeed then my weight usually goes up from the post fast weigh in.
Keto Cheesecake and erythritol/sweeteners in general were detrimental for my weight loss and I gained 15 lbs. if you can eliminate it, eliminate it. Good luck!!
I have noticed over these past 8 months that whenever I do a fast (48+ hours) the weigh in before the first meal to break the fast is usually only a couple pounds down. Then the next day (2 meals later) my weight is backup…sometimes even higher than before the fast. But, over the next couple days of eating like usual (oma, LCHF) my weight then proceeds to drop consistently by about 5 pounds over the next week or so. Then I plateau again till the next fast.
Sounds suspicious:
”…erythritol is not only absorbed from food but is also produced by the body. By substituting carbon atoms in glucose with “heavy” carbon (13C), the researchers followed the route of glucose throughout metabolism in the body.
The result was surprising. When participants drank 13C-labeled glucose, the labeled carbon was metabolized and appeared in blood erythritol after some time.
“This result proves that the body can synthesize the sugar alcohol itself,” said Hiller. “Erythritol is not consumed and released from the body unchanged; it has an impact on the metabolism of our body. This finding is in contrast to all previous assumptions.” …” …More
That is why I steer clear of artificial sweeteners; to much of a risk of visceral fat in my opinion and already known for causing inflammation in subcutaneous adipose tissue[1] (why you will get fat eating this stuff), if high fructose corn syrup is turned DIRECTLY into visceral fat by the liver without triggering insulin I can just imagine what artificial sweeteners are doing without triggering insulin either?
I would rather eat table sugar.
Footnotes:
Interesting study. The body metabolizes gluscose into erithritol. It’d be interesting to learn why? Related to college student alcohol consumption?