It’s been 2 months and no matter what i do, I’m stuck! I have gone down to eating once a day and started doing more strength training since I want to firm up more.
I’m just trying to lose my last 10-12 lbs and this is literally killing me. Whatever I do seems not to work.
I have been fasting with Diet Coke is this bad? Could this be the culprit?
I’m working so hard that my body hurts every morning I’m not sure what’s going on. I should see the results that I feel.
There are people that say there is nothing wrong with drinking a diet beverage. Me I say there is nothing good in them and one day they will likely find a negative quality. I would lose the coke and replace with water (hydro-flask makes it free).
A diet drink now and then might not be a big deal, but it gets more complicated when fasting. How long are you trying to fast for? If you can’t drink plain water you could try adding something like a few drops of peppermint extract, or maybe just have some plain green tea…
Yes, I would say the diet coke is the prime suspect here. Stop drinking it for a couple of weeks and see what happens. If you can’t live without carbonated beverages try flavoured soda waters instead. Most grocery chains have their own house brands. As @Rclause says, different people have very different reactions to artificial sweeteners. But overall it’s a good idea to wean yourself from the desire/need for sweet. Sour, bitter, salty: good; sweet: not so much.
Are you eating enough during your OMAD? Too much exercise is actually the first red flag- stress on your body. Then, yes, Diet Coke during a fast can hurt some people. I did an experiment with this recently. I have been doing 20/4 fasts for a couple months now. I‘m in maintenance but actually dropped two more pounds this way. So my experiment was: I drank a Diet Coke during my fasting window every day for a week. Every single following morning, that entire week, I was 5 pounds up. Immediately dropped those 5 pounds once I stopped drinking the Diet Coke during my fasting windows.
I had a diet ginger beer one night to test if artificial sweetener did anything to me personally and voila, up over a pound and it took me several days to drop it. If you are drinking it every day, it may be making it so you can’t lose.
Some people can lose drinking diet sodas, other people can’t. Interesting to note, I have a friend who changed NOTHING in his diet and exercise other than giving up his “Diet Coke” habit. He lost 12 pounds over the course of a couple of months.
Zero carb diet sodas don’t cause any BG spike in your blood but a sweet taste in your mouth no matter the source will cause a release of insulin into your blood. Insulin is a fat storage hormone so at the very least even without putting in anything to store it will stop weight loss until that insulin drops. If you’re sipping on diet soda several times during your fasting window you’re missing any opportunity to burn fat. You’re better off just eating instead of fasting if you’re drinking anything with an artificial sweetener or sugar alcohol. All that insulin without any sugar to deal with is damaging to your body. It was shown long ago that diet sodas made people gain weight, although some may not like to think about that. If you do want Diet Coke have it with your meals and keep your fasting window clean with water, plain tea or coffee or fizzy water with flavor but no sweetness.
@Iwanttobelieve This may seem contradictory, but it’s not and if you try it you will agree (I’m sure. OK, I’m kind of odd in ways so maybe you won’t agree). The British Navy came up with this, not me. Then again, the British Navy used to give its sailors a daily ration of dark rum. 
Plain soda water with a few drops (to suit your taste) of Angostura Bitters is a truly remarkable ‘pick me up’. It may be just what you need during your workouts . And it won’t break your fast.
This is good to know! I’m not drinking it any more unless it’s once a week as a treat! 
personally I would advise not to even do that unless it’s during your eating window. Just not during fasting. I say this because you’re struggling with results so it can only help you to treat your fasting window like a strict fast. If you’re super hungry during your fast, have maybe a one-time 50 calories of fat like a bite of butter or little MCT in coffee. That hasn’t harmed me during my fast before.
Bitters and bitter herbs are a common way to stimulate appetite. Don’t you feel this when drinking bitters?
Just wanted to add one more thing- if dropping the Diet Coke still doesn’t make a difference, I really do think (and so do several others based on previous replies in other if your posts) your body might be under stress from the exercise. It sounds scary but maybe try not to do any exercise other than light walking for a few weeks. Exercise and strength training aren’t bad. But they can absolutely hinder initial results because of the stress. If you were already doing that stuff it might be fine because your body is used to it. But if your body isn’t used to it, it’s just going to keep hurting your goals. FYI It took me a year of keto to see changes. I kept going because I trusted the process. There is so much going on inside your body that you can’t see.
@David_Stilley Not at all. I’m suggesting a couple drops in a half liter or liter of sparkling water. That’s just enough to add a little flavour not trigger anything metabolically. Bitters have such a strong flavour that only a couple/few drops are needed to taste it. The OP suggests an addiction to sweet and I think learning to drink very dilute bitters is a way to break that. Also, Angostura Bitters are 44% alcohol, but when used in the minute quantities I suggest, that is negligible as well. I’m NOT recommending she drink Pink Gin!
Of course not, the reason that I asked was that I have had problems with my 24 year old autistic son’ appetite. I researched possible things to do and that came up along with several bitter herbs. It said that the British use bitters and water as you mentioned a while before eating to stimulate appetite in people who had none. But then I just looked that up to confirm it and found this. Apparently it might do both?
When it comes to appetite the matter of bitters seems unresolved. Do digestive bittersstimulate appetite, or do they suppress appetite? This happens to be a rare case where the real answer seems to actually be that they do both.
@David_Stilley Thanks very much for the link! Now that is very interesting, indeed. Similar the Aesop fable of the man and the satyr.
Significant timing! Eat within half an hour of consumption to stimulate appetite. Wait longer or don’t eat at all to reinforce a fast. I suspect that it probably takes more than the two or three drops in a liter of water to have either affect, but then I guess this is yet another to-be-tested assumption. I’d better start making a list before I forget.
Takeaway for @Iwanttobelieve: if you take my recommendation to drink Angostura Bitters in soda water, don’t even contemplate eating afterwards. 1000+ years of cloistered and eremitic monks and nuns must have been onto something.
To be clear, my comment about Pink Gin was facetious. 
I think I need to give up the Diet Coke and maybe do OMAD every other day and mix stuff up as much as possible and keep my body guessing.
I have tried just walking but no results. I just want to lose 12 more pounds and be the way I want to look and feel. It’s been so frustrating since I am working so hard to lose these last few pounds and not seeing much results.
At this point I’m just going to try varying my workouts and my eating habits and see what happens.
Are you eating enough in that one meal to fuel you for the day? If you’ve only got 10-15 lbs to lose you don’t have a lot of available energy during a fasting period and cutting back on food will not make things better.
Your body needs time to rest and recover between workouts, you can’t be in constant exercise mode either.
Diet Coke is bad period. Not just for fasting. But yes, it does trigger metabolic processes that interfere with your fasting.
If you find yourself tempted to drink Diet Coke, what helped me was knowing how terrible it is for your body. It’s easier to avoid if you know just how horrible it is. I used to drink a 2 liter bottle of diet coke a day, sometimes more. Kicking the habit was like someone who quits smoking but then starts again months or weeks (or days) later. Finally, when I learned how truly bad it was, I was able to leave it behind for good.
When you don’t know the negative impact of a food, it’s just you and your willpower trying to restrain from the pleasure of consuming it. What’s the harm right? Go ahead and eat/drink it, no real harm done. Knowing it’s horrible for your body just gives you one more layer of armor to help fight the urge to backslide on your goals. At least, that’s how it is for me.
When you say no results, how long did you wait? I don’t mean from the start of your journey. I mean from the start of your experiment of changing habit. You are a lot like me, didn’t have a whole lot to lose. it took me a YEAR to budge on the outside. I had thoughts of ”maybe it just doesn’t work for me like it does everyone else” but trust me, if you work too hard at it, or give up on elimination experiments too soon, it’s going to cause more stress and you’ll be in an endless cycle. 
Do it for health and try to relax, and you will see changes. Don’t do OMAD if you feel hungry during fasting windows. Eat enough during the OMAD. For me, that’s difficult to do so I split it up into 2 meals in a 4 hour window (or 8 … I switch it up).
I have messed up my metabolism from years of yo yo dieting.
I would do what I’m doing now but work half as hard and be 10 lbs thinner. And this was only 4 years ago!
This time around I’ve done it all right. I eat clean and was eating twice a day up until I realized that it’s been months without the scale moving and started recently doing OMAD. I have very limited dairy. I also am so low carb so this is strange to me why I have such difficulties losing weight.
The only thing I noticed was drinking Diet Coke. I didn’t do it daily but more than I should. I’m thinking this may have to be a once a week treat.
I’m trying to go from too much cardio to more circuit training where I mix up everything maybe that’s what my body needs. I can see how your journey has been hard. Ugh mine also has not been easy. I would just be happy eating twice a day keto and having normal workouts. Im not sure why it’s so hard for some people compared to others.