JAN 2026 IF/EX Fasting

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #1

:fireworks::clinking_glasses::peace_symbol::heart: HAPPY NEW YEAR. Let’s make it a good one!

New year, new month. anyone doing fasting is welcome here.

I am happy to be at my goal at the begging of this year. Hope the holidays didn’t get you too far off plan.

DEC 2025 IF/EX Fasting
(Central Florida Bob ) #2

It wasn’t the holidays because my weight had been slipping up since the start of '25, but the time to go back to dieting is definitely back. I’m leaning more toward alternate day fasts rather than a continuous fast - mainly because I’ve done Every Other Day fasts for months at a time, although it has been several years since I did that. Lots of experience with ADF (EOD?) fasts and none with extended fasts or just not eating for a few weeks.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #3

I try to change it up a lot. I think that is why I have done so well with this way of eating.

Sometimes my body just says, “nope, not doing that one again”. I did go over my goal weight recently and tried to do OMAD for a month, but did not make it thru without a weekly 2MAD, It worked out well, i reached my goal, so I’m happy with that.

(Central Florida Bob ) #4

The first and biggest difference is that I never made my goal weight, just an “I give up” weight around 200. My goal had been 190 and I think I remember the closest I ever got was around 192. There was one old spreadsheet dated 2019 that had 191.8 one day. At the start of this year, I was about 212 but something made that change this year. I had to give up my every-other-day hour long bike rides and I’m scheduled for some surgery on March 4th.

I used to live pretty much on 2MAD and shifted to occasional OMAD days some years ago. Right now, I’m thinking of instead of Every Other Day fasts, I’m thinking of shifting to 2 days/week. Probably Sunday and Thursday. Simply because it has been so long since I did that EOD maybe five or six years.

(Hugh Walter Jennings) #5

My goal was to weigh 154 lbs by Jan. 6th. That’s the lowest I’ve ever weighed since I started my weight loss journey.

159.4 this morning, so I’m probably not going to make it. At least it’s staying below 160 for the last couple weeks.

Going to fast today, at least 24 hours.

(Hugh Walter Jennings) #6

Well, only fasted 12 hours. Nor did I hit the treadmill to get my 10,000 steps I usually shoot for.

Around 7:00 p.m. or so I did some food prep to last me two or three days. Wound up eating a serving and a half of black bean pasta with olive oil. About a half serving each of macadamia nuts and walnuts. Also ate about a third of a jar of peanut butter. Some with the meal and snacking until bedtime.

To my surprise, I stepped on the scale and weigh .8 lb lighter than yesterday and several other categories improved including body fat percentage as well as subcutaneous fat. Metabolic age dropped back down to 63 from 64.

My blood glucose was 106 but that was not fasting blood glucose. I woke up a couple of times last night and went to get a drink of water and naturally I had to get a bite of peanut butter lol. The only way I’m going to be able to quit snacking on peanut butter is to put a strict limit of two tablespoons totai per day on it.

My cold turkey on the nicotine pouches with short-lived but I’m having success weaning myself off of them. Hopefully I’ll get there within a week.

(Central Florida Bob ) #7

I seem to have settled on Alternate Day Fasts (not Every Other Day Fasts) I just had my first food since Saturday evening (a half cup of yogurt at around 8:30), so 38 hours of fasting. Yeah, I had two morning cups of coffee (sugar free and 1 tsp of HWC) and two cups of hot tea, one at noon the other closer to 9PM.

I weighed myself on Saturday and was 4.0 pounds lighter today. Without pulling out a spreadsheet from the bioimpedance scale, I think that’s pretty much water and “junk weight”. Hey, my birthday is a month away, so maybe I do ADFs until then? My Afib “surgery” is a month after that, so maybe…

(B Creighton) #8

Well, I am starting the month on a rather unexpected turn. Jan 5 my weight was way down about 7 pounds over the holidays. I’m not sure I will figure this one out. Mid December I was up to 182 pounds. My BF was 24.1% and my subQ was 20.9. I continued to lose some fat over the holidays despite being somewhat naughty with the sweets. My BF dropped to 23.9% and subQ fell to 20.7. My weight, however, dropped to 174.8! I was shocked, so confirmed this on another scale. My new Hume says most of this weight loss was in lean body mass. Well, I did not exercise for the last 2 weeks, and stopped the creatine, but otherwise at am somewhat of a loss over this rapid change. I probably should add that my mom died, and I attended her funeral, but I feel I ate fairly well… I certainly didn’t starve myself. I had breakfast every morning, and dinner every night… no OMAD except for this last Sunday. So, I am sure some may think stress could have done this, but although I was definitely impacted by her passing, I did not feel stressed at all. Anyway, at least I lost some fat, and I will see if going back on creatine, etc, will bring my weight back up just as dramatically…

(Bob M) #9

@scaperdude Creatine can cause muscle “mass” (I think water) increase, but it’s supposed to go away over time. Most references I see estimate about 5 pounds for muscle mass and creatine.

Sorry to hear about your mother.

@CFLBob I don’t weigh myself anymore, but when I would do a fast, I would often “lose” 5 pounds the first day. That’s probably the food I’m not eating, water weight, etc.

I’m trying for a 4.5 day fast. We’ll see what happens.

(Central Florida Bob ) #10

Need I say I’m interested in how that 4.5 day fast turns out? I’ve thought about that but never extended a fast that long. I’m guessing you’ll do that, then maybe wait a week before you’d think about doing another?

The main reason I’m doing alternate day fasts (Sun, Tues, Thurs) is that I did this some years ago, when I was trying get comfortably below my goal weight to start maintenance. I never made my goal weight, but the ADF was easy to live with. Weight has been sneaking back up and this year with the changes due to my afib and my bike rides going away.

I mentally flipped coins on this a lot, and with my afib “surgery” coming in March figured I’d do ADFs for a month and see how that works out.

(Bob M) #11

I started redoing longer fasts because my insulin remains “high”:

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I don’t know how to get it lower other than to fast a while (the “<3.0” on 9/18/15 was after fasting 4.5 days). (I think the 5.7 on 5/9/18 was in the afternoon after fasting since the night before; the other tests were normal overnight fasting.)

For the last test of 12.5, I did that after fasting 12 hours, but I also had some meatballs and sauce for dinner, which may have been slightly higher carb. Unfortunately, without pin-prick insulin meters, I can’t test things like 8, 10, 12 hours of fasting eating the same meal; what different meals with the same time of fasting causes insulin to do; etc.

The test on 10/31/16 shocked me, and I went on vacation, ate a worse diet, and got a better result 2 weeks later. Doesn’t make sense. I also think I fasted for multiple days not long before the 10/31/16 test, and I had a theory that longer fasting could lead to a “rebound” effect with insulin I still want to test that, but that would be getting 3-4 insulin tests (morning of first day of fasting; after 4.5 days of fasting; after eating on Monday; maybe another during the week).

Anyway, when I was doing the 36 hours of fasting 2x/week, and additional fasting at times, I started getting too cold. I got to the point where even short fasts (not even a day) would make me freezing. I think that was my body lowering my basal metabolic rate, but I can’t prove that.

That’s why I gave up on fasting for a while, and why I’m only on longer fasts. I might do one of these every 2 months. I’m not sure I want to do them more than that, but we’ll see.

It’s goo to see that you’ve scheduled your surgery.

(Central Florida Bob ) #12

As always, many things to think about in there.

The feeling too cold thing is something I’ve had for quite a long time. Although my last ADF run was years ago (I’d have to dig it up, but more than a couple), I had been doing one day/week until earlier this year. My initial observation was that in my working days where we had to characterize circuits as exactly as possible, we would try to duplicate the conditions of the test as closely as possible. That meant running the circuits or whole radios in a thermal chamber so the temperatures were as close to identical as we could get. For my case, I figured fasting the day before stepping on the bioimpedance scale would get me closer to the same conditions better than just doing a normal eating day, and that worked.

This is Florida, so for at least 11 months out of the year, being a bit cold saves on the electric bill. I was concerned about impacts on the measurements, but I don’t know what they consider in terms of the scale’s errors. There’s an old saying that goes, “if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.” I can’t phrase that as fasting off the top of my head, but I think it’ll be there.

This year I tried OMAD variations. Eating as close as I could to the same meal once a day for dinner. At my sloppiest, I had 2MAD, with close to the same meals twice and I eventually concluded that wasn’t close enough. It did reduce my feeling cold on the fasting day.

How do you measure insulin? A trip to a medical lab or …?

At the moment, I don’t even have strips for my blood sugar meter. I’ve never measured insulin or had it measured anywhere.

(KM) #13

My guess is that your scale interpreted the water within muscle from the creatine as lean mass, and when you stopped taking the creatine and lost that puffiness, the scale reported muscle loss. Sorry about your mom.

(Bob M) #14

You have to measure it in a lab, although there were some folks working on a pin-prick version with a monitor you could use at home. I don’t know what happened to that version.

That’s what makes it hard, because if you want to do insulin testing, you have to pay for it at a lab, make an appointment, get there, etc.

I can’t wait for Star Trek’s tricorder.

Fasting insulin is useful, as it can give one measure of “insulin resistance” through HOMA-IR, which uses blood sugar and insulin levels in a formula.

(Central Florida Bob ) #15

Is it unreasonable to think if it was as easy to do as a glucometer, they’d be on the market already?

(B Creighton) #16

Yep, I think this is it, because I had an unusual amount of lean mass gain in December right after Thanksgiving. My guess now is that my body had become saturated with creatine at that point, and over Thanksgiving my muscles refilled with glycogen. I certainly didn’t gain 5 lbs of muscle in two weeks…I wish…LOL…

(Bob M) #17

It’s definitely way harder, but when I was on Twitter (before it became X), there was at least one group that I thought had figured it out. I believe they had equipment you could buy. I researched it and the testing was expensive and limited (meaning the testing strips were expensive and they only gave you a few initially). Unfortunately, I can’t remember who was involved, so the searching I’m doing doesn’t turn them up.

(Bob M) #18

Well, I’m almost 4 days into my fast. Dr. Fung has been posting on Substack, and he says fasting isn’t easy. I agree with him. The hunger comes in waves, and last night I got home and my wife had made one of my favorite keto meals (basically cabbage, butter, ground beef, spices). That was tough.

Also, for the last two 4.5 day fasts, I’ve gotten so hungry that I ordered an entire sampler from Rosette’s (makes gluten-free, mainly keto, mixes) last time, and 4 bags of Carnivore Snax this time. The latter are ridiculously expensive, but great, just meat + salt. The Rosette’s was originally to get something to make a gluten-free pie crust with for Christmas, but I ended up not making that. So I have all these mixes of cookies, etc. What was I thinking? It’s the “don’t go to the store hungry” problem.

I get home at 7pm tonight, and will basically go to bed, maybe after walking the dog, so I’ll be able to make it until tomorrow, which is day 4.5. These are tough, though. One reason I might limit them to every 1.5-2 months.

(Jane) #19

Hey guys - joining you this month for a fast. Started on Tuesday after lunch and will break tomorrow for a 72-hr fast.

I did ok over the holidays - didn’t gain anything but still need to drop about 10 lbs to get back to where I want to be. Lost 4 already so almost halfway there.

I lost my 92-yo Dad last Saturday and he had the good graces to pass the day BEFORE my birthday and not on it. I raise my wine glass in his honor. He went low-carb about 5 years ago and did very well on it, but his body just gave out. No diseases or cancer and died in his sleep in his own bed - can’t ask for more than that. Headed to Vegas this weekend for his memorial service at his church.

Yesterday reading from my KetoMojo:
Glucose: 80
Ketones: 1.5
GKI: 2.9

Today were better:
Glucose: 95
Ketones: 3.2
GKI: 1.6

KCFO

(Bob M) #20

Are those readings once a day? If so, morning or evening?

I find mine are quite a bit different between morning and evening:
Jan 6 morning: 93, 0.7
Jan 6 evening: 84, 1.8
Yesterday morning: 76, 1.4
Yesterday evening: 72, 4.0

During normal days, it’s even more different. BS is about 110 in the morning, ketones 0.3; in the 80s in the evening with ketones higher (say, 0.7).

I’m taking Jardiance, which I think has raised my ketones and lowered my blood sugar (though not in the morning).