November 2025 IF/EX Fasting chat - all welcome

(B Creighton) #1

Hello all. I didn’t see an IF chat for the month, so I thought I’d start one… partly to keep myself motivated. So, those of you who follow me at all know that I go from “low carb” to keto in the winter… That starts this month. As part of my winter Keto diet, I eat more protein, and do OMAD IF on Mon, Wed and Fri. This year I started at 178 lbs yesterday morning, and fasted until dinner. My subQ is 18% aaagggain, but I swear that it feels like I am pinching less when I flex my abs. Anyway, this year my goal is not to gain any weight while I gain muscle… LOL… I think I accomplished this only the first year I did keto… but I was getting in a bad way back then before I decided to do keto. Really, I would like to get to 11% body fat, so figure I still need to lose about 10 pounds of fat, and would love to replace that with muscle. I just haven’t really found how to do that yet. This year, I plan to tweek a few things to see what happens… I will report back periodically. I will probably do blood work early next month, and this year I plan to also test my omega 3 to omega 6 levels and ratio. Any suggestions are welcome.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #2

Please edit the chat title to IF/EX Fasting chat. So those who do this month can easily find this chat.

Thanks for getting it started, much appreciated.

(Bob M) #3

@scaperdude I’ll be interested to see your O3/O6 ratio. Every time I’ve gotten mine taken, it’s been poor. Now, I’m not sure that’s “bad”, because the data for this ratio is all high carb folks, but I don’t know.

For muscle gain, more eating might be better. Also, from my perspective, gaining muscle is hard, particularly when you get older. Even when younger, it took me a long time to gain muscle. Years to be able to bench 325 pounds, and then that only 1-2 times. Years.

I know people have this idea that they’ll gain 10+ pounds of muscle in a year of lifting, but I think the chances of that are near zero unless you have genetics and are a younger male.

(B Creighton) #4

I’m interested too, which is why I plan to take it. I believe it will be relatively low, but I don’t know that is terribly important as long as I have a relatively good omega 3 number. At least some studies show good life expectancy as long as omega 3 is relatively high. However, I am of the belief that oxidized PUFAs are bad, and should be kept to a minimum, and there is science showing a connection between PUFA intake and glycation.

I believe I did achieve at least a 10 pound gain my first year of keto, but I was starting with def too much visceral fat, and studies have shown that muscle will replace fat rather effortlessly in that condition. I lost 2" in the waist, which typically equates to about 15-18 lbs of fat, which at 6’ I believe is quite reasonable. When I went off keto, and my weight went back up(water weight) my waist remained 2" smaller, so I believe at least 10 lb of that 12 or 13 lb swing must have been muscle, but I didn’t even use a smart scale back then. Every year subsequently, I have gained at least as much fat as muscle in trying to gain muscle, so it definitely has been a challenge. If I lost 10 lbs of fat now, I would be only 5 lbs over my HS graduation weight, so I haven’t been able to retain a lot of extra muscle from my efforts… I am making 2 different tweeks this year tho, so we’ll see I guess. Thanks for weighing in, because yeah, it is hard, and I appreciate anyone who has done it and has suggestions.