When do you add fasting?

[Keith_Bronsdon]

Honestly I don’t want to try fasting. I’ve been trying to keto for several months and seen NO benefits. (posted several times about my struggles since April) At the point where I feel like I’m wasting my time, so looking to change something. Wonder when adding fasting is the thing to do. I’m trying to eat consistently, be patient, not chase ketones (but check to know I’m in ketosis), don’t weigh myself often; yet the scale does not really change. Often I know there’s a wide margin of error with the scale too. Sometimes my weight bumps up or down but I have not seen a big downward change body size and not had a big change of calories in my diet. For instance I would expect to gain a pound if I ate 3500 extra calories, which has not happened. I have gone up in weight suddenly (or down) which I attribute to the scale’s inherent inconsistencies/innacuracies. I’ve confirmed by weighing myself several times in a row and seen different results. Not trying to chase numbers–but my overall body seems to have the same belly fat.

According to various measurements (again, inconsistent scale) I have 29% fat, 139 pounds of lean muscle mass, 14 pounds of visceral fat and 50.3% water. It also says my bone mass is 7.4 pounds and I really think that is wrong.

I’m 49, 6’1, 208. For several months being doing keto and showing consistent ketosis. Body fat has been consistent at 29% since the beginning, and incredibly frustrated it’s not changing. My normal ketone base seems to be 3.3 or so (on a breath meter). Sometimes higher first thing in the morning. I’m eating around my maintenance calories of 1950 or so, and lately trying to eat less to be in a deficit but afraid to try fasting as I’m also afraid of adding to what seems like a slow metabolism. I already feel like I don’t eat a lot. I don’t shy away from going over protein recommendation (according to keto calorie app) as I want to build muscle which seems to be very hard for me. I can’t lift weights as my gym is closed again during the pandemic. It was open for about a month after being closed for several. During that period I went back to running either long distance (45 min) or HIIT. Guess I’ll be going back to that.

as far as what I’m eating, my numbers are fairly consistent, but lately been breaking down and adding some keto snacks. But still not going over 50 g carbs. My net carbs are usually in the single digits for percent of total calories eaten. Seems to be never more than 6%. My carbs are usually coming from veg like broccoli, brussell sprouts, lettuce, peppers, etc. NO starch. I weigh things out as much as I can so I can stay consistent with calories and nutrient balance.

I have been eating keto brownies lately. Make them myself and portion them out so I know what I’m eating. I really binged last night, and had three of them. My total calorie intake yesterday was 2036. 50g carbs or 9%, 159g carbs or 66%, and 136g protein or 25%. This morning my ketones were 4.5.

[amwassil]

It doesn’t have to be intimidating. You could ease into it with a daily IF. If you timed your last meal of the day to end 12 hours prior to your first meal of the next day you would be doing a 12/12 IF with most of the fasting while you’re asleep. When I was growing up during the Paleocene that was the way most people ate every day and didn’t think anything of it. Breakfast at 8, supper at 6.

[Rclause]

It has been years and I still haven’t gotten around to fasting yet.

[Shinita]

I don’t think one should add fasting if they aren’t ready for that… Maybe it’s my hedonism but it makes sense to me.
I personally always did keto together with IF as IF is natural to me. Keto often causes people to eat in a smaller eating window later (it happened to me, my 8 hours diminished to 5 and sometimes it’s smaller) but not everyone is like this. It’s fine.

If you eat around maintenance calories, you should expect maintenance. 1950 sounds pretty low for your stats. More muscles? Sounds good, eat significantly more, fat-loss should be easier in the future
I have my own weights and bars, they were pretty cheap for newbie me, my press bench is homemade but one can get more muscular using their own bodyweight too, start with that and use weights later, maybe?

Carb percentage isn’t really important. It should be low enough for ketosis in your own individual case. Or low enough to eat properly for your goals, ketosis never was enough for me, carbs interfered even after fat adaptation… Some of us need to go lower. Or take out some items.

[PaulL]

The best time to start fasting is when you find yourself doing it accidentally. After about six or seven months of eating a ketogenic diet, I found myself no longer wanting breakfast, so I generally now eat only two meals a day. This is called intermittent fasting, or time-restricted eating. Today, I wasn’t hungry until I finished mowing the lawn, so my first meal of the day was at 4:30 p.m. I didn’t plan that, it just happened.

If you find yourself one day suddenly remembering that you forgot to eat all day, or wondering whether or not you’ve eaten, then you are probably ready to move quite naturally into fasting. Until then, don’t worry about it.

[cooked]

I think we can say that Keto doesn’t work for everyone.
From personal experience: 6 months Keto, followed by Keto + IF, at the same time I took up running, which I do fasted in the morning. Running or other exercise fasted really burns body fat once you’re in ketosis. Nothing wrong with using weights but I think endurance training is preferable to HIT.
I now do a 24 hour fast twice a month.
As for the NO benefits: did you measure blood pressure, blood sugar, get blood tests done? I’m sure that there were real gains made there. Weight loss is important but health is what it’s all about.

[atomicspacebunny]

I’m writing this to give you a general idea of what you may want to look at and why you may not be getting anywhere and your one of those people where nothing happens although you may want to keep trying what your doing right now to see some results this is for future reference.

Wonder when adding fasting is the thing to do. I’m trying to eat consistently, be patient, not chase ketones (but check to know I’m in ketosis)

If weight loss or body fat loss is your goal?

What do you consider fasting?

How often do you eat? Every 12 hours and with lots of physical activity every 6 hours?

Carb up 3 days and just before a work out with weights? Trying to lift weights in a fasted state for more than 20 minutes is going to take longer to recover from and you will gain muscle at a much slower pace?

When your eating you are building something but at the same time your physical activity is going to bring what your eating in calories down to 0 and mimic fasting and why your seeing a baseline of 3.3 in ketones?

My normal ketone base seems to be 3.3 or so (on a breath meter). Sometimes higher first thing in the morning.

Baseline ketones would be when your fasting (should be real low once fat adapted?) or physical activity which can mimic fasting once you go into a resting state? Your also not really using ketones for energy yet because your not fully fat adapted and why your seeing 3.3? And most of what your seeing with that 3.3 might be your liver oxidizing dietary fat not body fat.

How much dietary fat or body fat do you think your liver can oxidize at once before the fat your eating gets stored all over again because it did not get oxidized to maintain or store what your trying to take out of it? Keep fat intake low then increase as you lose body fat?

I can’t lift weights as my gym is closed again during the pandemic. It was open for about a month after being closed for several. During that period I went back to running either long distance (45 min) or HIIT. Guess I’ll be going back to that.

How often do you work out?

I only lift weights once a week and eat more carbs and protein (digestible protein (DP) and digestible energy (DE) ratios) when I do, so that I’m not mimicking fasting and burning up muscle (non-protein-sparing-mode) because as muscle volume increases the more fat you burn when at rest or sleeping but the scale will not budge but that’s what I want, I want to gain muscle (1 gram of glycogen has 2 grams water bonded to it by hydrogen) and bone weight not lose it? Problem is when people step on a scale they have “fat” embedded into their psyche?

Bottom line the more muscle you tear and re-build the more calories you can eat without gaining fat because you have more storage space in muscle and are gaining and feeding muscle rather than your insulin taking it and storing in adipose tissue, it’s going to store it in skeletal muscle as glycogen rather than converting it to triglycerides to be stored as lipid droplet in adipose cells. But as you loose body fat and you keep on fasting long-term, restricting calories or carbohydrates the more muscle will be lost if you keep lifting weights? Why because your body is adapting to the conditions of famine and preserving fat storage the more you try to lose body fat by caloric restricting because your not putting back into system what your losing so it starts going after muscle to compensate, so you want to feed your muscles not your fat stores and there is where the confusion lies about increasing caloric intake?

References:

[1] Protein sparing (amino acid sparing) is the process by which the body derives energy from sources other than protein. Such sources can include fatty tissues, dietary fats and carbohydrates. Protein sparing conserves muscle tissue. The balance between digestible protein (DP) and digestible energy (DE) in the diet is a key factor. Decreasing dietary DP/DE ratio results in an increase of protein conservation. The amino acids are not catabolized for energy, and are conserved in the body in a greater ratio. The amount of protein used in the body is influenced by the percentage that is digestible by the body, and the total quantity of protein fed to the body. Bodybuilding and other strength training promotes the utilization and conservation of protein’s amino acids in the body. Using alternate energy sources lessens the amount of amino acids that will be metabolized for energy. An increase of protein in the diet does not lead to greater protein efficiency, more protein will be lost, but a greater amount of protein will be conserved in the body through sheer volume, staying a step ahead of the metabolization of amino acids for energy. This supposedly happens roughly two days after a water fast, according to fasting proponents. …More

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[EquiPro]

For the past 20 years or so, I have followed the Blood Type Diet and I am still doing it within the parameters of Keto. I am a Blood Type O and for us Type Os, Keto is very natural as our food should be red meat based with extra fat. All starches are avoids for us and we don’t do well with sugar either.

Do you know your blood-type? If you are anything but Type O, Keto might not be the best choice for you. Type A blood-types are the only blood-type that can benefit from a Vegetarian diet and the only one that should even consider a Vegan diet. I know it sounds like hooey, but you might go to their website and look around a bit. https://www.4yourtype.com/. If you are Type A, this might be the problem for you. It might be something you should consider and explore.

With regards to IF, I started doing it about 3 years ago, and it solved a big problem for me. Before I tell you how it helped me, I found it through Kinobody. It’s very simple as he puts it forth: Just postpone your first meal for a minimum of 4 hours after waking. Ideally, you would postpone your first meal 5-7 hours, but 4 is perfectly acceptable. That’s really it. It’s not that complicated or scary.

For me, IF has been a game changer. My entire life, I have loved, loved, loved breakfast. It has always been my favorite meal and I tend to wake up hungry. The problem? Breakfast doesn’t love me. When I was young, my breakfast was either starch based (hot or cold cereal) or heavy on the starch (bagels). The problem was, within an hour of eating this type of breakfast, I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open. This went on for decades. Then I found protein-based diets that limited starch and I switched to eating protein-based breakfasts: eggs with veggies, even salads with meat, etc. What I found was that, instead of being tired, I became ravenous. I would eat a HUGE breakfast and within an hour, I was hungry again. And then another hour later I was hungry again. Really hungry.

IF was the key. When I don’t eat my first meal for the first 7 hours (which is my usual), I am neither tired, nor hungry. I might get some hunger pains, but usually if I drink a bunch of water, they go away. I suspect I am thirsty rather than hungry. By the time that I do eat my first meal, I am truly hungry and what I try to put in first is fat. My usual is to eat 2 oz of macadamia nuts as I prepare my meal. I then eat a very large, very fat-filled meal and I get full. My hunger, LITERALLY, turns off. Today, I am eating 8 oz (cooked) of fresh spinach saute’d in 1 T of ghee, with 2 jumbo eggs fried in 1 oz of butter on top of it. I salt liberally and add a good amount of nutritional yeast on top. I make sure to drink every bit of the liquid left at the bottom of the bowl. Absolutely delish and I can barely finish it, I am so full. If I had eaten that exact meal when I get up at 5 AM, I would have been starving and would not have felt satiated. For me, the IF is very, very important. It is now just after noon, and I have had 7 gms of carbs, 93 gms of fat and 27 gms of protein. Perfect.

[PaulL]

Do you know your blood-type? If you are anything but Type O, Keto might not be the best choice for you. Type A blood-types are the only blood-type that can benefit from a Vegetarian diet and the only one that should even consider a Vegan diet.

I’m A⁺ and have done very well on keto, so I’m not particularly concerned. But it’s good to know that I have an excuse to avoid eating vegetarian or vegan!

[Keto89]

You said that you have 50g of carbs per day. Try going down to 20g net carbs or less per day. That may help.