Why are longer fasts more efficacious than daily IF?

(Jennifer ) #41

I also think that if you don’t maintain your BMR by properly eating in between fasting, you could gain back after your break. If your BMR is in the toilet, eventually you could start putting it back on in between fasts. That’s just a mildly educated guess though.

(Brian) #42

This discussion naturally leads me to a question I haven’t really found much of an answer to.

Let’s say, just for the sake of discussion, that I’m one of the ones that screwed myself up and went on the Biggest Loser, lost 300 pounds, and dropped my BMR into the lowest level of the basement. What would I do to heal that BMR and take life back to some kind of normal without putting all of that 300 pounds right back on?

(Doug) #43

I wonder, Jennifer. Does our BMR really decline that fast? Over a long enough time period like months, I do believe that one’s metabolism can and will adapt. Yet if we are talking about a week, or just a few weeks, then I don’t think there is much to worry about.

If I fast 3 days per week, and only eat 800 calories per day on the other 4 days, how fast are you thinking that a reduction in metabolism will appear? I don’t even have an educated guess, just personal experience. I can’t believe that much if anything will happen during the first week, or even over the course of one month. Beyond that, perhaps.

I’m a believer in longer fasts. There are beneficial hormonal adaptions that don’t take place with daily calorie restriction. Yet I’ve also done stuff like fast for 3 days, eat very little, around 400 calories per day, for 2 days, then fast for another 3. I have not done this for weeks in a row, so it’s for an overall short time period, but I’ve never seen or felt anything to indicate that my metabolism was slowing. If anything, I’ve felt sped up and like my body turned the thermostat up a little on those low-cal days.

Dr. Fung says that over 4 days of continuous fasting, our BMR actually increases by 12%. Sweet! He also says that ‘The Biggest Loser’ contestants, over 6 months of daily calorie restriction, suffered a decline of their BMRs by 789 calories per day. Ouch! So, it can certainly be bad.

(Jennifer ) #44

My only n=1 experience was over months. That was through OMAD and consistently only eating 200-500 under BMR.

However, I can imagine a situation where, if you’re fasting 4 days of the week and only eating 800-1200 on your eating days…after a few weeks of that, I can imagine the body reacting poorly and trying to hoard some extra energy. Especially if the person is still insulin resistant, so you body can’t get to the fat storage as it would like.

However, this is filed under “who the F*** really knows, I’m could be full of s**t”. There certainly seems to be people out there who stall, even while fasting a good bit. Something must be happening there.

(Doug) #45

I agree - and it does seem like some number of weeks must be when the effect really gets going; there’s no doubt that when we speak of “months” it’s been amply demonstrated.

Stalls while fasting a good bit - AAUUUUGGHHHHH. Haven’t had that yet, but have heard other speak of it. :confounded:

(Doug) #46

Good question, Brian.

I think - eat plenty of protein, get plenty of sleep, do high intensity interval training, (and maybe drink a boatload of greet tea and eat a lot of hot peppers). :grin:

(Dan Dan) #47

You shouldn’t regain if you continue your fat loss routine or maintenance routine :thinking:

Regaining is usually because of over eatlng after fasting :open_mouth:

Using a scale to determine Weight/Fat loss can be confusing because the food and drink we consume after fasting and daily obscure the results and it can take a week or more to see net Weight/Fat loss.

#48

Except in a few very rare cases, I don’t think true stalling while fasting really happens. Fasting will result in weight loss, the only question is dosage. Some people can lose weight fasting 16 hours a day. Some folks need more, like a 5:2 schedule. More metabolically deranged people may need alternate day fasting. And an unfortunate group need block fasts to adequately address their hormonal issues.

I view adhering to a LC diet as a way of minimizing the symptoms. I view fasting as a tool for fixing metabolic damage.

(Brian) #49

Thanks, Doug.

I’ve been kinda thinking along those lines in general but haven’t really heard a lot of the big name types talk directly about it.

BTW, my question was hypothetical. I am fortunate to not have put myself on the diet teeter-totter and lost the same 100 pounds 50 times over. So I think my metabolism is responding pretty well to eating a pretty good amount of food. I do really notice on higher protein days, the body thermostat does get turned up. I feel it in the night, mostly.

I’ve been playing with some fasting days here and there, something I’ve finally gotten my wife onboard with. We were going to try alternate day fasting. We made it through the first day, ate the next, and started out the following day. She made it to lunch time and I went to supper, which turned that into a 24 hour fast. Despite resuming our normal eating, the scale has continued to show lower numbers. So I think we’ll be doing more fasting, at least short term. True alternate day, probably not. But there will be more. I figure it will come about slowly, as we’re comfortable with it. There is no contest or badge of honor, at least not at our house. Anyway… just sharing. :slight_smile:

(Doug) #50

True, 4dml - fasting can’t simply “not result in weight loss” - the energy has to come from somewhere. Those hormonal issues you mention probably figure into the more extreme cases where if they lose a little weight over a fast, it seems to come back afterwards. Aside from rehydration, unless one really goes into a caloric surplus, I don’t see how the weight can be regained. I know, it’s “calories in, calories out,” there, but otherwise it seems to me there would have to be some real magic involved, i.e. whatever one’s daily intake averages, the difference between that and going to zero on a fast cannot easily be made up in the short term, even with potential metabolic slowdown.

Yeah, with some overlap, as with insulin resistance - fasting may fix it faster, but low-carb helps too.

(Justin Jordan) #51

I’d note as a confounder that the Biggest Loser folks ALSO did an extraordinary amount of exercise while simultaneously restricting calories.

(Doug) #52

Brian, there definitely is the thermogenic effect of protein digestion to consider. :slightly_smiling_face: A totally good thing, in my opinion.

Right on. :+1: My wife is a pretty serious carb addict, and despite my success so far with keto and fasting she’s really not into changing much of anything. 8 or 9 years ago, she lost about 30 pounds via more exercise and less food - made a big difference since she’s only five feet (1.5 meters) tall exactly. Ironically, that was at a low point in our marriage, when she was thinking of leaving me. :smile:

(Doug) #53

Justin, what do you see there that’s confounding? That the large amount of exercise didn’t prop up the metabolism?

(Justin Jordan) #54

The opposite, actually - there’s been at least a couple of studies showing a lot of exercise in a calories reduced state can make the metabolic shenanigans WORSE. Lyle McDonald has talked about this a bit.

Which could be an important variable, Precision Nutrition compared the BL results to people who’d lost weight via gastric bypass, and bypass patients had far less metabolic slowdown (although there was some) and lost less lean mass.

Some of that might be due to the hormonal effects of near fasting, but some of it may also be down to the huge amounts of exercise the BL contestants were doing.

(I honestly think people worry waaaaay too much about metabolic slow down, myself)

(Doug) #55

Well now that is confounding; who would have thought?

Co-signed!! (I put it in the same boat with fears about losing lean mass.)

(Dan Dan) #56

I’m sure the biggest loser contestants would disagree :open_mouth:

“Their Resting Metabolic Rates (RMR), the energy needed to keep the heart pumping, the lungs breathing, your brain thinking, your kidneys detoxing etc., drops like a piano out of a 20 story building. Over six months, their basal metabolism dropped by an average of 789 calories. Simply stated, they burning 789 calories less per day every day.”

https://idmprogram.com/difference-calorie-restriction-fasting-fasting-27/

(Justin Jordan) #57

Most people aren’t Biggest Loser contestants.

(Brian) #58

Maybe some of it might be about exactly what the Biggest Loser contestants were doing for exercise. It appeared that many of them were spending hours and hours and hours on a treadmill or elliptical or stationary bike type thing. Were they getting the HITT training that is a little more talked about as possibly raising the metabolism?

Just the thought that came to mind…

(Doug) #59

Dan, I was really surprised when I first read that. After thinking a little more about it, it coincided with a large weight loss, so perhaps not so surprising - a much heavier person will be burning a significantly greater amount, period, all other things being equal. But the exercise-increased-the-decline-in-BMR deal is still hard for me to get my head around.

#60

In one of the latest The Obesity Code podcasts Megan Ramos said that while for many people shorter fasts are okay, there are some cases where extended fasting is really needed - for instance such cases where the metabolism has been messed up with caloric restriction/yo-yo dieting. So from that that would be the recommended solution for the BL contestants as well - keto and extended fasting to heal the metabolism.