Alternate day fasting

elizabeth1357

I am currently on my 2nd fast day of the alternate day fasting program. Basically, you try to keep the fasting days below 500 calories, but every other day you can eat normally. I feel good about this being something I can stick to and was wondering if anyone else does or is planning on doing this. I am 27 and wanting to lose about 70 pounds.

donmcd

I'm starting that from Monday. Did it a couple of years ago and it did seem to work. I thought that I would pig out after the fast days but didn't feel like it, which was good.
I'm 51 so it's harder to shift the excess but fast days deffo help.
Good luck with it.

Justin_7272

The feast/starve "diet" seems a little odd to me - you would have the same results if you curbed your calories out over a week, and the "eat normally" phase will likely result in over-eating due to lack of nutrition the day prior. I'd suggest a well-balanced meal plan rather than the feast/starve method, but if it works for you then it works for you.

yopeeps025

Lots of people do the 5:2 fast diet and have success with it.

Elizabethharvey1988

I have tried and retried cutting calories everyday and have failed every time. For me I think, this is much easier because I know that the next day I can eat normally. I normally eat healthy and stay under 2000 calories but I will concede that if the normal day is 4000 calories of junk this will for sure not work. I guess the ultimate test will be if I can lose the weight. Stay tuned!

jamesha100

I have been doing alternate fasting for nearly two weeks and it is going ok. As a man I get 600 calories a day and I think the extra 100 makes a big difference. I normally have a porridge pot (200'ish calories) at 11am and some soup or similar (300 cals) at about 6pm. The other calories I reserve for tea with milk, lo-cal flavoured water etc.

On non fast days I try to stick to the 1570 calories that MFP gives me for a 2lb/week loss.

I have managed to stick to this pretty well and my main issue is boredom rather than hunger. I have found that if I do any serious exercise (e.g. 38km hilly bike ride) on a fast day my performance is way down on normal.

For the record I am 45, 6 ft tall and my starting weight was 253.8 After two weeks it is now 242 which is a pretty good loss. Oddly I only lost 0.5 pounds in the last five days which was frustrating.

I want to get down to 180 and am going to stick with this fasting. It suits me as I do a lot of travel with work so one fast day followed by a feast day is easier to follow than trying to restrict calories all the time.

Hope this is of use.

Iloveyarnz

I have done that and loved it. Hope it's a success for you!

cdkt

I started last week. I've tried logging MFP for a while and then quit because I wasn't losing. Then happened across alternate day diet. I'm doing about 650 cals on DD and 1600 on UD. I tried going ton2000 cals and was too full.

I think I'm eating out of boredom more than hunger.

I like the protective aspect against several things but mostly Alzheimer's that runs in my family. Look how many elderly we have that are alive and healthy that went thru the Great Depression

Anyway, I'm almost 45 and need to lose about 60 pounds. Started this year at my heaviest of 223 and now I'm at 214. Since starting alternate day I'm down 4 pounds.

Have a great day whether your up or down.

Jamesha100- I have also found that exercising on my dd depletes my energy so I'm sticking to working out on my up days

amusedmonkey

I do it every once in a while when I get bouts of increased appetite, because it allows me to not feel stressed every day over food. When I'm not doing it, I usually throw in a fast day after a big feast to balance things out. I'm very random at dieting, from alternate day, to general calorie deficit, to weekly calories, to maintenance.. etc. Whatever I feel like doing at any particular time. All I know that it DOES work, and helps in cases where you have a week full of events or just plain bored with restricting every day.

Elizabethharvey1988

Thanks for all the input. Great to hear that y'all are having success. The hardest thing for me is when social events get planned on down days and people try to make me eat. I need to lose about 75 pounds and everyone still thinks I will waste away if I skip eating for a day!

amusedmonkey

Elizabethharvey1988 wrote: »

Thanks for all the input. Great to hear that y'all are having success. The hardest thing for me is when social events get planned on down days and people try to make me eat. I need to lose about 75 pounds and everyone still thinks I will waste away if I skip eating for a day!

The whole point of feast days is to be able to eat things you want without worrying too much. When you have something planned, it's okay to skip a day and start a down day the next. One day every now and then will not ruin things.

ksy1969

Justin_7272 wrote: »

The feast/starve "diet" seems a little odd to me - you would have the same results if you curbed your calories out over a week, and the "eat normally" phase will likely result in over-eating due to lack of nutrition the day prior. I'd suggest a well-balanced meal plan rather than the feast/starve method, but if it works for you then it works for you.

It is because you do not understand it. Instead of assuming you need to actually do some research on the subject.

I haven't tried the 5:2 diet but I am doing Leangains 16:8 (16 hour fast w/ 8 hour feeding window) and love it. I still get in my recommended calories, just in a shorter window. I have contemplated doing 5:2 but not ready to make that jump yet.

The other day I had a bad day. Homemade pizza with friends and we made way more than needed. Pizza is a weakness for me. If it is there I will eat it. Doesn't matter what self control I have. Anyway, the next day I did a 20:4 Fast (Also know as the Warrior Diet) and ate a normal supper with evening snack. The next day I went back to 16:8 and didn't even have a hiccup in weight loss. I think because of the sheer volume of pizza I ate the night before I didn't even start having hunger cravings till later in the afternoon the next day.

MinimalistShoeAddict

I think you will find this group helpful:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/49-intermittent-fasting

For the record, I fast on occasion. Some days I consume 6000+ calories and some days I consume 0. I always am near my weekly calorie/macro targets and maintain my goal weight (for long distance running) year round.