Discouraged with fasting
cgcrutch
Posts: 223 Member
I've been back on keto for about 2 weeks. I haven't lost any weight this past week, and I only lost 2lbs the first week. I didn't get a "woosh" like I did the other times. I usually drop a lot more than 2lbs in the beginning, and it's not because I don't have as much to lose, cuz I definitely do lol! I'm over 200lb, 20 of that was gained over the holidays and a very stressful time. So, I did a 24 hour fast yesterday. My goals are weight loss and autophagy to help prevent loose skin. I thought I'd lose at LEAST a pound from that. NOPE! only down .4lbs, which could be what I peed out before weighing 
I'm considering stretching the fast another day, but it's tough and I'm HUNGRY, and I don't want to suffer all this hunger for nothing! Knowing it is helping me lose weight is what makes it bearable, but it isn't helping. Wth
I'm considering stretching the fast another day, but it's tough and I'm HUNGRY, and I don't want to suffer all this hunger for nothing! Knowing it is helping me lose weight is what makes it bearable, but it isn't helping. Wth 2
Replies
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It's only been 2 weeks, give it more time.
Many people take closer to 3 weeks just to adapt, and every time you start again can be a different adaptation time because our bodies are not machines and almost nothing is really linear in terms of change. Could be the time of year? The time of month? Stress levels? Any number of things could be making this time different than previous times.2 -
I'm on my second time doing Keto a year apart.
My first time starting at 206lb I had a huge water loss at the beginning about 10 lbs in the 1st 2 weeks, then it went to a normal loss as the weeks followed.
This time my body has reacted differently (I'm on week 5) my initial weight loss was 4 lb, but the following weeks have been bigger loses than my 1st go around. So compared to last time my loss is the same or a little better but it's happening differently.
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Just put the work in EVERyDAY it will work. You have to want it more than you want to breath.16 -
Just put the work in EVERyDAY it will work. You have to want it more than you want to breath.
Yup. Whatever it is, if you want the result, you gotta do tha work. Every day like it's your job. Later after you hit maintenance it can just downgrade to your side-hustle, but still. Gotta do the work. No way around it.
Consistency + Persistence + Perseverance + Time
The hard parts of the equation are those P's above. But you also get the wonderful opportunity to build your Patience muscle. Ain't that grand?
The good news is, if you do the work you get the result. 7 -
I had soooo many times during my weight loss phase of this thing that I didn’t lose weight on the scale! Many times that I could have thrown in the towel and just given up. But I chose not to because I was seeing subtle changes in other ways; my pants weren’t as tight, my headaches days were beginning to be less than they had been! I was here reading about others who were experiencing some of the same things I was, or who had, and had persisted and made it through, and were so glad they had (like me!)! I know, without this group, I would have given up for sure! I gained knowledge on what to expect and how to just stay the course and I would eventually see results!! I did!!
The carb withdrawals are tough to get through at first! They have such a hold on our habits and are hard to give up! Just like a drug can be! But carbs are everywhere! We can’t get away from them which makes it so much harder! Once you’ve stuck with it long enough those foods hold no power over you any more! You can be in a bakery and walk away with a bottle of water! You see them as non food (at least I have). It becomes easy, but you always have to do it to maintain.
It’s just like building a house! You have to work very hard for months and pay attention to every detail to be sure everything is done right. Then, once you move into that new house all you have to do is maintain it. Little things here and there to keep it up or it will become run down.
Anyone has the ability to do this! It takes making the choice each day to show up for yourself!11 -
I'm finally losing! I guess the fast helped kick start ketosis, I'm down another pound and a half since the fast
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I had soooo many times during my weight loss phase of this thing that I didn’t lose weight on the scale! Many times that I could have thrown in the towel and just given up. But I chose not to because I was seeing subtle changes in other ways; my pants weren’t as tight, my headaches days were beginning to be less than they had been! I was here reading about others who were experiencing some of the same things I was, or who had, and had persisted and made it through, and were so glad they had (like me!)! I know, without this group, I would have given up for sure! I gained knowledge on what to expect and how to just stay the course and I would eventually see results!! I did!!
The carb withdrawals are tough to get through at first! They have such a hold on our habits and are hard to give up! Just like a drug can be! But carbs are everywhere! We can’t get away from them which makes it so much harder! Once you’ve stuck with it long enough those foods hold no power over you any more! You can be in a bakery and walk away with a bottle of water! You see them as non food (at least I have). It becomes easy, but you always have to do it to maintain.
It’s just like building a house! You have to work very hard for months and pay attention to every detail to be sure everything is done right. Then, once you move into that new house all you have to do is maintain it. Little things here and there to keep it up or it will become run down.
Anyone has the ability to do this! It takes making the choice each day to show up for yourself!
I love that way of looking at the keto journey! Great way to put it!2 -
how long do you fast0
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how long do you fast
25 hours.. I couldn't go another day LOL! I'll try to fast at least 24 hours a couple times a month.. I do OMAD, or 2MAD occasionally when I'm still hungry. Next time I want to try skipping a day, with a 2-4hour eating window on the neighboring days. That would be at least 40 hours fasted I think!2 -
I'm only trying long fasts to prevent loose skin. YouTube doctors say autophagy doesn't kick in until after 24 hours of fasting. There's probably other benefits to long fasts too. But I'm hoping I get them from OMAD fasting lol2
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No one has ever adequately explained to me how denying your body the nutrients it asks for (hunger) is supposed to lead to better health and better appetite control over time. It seems like refusing to eat when you're hungry is just going to train your body to complain more often and louder when it needs something. I'm not convinced by any of the autophagy research that there are health benefits from fasting. In fact, women do worse when doing IF.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/7.fullAnother diabetes risk factor that has shown a sex-specific effect is glucose tolerance. After 3 wk of ADF (Alternate Day Fasting), women but not men had an increase in the area under the glucose curve. This unfavorable effect on glucose tolerance in women, accompanied by an apparent lack of an effect on insulin sensitivity, suggests that short-term ADF may be more beneficial in men than in women in reducing type 2 diabetes risk.
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/373665/Caveman-fasting-diet-may-leave-women-diabetic“At the end of the trial there was no insulin improvements in the women and their glucose response got worse, while the men had no glucose changes and their insulin response improved.”American scientist, author and blogger Stefani Ruper, who was one of the first to question the safety of the 5:2 regime, warns: “The IF regime was not just neutral for women, but was downright harmful.”
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Technically, a ketogenic diet causes transient physiological insulin resistance too. The body gets used to not having excess carbs so when it does, its reaction can look diabetic , for some people with high BG.
If I did another oral glucose tolerance test, with 75g of glucose from the orange drink, I would be surprised if my BG did not skyrocket then plummet.
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Right but the first study said there was an increased area under the curve, meaning glucose went up and stayed up longer. Going high (say 170) and dropping fast is better than going less high (say 160) and taking a while to return to baseline.2
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True!0
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I know, I know, I usually leave my anti-IF ranting in the carnivore group, but I can't help myself. If you're struggling with IF, the problem isn't with you. It's the IF.
https://tim.blog/2008/03/03/real-life-extension-caloric-restriction-or-intermittent-fasting-part-2/People started commenting that they were doing great on the IF. Some were losing weight, but others weren’t. Or if they were, they were losing much less than they thought they should be losing given the caloric reduction. As I mentioned, it seems that humans have a difficult time doubling up on calories on eat days, so in most humans an IF is also a reduced-calorie diet. And humans, it appeared, weren’t losing as much as their reduction in calories would predict. Reports started popping up on low-carb bulletin boards describing how blood sugar levels had gone up in people IFing and how some people had seen their blood pressure go up.
Like many of my readers, the research community had jumped on the IF bandwagon as well. And, in a similar fashion, the results were not all positive. Papers appeared showing that subjects IFing, or even regularly skipping a couple of meals per day, were developing insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, elevated blood pressure, and decreased thermogenesis. Even Mark Mattson published a couple of human studies, including a randomized crossover designed experiment that showing the above disorders in women who ate the same number of calories in one meal per day as opposed to three meals per day.
I must hasten to add that the loss of insulin sensitivity, the impaired glucose tolerance and high blood pressure did not reach major levels. But they were significantly more pronounced than the same measures in the same subjects consuming the same number of calories divided into three meals instead of just one. The finding that troubles me the most, however, is the decrease in thermogenesis found under iso-caloric conditions. Said decrease in thermogenesis can only be worse in a true, real-world, intermittent fast in which the calories are typically lower than usual.
The decreased thermogenesis explains why the IF doesn’t work particularly well as a weight-loss regimen even though in most cases it is a reduced calorie diet [see the “the real science of fat-loss: why a calorie isn’t always a calorie” post for more on this phenomenon]. The subjects in these studies who consumed only one meal per day had reduced thermogenesis even while consuming the same number of calories that they did when eating three times per day. Imagine the reduction in thermogenesis if the calories were reduced as well as they are in most IF regimens.
The energy balance equation states that the change in weight equals calories in minus calories out.
Δ Wt = kcal in – kcal out
Many people think that the items on the right side of that equation are independent variables. In other words, if kcal in decreases weight will be lost because kcal out stays the same. But it doesn’t work that way because those terms aren’t independent variables – they are dependent variables. If kcal in goes down, often kcal out goes down as well to compensate. If people increase kcal out by exercising, they end up increasing kcal in because they eat more.It’s looking like the intermittent fast is another of those ideas in science that looks good in animal studies then not so good in human studies, proving once again that rats and mice aren’t simply furry little humans. And it appears – for humans, at least – that the intermittent fast is indeed beginning to look like the reality of a late-night gimmicky infomercial: long on promises, short on delivery. I suspect that it is also a cautionary tale about the applicability of caloric restriction studies to humans.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s the way science sometimes works. Lab results and reality are often two different animals.
Alright, I promise. No more anti-IF rants in here. I'll save the rest for the zerocarb discussions. 2 -
IF works for me because i like BIGGGGG meals
. Those little 400-600 cal meals dont do it for me they make me more hungry. If i had 5 600 cal meals a day i would be 1000 cal over my intake goal. It basically helps me keep under or at my cal. goal thats all. After eating 1200-1500 cals im not really hungry for another 16 hours anyway soooooo.... Fasting is just a tool that fits my lifstyle. It doesnt make you loss more weight just helps some peeps stay in there cal. goals. 6 -
Autophagy is happening all the time at varying levels. It's going to kick in high gear once liver glycogen is depleted, which is pretty much all the time with a keto diet. It's going to kick into high gear after about 12-24 hours of fasting. It's also going to kick in high gear with exercise, though possibly not high enough to offset the damage from exercise, depending on intensity, time, etc.4
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IF works for me because i like BIGGGGG meals. Those little 400-600 cal meals dont do it for me they make me more hungry. If i had 5 600 cal meals a day i would be 1000 cal over my intake goal. It basically helps me keep under or at my cal. goal thats all. After eating 1200-1500 cals im not really hungry for another 16 hours anyway soooooo.... Fasting is just a tool that fits my lifstyle. It doesnt make you loss more weight just helps some peeps stay in there cal. goals.
You're also male, which makes it more likely to work for you. There's a lot of variance with stuff like this, but if someone is struggling with fasting (especially if they're a woman) it doesn't mean that something is wrong and they should push-through. Maybe it means that IF isn't for their body.4 -
tcunbeliever wrote: »Autophagy is happening all the time at varying levels. It's going to kick in high gear once liver glycogen is depleted, which is pretty much all the time with a keto diet. It's going to kick into high gear after about 12-24 hours of fasting. It's also going to kick in high gear with exercise, though possibly not high enough to offset the damage from exercise, depending on intensity, time, etc.
I keep seeing this 12-24 hour window mentioned, @tcunbeliever , and my OCD anal side really wants to know where that number comes from (so that I can use it as well). Do you have any references that I could use to back that number up?0 -
If you are going to be OCD, then dive into the details of the three types of autophagy and how each of them works at the cellular level. Then you will understand what the triggers are for each and what their purpose is and what they accomplish. You don't need a study, you just need to understand cellular biology.0
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[quote="tcunbeliever;c-43186287 It's also going to kick in high gear with exercise, though possibly not high enough to offset the damage from exercise, depending on intensity, time, etc.[/quote]
@tcunbeliever I am very intrigued and still learning, can you please go into more detail, On "offset the damage of Exercise" how does exercise do damage?
Thanks
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@tcunbeliever I am very intrigued and still learning, can you please go into more detail, On "offset the damage of Exercise" how does exercise do damage?maddog1769 wrote: »[quote="tcunbeliever;c-43186287 It's also going to kick in high gear with exercise, though possibly not high enough to offset the damage from exercise, depending on intensity, time, etc.
Thanks
[/quote]
The whole point of exercise is to create micro-tears in the muscles - that forces the body to respond by repairing the damage and make the muscle stronger so that the micro-tears don't happen as easily. The body also responds by neuro-adaptation - adapting the response of the nervous system to accommodate (and become more efficient at) the exercise.1 -
Thanks Dragon.... Got it, The whole No Pain, No Gain thing... I was in a different mind set when reading that0
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"In mechanically strained cells and tissues, chaperone-assisted selective autophagy mediates the degradation of the actin-crosslinking protein filamin. Mechanical tension results in unfolding of filamin, leading to recognition by the chaperone complex and to the autophagic degradation of damaged filamin. This is a prerequisite for the maintenance of the actin cytoskeleton in mechanically strained cells and tissues."
When you exercise, your body triggers autophagy to rush in and deal with the damage caused by exercise. This is how your body naturally tries to maintain a stable system. Damaged cells get removed and recycled.
New cells will get produced, but that's not part of autophagy, that's a different process that comes in right after.
They are finding that exercise induced autophagy is not localized, that it triggers cleanup in more places than just the muscles worked, like heart, liver, etc. Your body seems to know that if your muscles are working, then other parts are working too and it sends the cleanup crew everywhere it needs to go all at once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaperone-assisted_selective_autophagy
I don't really know anything about treating lose skin with autophagy - in theory with sufficient autophagy stimulation no one would ever have wrinkles even at 100 years old...but that also assumes sufficient raw materials because autophagy will reduce without sufficient amino acids and lipids and other base materials. As you age, not only does autophagy response diminish, but also nutrient bioavailability is reduced. So it's kind of chicken/egg as to which came first or if there is any really causative relationship there or just a correllation triggered by something completely different. Also, there is some potential that fasting induced autophagy only happens when certain genetic markers are also present. Plus they are working on drug/supplement triggers to autophagy.
In any case, if you are struggling to stick to your plan, then maybe it's time for a new plan because I do know with 100% certainty that long term sustainability is the single most important factor to success.
What path you take matters far less than how long you stay on the journey.5 -
In 3 weeks I lost 10.3 lbs😀 then I gained back 1.9 lbs 8 days later.I couldn't lose more than 0.4 lb😖 so I started 10 to 15 hours IF.Hey presto ! I continue to lose weight again.I lost 3 lbs in 6 days.😃
So,I'm losing weight doing short IF and one hot drink☕ at night at present time.I have a bad habit of going to bed late.I count my IF time from dinner time or snack time if I have one.3 -
@Malimalai you would count it from snack time. Any calories in will break your fast. If your hot drink has no calories then it will not break your fast.
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@Malimalai you would count it from snack time. Any calories in will break your fast. If your hot drink has no calories then it will not break your fast.
Yes, I count it from snack time because my drink has some calories, thank you.0
