Alternate day fasting

kelly4191996

Hello! I'm making this post to not only connect with other people doing adf but to share what my first week has been like! So with my fast I finish eating around 7pm and then skip a day of eating and then eat around 7 am the next day so roughly 24hr without eating. And it has been incredibly helpful and easy! My problem with dieting is that I have a hard time stopping when j start so if I dont eat for the day I dont overeat and on my eating days I find that I'm less hungry and not really in a hurry to eat. On my fasting days I dont feel sluggish or all that hungry. I just make sure to drink plenty of water and maybe some coffee! I'm 4 pounds down the first week so I'm pretty excited!

harper16

Are you making up the calories from your fasting days on your non fasting days. Eating zero calories one day and 3,000 the next. Instead of 1500 for both days? (That's just an example.)

Redordeadhead

That doesn't sound very sustainable. Also 7pm to 7am the day after the following one is not 24 hours, it's 36.

kelly4191996

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eat-only-every-other-day-and-lose-weight-2017053111791 here is a link to a study about a 36hr fast! (Yes 36 not 24 I'm sorry haha I wrote that late at night.) But basically you can eat up to 500 cal on fasting days and then up to 125% of your daily calories on non fasting.

harper16

kelly4191996 wrote: »

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eat-only-every-other-day-and-lose-weight-2017053111791 here is a link to a study about a 36hr fast! (Yes 36 not 24 I'm sorry haha I wrote that late at night.) But basically you can eat up to 500 cal on fasting days and then up to 125% of your daily calories on non fasting.

Are you planning to follow this diet plan for the rest of your life? If not, why not consider a diet plan that you will.

SeanD2407

Not healthy. I did this and actually got a warning for even suggesting it. I wouldn't over compliment it. If you want to do a zig zag deficit (some days 500 less, some days 250 less, some days maintence) ect depending on your needs, that would work much better than just not eating a day.

ccrdragon

kelly4191996 wrote: »

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eat-only-every-other-day-and-lose-weight-2017053111791 here is a link to a study about a 36hr fast! (Yes 36 not 24 I'm sorry haha I wrote that late at night.) But basically you can eat up to 500 cal on fasting days and then up to 125% of your daily calories on non fasting.

Did you read the article you posted a link to?

There are a couple of interesting things to note in the article:
1. Alternate day fasting produced the same results as normal everyday calorie restriction
2. 12 people dropped out of the alternate day fasting group (almost 1/3 of the participants), most of whom said it was too hard to continue with the feast/famine cycle

Are sure you want to get into this sort of thing?

TeaBea

I'm with Sean, the zig-zag approach sounds much more easier to sustain. Eating a bit less during the week to "bank" some extra calories for the weekend is pretty common.

Water weight can fluctuate the first week or two. 4 pounds of fat loss would be crazy aggressive (unsafe).

lgfrie

Most people abandon ADF pretty quickly - like in a few weeks. A very small number of people stick with it. Suggest you head over to Reddit and peruse r\intermittentfasting to get a feel for other peoples' experiences with it; there are many hundreds of people there, both long-term IF types and experimenters/dabblers. Imho there are easier ways to use IF to control your caloric intake, especially the popular 16:8 protocol, which incidentally I did for 10 months with good results. Also, if you start to feel like IF (of any type) is burdensome, it's important to keep in mind that it confers no weight loss benefit beyond calorie control and you can just eat the right amount of calories everyday instead of 2x that amount and then total fasting the next day.

Any type of fasting is going to have benefits as far as appetite suppression and learning to accept/accommodate hunger pangs. So I do agree that one can end up less hungry and more likely not to overeat in general on an IF regime. At least that was my experience. I'm sure some people out there were ravenously hungry and binging on IF and yet then managed to diet very successfully with a non-IF approach. In the end, it's very individual.

VeryKatie

There have been studies (in rats mind you) that showed this type of diet or even 5:2 severely messed with the hormones and behaviors of female rats in particular. When i tried 5:2 in the past, my period became incredibly irregular (well... not irregular... it became constant. Like.. bleeding for 3 weeks every month). Obviously this is anecdotal so take what you will but I will not touch this type of diet with a 20' pole any more.

Redordeadhead

kelly4191996 wrote: »

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eat-only-every-other-day-and-lose-weight-2017053111791 here is a link to a study about a 36hr fast! (Yes 36 not 24 I'm sorry haha I wrote that late at night.) But basically you can eat up to 500 cal on fasting days and then up to 125% of your daily calories on non fasting.

This might be slightly more sustainable (in your first post, you said no food for 36 hours) but for me personally, I would still struggle on 500 calories.

Banking some calories throughout the week to have higher calories at weekends can be helpful for some, but 500 calories is too low for me and I would quickly give up.

yirara

VeryKatie wrote: »

There have been studies (in rats mind you) that showed this type of diet or even 5:2 severely messed with the hormones and behaviors of female rats in particular. When i tried 5:2 in the past, my period became incredibly irregular (well... not irregular... it became constant. Like.. bleeding for 3 weeks every month). Obviously this is anecdotal so take what you will but I will not touch this type of diet with a 20' pole any more.

I've lived in the Middle East for a while. Fasting during Ramadan is obviously totally a thing there. Also totally anecdotal, but several doctors I knew told me not to fast as it messes with female hormones. One internal medicine doc said he was seeing a lot more cardiovascular problems and diabetes in women fasting as well; also in those at normal weight eating a healthy, varied diet. Of course it could be due to ethnicity, just like some conditions are. Thus this one has a huge disclaimer.

carpydave47

Hi, does anyone know how long sugars spike upward when starting a alternate day fasting regimen? I know why I just don’t know for how long it will happen. Thanks, Dave~

Lillymoo01

carpydave47 wrote: »

Hi, does anyone know how long sugars spike upward when starting a alternate day fasting regimen? I know why I just don’t know for how long it will happen. Thanks, Dave~

For as long as you continue to do alternate day fasting.