Intermittent fasting.

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zimborunner
zimborunner Posts: 527 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I’m on 20:4 weekdays and 16:8 or 18:6 weekend. I make a fresh ginger/lemon/mint iced tea and drink while in the fasted state. Is this breaking my fast? Should I just stick to plain water? Thanks!

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  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,914 Member
    edited August 2022
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    What are the consequences if the ice tea does break your fast? Curious. Your basically doing time restricted eating as opposed to intermittent fasting which basically is not eating on certain days and 5:2 being a popular option with 2 days without eating at all and 5 days with eating to whatever goal weight you want to accomplish or not. cheers.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    There isn't one set of golden rules for fasting (which ranges from restriction to complete abstinence) - you get to set your own rules.

    Why do you think it matters if you have that beverage or not?
  • Seasonal_One
    Seasonal_One Posts: 49 Member
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    I drink coffee with a splash of Almond milk, no sweetener, and don't count it. Did some research before starting and most people but not all would not count coffee, tea, or water. If you add a lot of sugar, maybe but it's up to you.
  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
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    The consensus is, unsweetened tea or coffee is fine. I sometimes have some artificial sweetener or (gasp) almond milk. After 3 years of IF, my take is, a lil almond milk is fine as long as it doesn't lead to a slippery slope of noshing at night. Hold the line at an ounce of almond milk and you're fine.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,914 Member
    edited August 2022
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    Keep in mind that the body needs time for digestion which is still the fed state and any benefits from fasting apparently doesn't really start until about the 12 hour mark. With your schedule you'll have around 50 hours of total weekly fasting, that's pretty good actually, but do consider alternate day fasting and maybe research that a little.

    Anyway, the real question is, will ginger effect insulin and slow or stop lipolysis. I use ginger to flavor water sometimes and with lemon, it's less boring than just water and there is some medicinal value there as well. Anyway if it's just a small piece and generally that's all that is needed for flavor I would say your fine, maybe crush it a little. Ginger is around 18g's of carbs per 100g's of ginger for reference. It's not about the calories because bulletproof coffee is accepted, with reluctance but is acceptable, I don't when I fast but a friend does and the reason I mentioned it.

    I also drink coffee when I fast and add some cream maybe a tbsp and probably just a tsp. Considering there's only 6g's of carbs in 1 cup of heavy cream and there's 16 tbsps in that cup it means there's less than 1/2 a gram of carbs in a tbsp and I suspect that isn't going to elevate insulin anymore than the natural fluctuation in insulin that happens anyway imo.




  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,365 Member
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    What specifically are you trying to accomplish with the intermittent fasting?
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,287 Member
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    I think I've read that it takes 50 calories or more to break a fast. So figure it out the calories of your drinks you sip on as you fast. Also .. read up on differing opinions and stick with what makes sense to you.
  • hilaryhill
    hilaryhill Posts: 156 Member
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    Yes technically it does break your fast.
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,609 Member
    edited August 2022
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    neanderthin wrote: »
    What are the consequences if the ice tea does break your fast? Curious. Your basically doing time restricted eating as opposed to intermittent fasting which basically is not eating on certain days and 5:2 being a popular option with 2 days without eating at all and 5 days with eating to whatever goal weight you want to accomplish or not. cheers.

    Time restricted eating is a form of intermittent fasting. No. Intermittent fasting does not mean not eating on certain days. You are referring to one particular intermittent fast, which is the 5:2.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,914 Member
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    sollyn23l2 wrote: »
    neanderthin wrote: »
    What are the consequences if the ice tea does break your fast? Curious. Your basically doing time restricted eating as opposed to intermittent fasting which basically is not eating on certain days and 5:2 being a popular option with 2 days without eating at all and 5 days with eating to whatever goal weight you want to accomplish or not. cheers.

    Time restricted eating is a form of intermittent fasting. No. Intermittent fasting does not mean not eating on certain days. You are referring to one particular intermittent fast, which is the 5:2.

    I respectfully disagree. Cheers.
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,609 Member
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    neanderthin wrote: »
    sollyn23l2 wrote: »
    neanderthin wrote: »
    What are the consequences if the ice tea does break your fast? Curious. Your basically doing time restricted eating as opposed to intermittent fasting which basically is not eating on certain days and 5:2 being a popular option with 2 days without eating at all and 5 days with eating to whatever goal weight you want to accomplish or not. cheers.

    Time restricted eating is a form of intermittent fasting. No. Intermittent fasting does not mean not eating on certain days. You are referring to one particular intermittent fast, which is the 5:2.

    I respectfully disagree. Cheers.

    What is intermittent fasting? Does it have health benefits?
    Answer From Manpreet Mundi, M.D.
    Intermittent fasting means that you don't eat for a period of time each day or week. Some popular approaches to intermittent fasting include:

    Alternate-day fasting. Eat a normal diet one day and either completely fast or have one small meal (less than 500 calories) the next day.
    5:2 fasting. Eat a normal diet five days a week and fast two days a week.
    Daily time-restricted fasting. Eat normally but only within an eight-hour window each day. For example, skip breakfast but eat lunch around noon and dinner by 8 p.m.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,914 Member
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    sollyn23l2 wrote: »
    neanderthin wrote: »
    sollyn23l2 wrote: »
    neanderthin wrote: »
    What are the consequences if the ice tea does break your fast? Curious. Your basically doing time restricted eating as opposed to intermittent fasting which basically is not eating on certain days and 5:2 being a popular option with 2 days without eating at all and 5 days with eating to whatever goal weight you want to accomplish or not. cheers.

    Time restricted eating is a form of intermittent fasting. No. Intermittent fasting does not mean not eating on certain days. You are referring to one particular intermittent fast, which is the 5:2.

    I respectfully disagree. Cheers.

    What is intermittent fasting? Does it have health benefits?
    Answer From Manpreet Mundi, M.D.
    Intermittent fasting means that you don't eat for a period of time each day or week. Some popular approaches to intermittent fasting include:

    Alternate-day fasting. Eat a normal diet one day and either completely fast or have one small meal (less than 500 calories) the next day.
    5:2 fasting. Eat a normal diet five days a week and fast two days a week.
    Daily time-restricted fasting. Eat normally but only within an eight-hour window each day. For example, skip breakfast but eat lunch around noon and dinner by 8 p.m.

    Thanks for the description, and it's a popular description but I feel there needs to be a distinction based on when the benefits of an actual fast begin to occur without interruption, no maybe interference is a better word which I believe is a little longer than most would describe as an 16:8 period for example. At best it's a spinoff imo. Cheers.
  • bluebird321
    bluebird321 Posts: 732 Member
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    Black coffee, unsweetened tea should be fine. I just completed a 40 hour fast on just water and black coffee. My preference is to shoot for zero calories, period. Do your own outside research and take everything you hear on this forum with a grain of salt.
  • debtay123
    debtay123 Posts: 1,327 Member
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    Do your own research and do what is best for you-- Your blood sugar meter- or ketosis meter will TELL you better than any person- because we ALL have different goals or outcomes we are looking for- Best approach to me for any calorie restricting, carb restricting, ww or whatever is do what YOUR body responds too- and be sure to RESEARCH--- before you attempt it Why?

    because for me-- only,- I attempted to do veganism(or no meat products) without proper research and for me-although I lost weight-- I also loss some of my hair-- then I needed to use collagen etc-- so for me- it didn't work -- but for lots of people- veganism works well- well- Low carb, keto, ww, counting calories - ALL work for some people- You just have to figure out what works BEST for your body---hope it helps
  • rvohra
    rvohra Posts: 1 Member
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    Does intermittent fasting slow metabolism down?
    Because I thought eating protein every 3-4 hours keeps the furnace running to help burn more calories?
    I mean does intermittent fasting help reduce body fat and not burn muscle
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,914 Member
    edited May 2023
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    rvohra wrote: »
    Does intermittent fasting slow metabolism down?
    Because I thought eating protein every 3-4 hours keeps the furnace running to help burn more calories?
    I mean does intermittent fasting help reduce body fat and not burn muscle

    For the vast majority of people that are in a caloric deficit adaptive thermogenesis kind of controls our metabolism with the assistance of quite a few of our hormones and generally speaking our metabolism will decrease, and this is beyond what were would normally expect from normal weight loss, so if your in a deficit most peoples metabolism will drop.

    Protein when consumed more or less equally over our meal plan except OMAD so, 2 or more meals will help maximize muscle protein synthesis and lessen the loss of lean body mass normally expected when losing weight, and with certain criteria can maintain lean mass or slightly increase.

    Studies on fasting for short durations and I believe it's somewhere up to 3 days can actually increase our metabolism due to our fight or flight hormones and with IF it's generally the hormone's norepinephrine and epinephrine. Also HGH or human growth hormone helps to preserve muscle mass during this time as well. These are survival mechanisms that we've adapted to help find food to survive, basically we feel more motivated to go out and procure food as opposed to being lethargic and lower motivation to survive. As well as having an action on the brain produced through our adrenals to increase hormones that heighten our cognitive abilities and other bodily functions like eyesight, breathing, energy production etc.

    This all needs to be put into context though, while IF has advantages like preserving lean mass and increasing short term metabolism most people will not really see that benefit in real life when over the course of the day your adding in a bit of IF to your deficit, but it won't hurt. And IF is a fairly decent way to help people with a deficit, where they may just end up eating less. imo. Cheers.

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