Intermittent Fasting Support Group?

Bluestar083

Starting my first ever 24 hour fast in around an hour. Scary prospect because I've never really fasted before, and eat constantly throughout the day.

24 hour is hard to do the first time but stick with it if thats how you want to do it. if you struggle getting through i would try the 16/8 next time (daily). I try to stop eating nolater than 7 pm and then can eat again at 11 am.

AGREE! I just made 18 hours th,e first time and felt sick by the last hour, headache, nausea, foggy. Ate and felt fine. 19 hours was my aim the first time so was happy I almost made it. Second time was 20 hours. Now I can do 22, and am sure can do 24 as well but don't feel the need to get to 24 hours. But I'd recommend starting your first fast for 18 hours. I improved over 3 weeks, not a huge chunk of your life to let your body get use to it!
And DON'T gorge for your first meal. Have it planned out. I calorie cycle as well so might eat 600 calories my fast day, then 1400-1800 the next day, 1200 the day after and til my next fast day.

Bluestar083

Did my first 'proper' workout fasted today (had done some jogging before). Kept it simple- a 30 minute class at the gym called CX (Low impact, low cardio workout , dynamic training that hones in on your abs, glutes, back, obliques and “slings” connecting the upper and lower body)
After 5 minutes I was tired and about ready to go home-which is not like me. I pushed through and felt fine by the end. But didn't feel like doing my usual 10-15 min on the cross trainer after
Wonder how I will feel when I do body pump fasted? A bit nervous.
How has everyone else done on fasted workouts? Any advice/hints?

chrisdavey

IF works by you consuming less calories. That's all.

No, not correct. Even if you eat all of your maintenance calories in your 8 hour window on Leangains style IF, you will still be losing fat, because IF works not only by calorie restriction but also by creating a hormonal state favorable to fat burning and muscle conservation. This is how it is possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time on Leangains. You will not be losing *as much* fat if you eat maintenance calories every day (as opposed to calorie restriction + fasting), but it will still occur. There is a veritable ton of research backing this up. It's not a "maybe" thing, this is how fasting works physiologically.

Can you post any of these studies? I would like to believe it is true but I can't see how eating maintenance cals can result in any fat loss. Unless you are referring to the recomp type setup Martin uses with +20% above TDEE on workout days and -20% on rest days.


nyspotlight:
Estimated TDEE is 2700. I would say at this stage a 1000 cal deficit would be appropriate at this stage. (as you get closer to goal weight, the deficit should be reduced) SO aim for 1700cals. (don't worry about exercise cals)

P=131g minimum (525 cals)
F=54g minimum(486cals)

1700-525-486=689cals remaining to fit where ever you want.

That's what I would do.

nyspotlight

nyspotlight:
Estimated TDEE is 2700. I would say at this stage a 1000 cal deficit would be appropriate at this stage. (as you get closer to goal weight, the deficit should be reduced) SO aim for 1700cals. (don't worry about exercise cals)

P=131g minimum (525 cals)
F=54g minimum(486cals)

1700-525-486=689cals remaining to fit where ever you want.

That's what I would do.

Thank you so much - considering that that is awfully close to my calculations, that makes me feel much better. As far as this site goes, anyone know if there's a way to get it NOT to add your exercise calories to your food? That would help my sanity...

Otherwise I guess I'll log my exercise at the very end of my day or something.

Thanks again!

chrisdavey

your initial post had fat and fat. I was confused.

Just input exercise and change to zero cals burnt or don't input it.

I prefer to work with gross cals personally. At 180lbs, TDEE is approx bw x14-16. I just used 1000 deficit per day but you would probably be fine with anything around 1800ish as normal weight loss is around bw x10-12. If you start with the upper limit and then reduced if required.

FaithHopeBELIEVE

Did my first 'proper' workout fasted today (had done some jogging before). Kept it simple- a 30 minute class at the gym called CX (Low impact, low cardio workout , dynamic training that hones in on your abs, glutes, back, obliques and “slings” connecting the upper and lower body)
After 5 minutes I was tired and about ready to go home-which is not like me. I pushed through and felt fine by the end. But didn't feel like doing my usual 10-15 min on the cross trainer after
Wonder how I will feel when I do body pump fasted? A bit nervous.
How has everyone else done on fasted workouts? Any advice/hints?

i haven't completed any 24 hours fasts. But on my 16/8 fasts I workout at 5:45 amdaily during the week so I'm in my fastest state and will still not eat until 10-12 whichever i need to get to from stopping the night before. ANYWAY my workouts have been really good almost like I have more energy.

chrisdavey

Did my first 'proper' workout fasted today (had done some jogging before). Kept it simple- a 30 minute class at the gym called CX (Low impact, low cardio workout , dynamic training that hones in on your abs, glutes, back, obliques and “slings” connecting the upper and lower body)
After 5 minutes I was tired and about ready to go home-which is not like me. I pushed through and felt fine by the end. But didn't feel like doing my usual 10-15 min on the cross trainer after
Wonder how I will feel when I do body pump fasted? A bit nervous.
How has everyone else done on fasted workouts? Any advice/hints?

i haven't completed any 24 hours fasts. But on my 16/8 fasts I workout at 5:45 amdaily during the week so I'm in my fastest state and will still not eat until 10-12 whichever i need to get to from stopping the night before. ANYWAY my workouts have been really good almost like I have more energy.

what do your workouts consist of?

Taking bcaa's during your fast now then?

Bluestar083

@Jeanine-was it always better for you fasted or did it take some time?
@ChrisDavey-CX is kinda like a pilates class crossed with a low impact aerobics class. visit fitnessfirst.com.au website for more info. I usually do body pump 3 times a week, pilates/core or CX 2 times a week, step once a week and jog or use the crosstrainer 2-3 times a week. I am not a fan of supplements so don't take BCAA. this (CX) was the first time I did a fasted workout as its only 30min and not full on.

chrisdavey

aah. If it's the first time then yeah, try it out and see how you go.

Just remember that all exercise is catabolic in nature until we are fed (not something we want) so the bcaa supplementation during fasting period has some merit.

Alloranx

No, not correct. Even if you eat all of your maintenance calories in your 8 hour window on Leangains style IF, you will still be losing fat, because IF works not only by calorie restriction but also by creating a hormonal state favorable to fat burning and muscle conservation. This is how it is possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time on Leangains. You will not be losing *as much* fat if you eat maintenance calories every day (as opposed to calorie restriction + fasting), but it will still occur. There is a veritable ton of research backing this up. It's not a "maybe" thing, this is how fasting works physiologically.

Can you post any of these studies? I would like to believe it is true but I can't see how eating maintenance cals can result in any fat loss. Unless you are referring to the recomp type setup Martin uses with +20% above TDEE on workout days and -20% on rest days.

Sure thing, Chris. I made a big post on this in the first part of this thread, but I'll go through it some more for new comers. Here is a study showing that BMR (actually RMR but the two are very close) goes up during early fasting, up to 10% by day three of a fast, seemingly mediated by increased catecholamines:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292

Note: BMR does eventually come back down in extended fasting, but in the early period it goes up.

So that's just simple math. If your BMR goes up and your calorie intake stays at maintenance based on a lower BMR, you go into a deficit and will lose weight. However, it's more than that.

This study shows that fatty acid mobilization (i.e. how much fatty acids are pulled into your blood to be used for energy) doubles between the beginning of a fast and 72 hours in. The majority of that increase (60%) happens between 12 and 24 hours, with the greatest acceleration between 18 and 24 hours (honestly this is one reason I like 24 hour fasting):

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/265/5/E801.short

So with this increased RMR comes an increased utilization of fat. In addition, as I've said elsewhere, growth hormone increases by up to 6-fold during fasting, which both protects muscle from degradation, and appears to promote both mobilization and burning of fat:

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/50/1/96.short
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/94/11/4524.abstract

I actually did some calculations based on some text-book numbers (i.e. this is really rough and take it with a grain of salt) and found that fat, weight for weight, is burned at more than double the rate of protein during fasting. And that's in early fasting. As a fast goes on (>48 hours), the body gets better and better at suppressing protein catabolism and it becomes something like 7x more fat than protein burned.

What all this means is that the calorie need generated by fasting will primarily be filled by fats, and much less so by muscle (as it will be protected by growth hormone), and obviously not carbs, since they get all burned up by about 12-16 hours into a fast. So from all this, I think it is quite reasonable to suppose that fasting while at maintenance calories will in fact produce *some* fat loss, though not necessarily an impressive amount. Martin's diet that you mentioned above works on this principle, insofar as I can tell.

Does that make sense?

nyspotlight

your initial post had fat and fat. I was confused.

Just input exercise and change to zero cals burnt or don't input it.

I prefer to work with gross cals personally. At 180lbs, TDEE is approx bw x14-16. I just used 1000 deficit per day but you would probably be fine with anything around 1800ish as normal weight loss is around bw x10-12. If you start with the upper limit and then reduced if required.

I had no idea I had fat and fat. Whoops. Thanks for the help.

chrisdavey

Alloranx. Thanks for that. Yeah makes sense. So the RMR increased by 15% after a 3 day fast. I couldn't see anywhere to see more details as to the progressions of this increase.

In the scheme of things, I still think that calories in vs calories out matters the most (and macro choices) but those studies do suggest that there is additional benefits.

Alloranx

In the scheme of things, I still think that calories in vs calories out matters the most (and macro choices) but those studies do suggest that there is additional benefits.

Completely agreed. Calories in vs calories out is the major determinant.

Edit: Just noticed the full text is available for free on that study. On day 1, REE was 3.97, on day 2 it was 4.37, day 3 was 4.53, and on day 4 was 4.43 (presumably the beginning of the BMR decline of prolonged fasting). The first day 1 measurement was made 8 hours in (after an overnight fast), the second 36 hours in, the 3rd 60 hours, and 4th 84 hours.

It would be nice for our purposes if they had taken another measurement right at the onset of the fast (0 hours) and between the first and second (16-20 hours), but alas.

And here is the study in full if you'd like to peruse it:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/71/6/1511.long

chrisdavey

that'd be awesome Thanks

FaithHopeBELIEVE

Did my first 'proper' workout fasted today (had done some jogging before). Kept it simple- a 30 minute class at the gym called CX (Low impact, low cardio workout , dynamic training that hones in on your abs, glutes, back, obliques and “slings” connecting the upper and lower body)
After 5 minutes I was tired and about ready to go home-which is not like me. I pushed through and felt fine by the end. But didn't feel like doing my usual 10-15 min on the cross trainer after
Wonder how I will feel when I do body pump fasted? A bit nervous.
How has everyone else done on fasted workouts? Any advice/hints?

i haven't completed any 24 hours fasts. But on my 16/8 fasts I workout at 5:45 amdaily during the week so I'm in my fastest state and will still not eat until 10-12 whichever i need to get to from stopping the night before. ANYWAY my workouts have been really good almost like I have more energy.

what do your workouts consist of?

Taking bcaa's during your fast now then?

Not sure if you were asking me or the other poster. My workouts are always different. Every other day I will throw in a turbofire HIIT DVD, I also do Tabata sprints or bodyrocktv workouts, kickboxing. On top of that I will do weight/strength training or just toning. I do whatever I can in 60 minutes before I have to get my kids up. Then a day like today I will do a Barre DVD for extra toning.

Oh and i haven't purchased BCAAs yet....kinda forgot about that since it's in my protein drink.

FaithHopeBELIEVE

@Jeanine-was it always better for you fasted or did it take some time?
@ChrisDavey-CX is kinda like a pilates class crossed with a low impact aerobics class. visit fitnessfirst.com.au website for more info. I usually do body pump 3 times a week, pilates/core or CX 2 times a week, step once a week and jog or use the crosstrainer 2-3 times a week. I am not a fan of supplements so don't take BCAA. this (CX) was the first time I did a fasted workout as its only 30min and not full on.

I have pretty much always worked out in the morning, with having kids its the absolute best time. So it was natural with the fasting. I did have hunger pangs last wek but tried to push through it because i know it will get better. When I started shaking or feeling faint I stopped the fast.

skinnyfat14

Starting my first ever 24 hour fast in around an hour. Scary prospect because I've never really fasted before, and eat constantly throughout the day.

How did it go??

FaithHopeBELIEVE

aah. If it's the first time then yeah, try it out and see how you go.

Just remember that all exercise is catabolic in nature until we are fed (not something we want) so the bcaa supplementation during fasting period has some merit.

What's catabolic in nature mean? I have no idea, never heard that before. And why do BCAAs help that state?

chrisdavey

catabolic means that your muscles are atrophying (shrinking) which in turn lowers your bmr. This is not a good thing. The goal is fat loss not weight loss

bcaa's are branch chain amino acids which are the exact proteins that your muscles are looking for to get nutrients. By taking bcaa's until the first meal, the muscles should be taking in the bcaa's nutrients instead of just breaking down and atrophying.

janiedoe111

13 hours into my 24 hour fast and going strong!

Anyone tried Oolong tea for appetite suppression?