Intermittent fasting ? Does it work for you????
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SFLiminality wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »if MFP yells at you for being under 1200 then you must have your settings set to female. because 1200 is the LOWEST amount for a woman. also you cant say you arent losing muscle, while you may be able to still pick up packages and what not now eventually down the road you may notice the effects of under eating.Im a 5'6 1/2 ft woman and need more than 1200 calories per day even when sedentary to properly fuel my body.fast weight loss is not always healthy and can lead to a lot of health issues as well as saggy skin.
1600-1800 calories may not be enough to put on muscle. its going to depend on if it puts you into maintenance or surplus calories. most men here need to eat over 2000 calories just to gain a little muscle.Im maintaining on 1900-2000 myself and Im not lugging boxes thats for sure. so its understandable the most males should be eating more than most females due to having more lean mass(including muscle) compared to a woman in order to keep from losing said mass. The more active a person the more calories their body needs to fuel it.
I have it set to male. It will only yell at me if I drop below 1200, which I haven't lately. I was just exceptionally not hungry for a few days, so I ran with it 1189 or whatever I was at. I'm 6'3 227 currently. I did some research on 2-3 day water only fasts to see if I could, but that probably wouldn't cut it at work. The research seems to point to longer day fasts doing more good than harm.
I'm also not saying I'm not losing muscle, just that I'm not losing enough for it to slow me down all. Like, the only reason I've been doing 40 minutes of cardio lately instead of an hour - two hours is that I heard shorter high intensity cardio is better than dragging it out, and you increase you chances of burning muscle. The real test is to see if keeping the weight off is difficult after I'm in maintenance.
1600-1800 is definitely not going to be enough to gain, but I'm slowly ramping up my calories while I get down to my goal weight. Then I'll switch to researching how to really pack on muscle.
Worst case scenario is that this all goes poorly, and I get warn others that are considering going my route.
Here is my below 1200 warning. Goes away if I go to 1200 or more.
well a few days is different from what you originally said. at your height and weight you can still lose possible on more than 1800. point is IF you had said you had a few days eating at 1200 calories thats one thing but you said fasting makes it easier to eat to your 1200-1600 calorie goal and that you lost 23 lbs in 4.5 weeks. which is almost a lb a day. thats a really large deficit so that means your deficit was about 2500 calories less than your TDEE. which means low calorie. so you were eating very little for at least that 4.5 months to have lost that much weight. even with 5 being water weight thats still a big deficit. almost 2000 calorie deficit.4 -
I don't call it IF but I don't eat anything before about 2pm. Unless I'm hungry. Most days I'm not. It helps me, because it makes it easier to stay in a calorie deficit. But it's not enough on it's own. Because one Friday night, I ate and drank 3,000 calories (I logged them all) in 2 hours. All while sitting at home and watching a DVD. So don't let people tell you that you don't need to worry about calories if you only have a small window of eating.
It's just a tool. It's not a magic pill - which many people seem to think it is.4 -
Tried it. Got to 10:30 AM and was famished. Ordered a bigger lunch than I usually eat. Put on 2 lbs that week. Great for bulking, I guess...5
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CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »well a few days is different from what you originally said. at your height and weight you can still lose possible on more than 1800. point is IF you had said you had a few days eating at 1200 calories thats one thing but you said fasting makes it easier to eat to your 1200-1600 calorie goal and that you lost 23 lbs in 4.5 weeks. which is almost a lb a day. thats a really large deficit so that means your deficit was about 2500 calories less than your TDEE. which means low calorie. so you were eating very little for at least that 4.5 months to have lost that much weight. even with 5 being water weight thats still a big deficit. almost 2000 calorie deficit.
A lot of the time, I'm not doing much better than 1200. The exercise puts me pretty far into deficit as well. I was doing closer to 1000 calories of cardio for the first couple weeks, and then scaled it back. I ran it through some calculators, and my daily deficit was between 2000-2500, yeah. I also don't count working UPS at night towards my calories, so that could be a factor.
Daily grind give or take 200 calories.
Some of the early days were like this.
Not really being hungry during the day is making this really easy to do though. That's why I'm going to stick to IF for a while. The money and time savings are a big plus.
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IF does help me control my appetite. I skip breakfast and once I eat lunch I'm usually fine all day with no hunger.2
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The reason for it is that some people find that eating in a smaller window makes it easier to hit their calorie goal.
Much easier.
This is the reason I started doing it a few weeks ago, to kick-start things after summer and what has amounted to several months of recomp. I wanted the scale to move.
When I only allow myself a small 6- or 8-hour window to eat, it makes it far easier to stay under my caloric budget.
The difficult part is the hunger pains in the evening. But it's been worth it. Results make it worth it.
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colors_fade wrote: »The reason for it is that some people find that eating in a smaller window makes it easier to hit their calorie goal.
Much easier.
This is the reason I started doing it a few weeks ago, to kick-start things after summer and what has amounted to several months of recomp. I wanted the scale to move.
When I only allow myself a small 6- or 8-hour window to eat, it makes it far easier to stay under my caloric budget.
The difficult part is the hunger pains in the evening. But it's been worth it. Results make it worth it.
If you can deal with black coffee, it helps. Works for me anyway. About 10oz keeps me good for the 2-3 hours before my eating window starts.
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SFLiminality wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »well a few days is different from what you originally said. at your height and weight you can still lose possible on more than 1800. point is IF you had said you had a few days eating at 1200 calories thats one thing but you said fasting makes it easier to eat to your 1200-1600 calorie goal and that you lost 23 lbs in 4.5 weeks. which is almost a lb a day. thats a really large deficit so that means your deficit was about 2500 calories less than your TDEE. which means low calorie. so you were eating very little for at least that 4.5 months to have lost that much weight. even with 5 being water weight thats still a big deficit. almost 2000 calorie deficit.
A lot of the time, I'm not doing much better than 1200. The exercise puts me pretty far into deficit as well. I was doing closer to 1000 calories of cardio for the first couple weeks, and then scaled it back. I ran it through some calculators, and my daily deficit was between 2000-2500, yeah. I also don't count working UPS at night towards my calories, so that could be a factor.
Daily grind give or take 200 calories.
Some of the early days were like this.
Not really being hungry during the day is making this really easy to do though. That's why I'm going to stick to IF for a while. The money and time savings are a big plus.
when you put your info into mfp youre activity setting is what you do daily for a job. so you need to put that in and you need to eat the calories it gives you, your deficit is built in without exercise aside from your job. you are seriously underfueling your body. even doing IF you need to make sure you get enough calories in. you are not doing your body or organs even any justice eating so little. your TDEE should be more than 2500 if you lug around boxes all day.so go back and re enter your height,weight,and your day to day acivities and how much you want to lose(if its more than 75lbs you can put 2lbs a week. and eat to your calorie goal. any extra exercise you will need to eat at least some of those calories back and gauge in a a month or so how your weight loss is going. right now you are eating too little and burning too much. a lot of lean mass is definitely being lost even if you dont feel it your organs and heart is also a muscle. so damage can be done there too.1 -
CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »when you put your info into mfp youre activity setting is what you do daily for a job. so you need to put that in and you need to eat the calories it gives you, your deficit is built in without exercise aside from your job. you are seriously underfueling your body. even doing IF you need to make sure you get enough calories in. you are not doing your body or organs even any justice eating so little. your TDEE should be more than 2500 if you lug around boxes all day.so go back and re enter your height,weight,and your day to day acivities and how much you want to lose(if its more than 75lbs you can put 2lbs a week. and eat to your calorie goal. any extra exercise you will need to eat at least some of those calories back and gauge in a a month or so how your weight loss is going. right now you are eating too little and burning too much. a lot of lean mass is definitely being lost even if you dont feel it your organs and heart is also a muscle. so damage can be done there too.
UPS is only 3 hours a night, and I'm mostly gaming the rest of the day, so I figured that about evened out to lightly active. As far as underfueling goes, I have more energy than I've had in years, and my body isn't telling me I'm hungry all of the time like it did when I was eating 2500-4000 calories a day, so I'm not inclined to argue with it really. I've got plenty of fat stores to with for now.
I was at the doc not long ago about high blood pressure. She said try diet and exercise. My blood pressure is now lower than ever. Around 117/80, so my heart is probably fine? Used to be 168/90 range.
I'll hit my goal weight soon, and then I'll take your suggestion and bump up my calories closer to maintenance range, and keep up with MFP for about a month to see how that goes. My next challenge is building muscle, because I've never done it intentionally, so I'm not too concerned about losing muscle mass. Lifted a friend that's pushing 220 without much effort yesterday, so I'm still where I like to be on strength.
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no it didn't.. but I think for people with binging eating disorders ..it helps them. it is either feast or famine for them. doesn't fix the problem.. but at least they can lose weight.1
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This is paraphrased from an article, written by a dietician, that I read recently on IF (wish I'd copied the title and author): Fasting triggers beneficial hormonal changes. Insulin levels drop when you fast, allowing your cells to release stored fat and use it more effectively. Fasting also stimulates a housekeeping process called “autophagy.” With no food around to process, your cells can use that spare time to remove damaged cells.
I was losing quite well on keto, and even with 5-6 days of week of mod to high-intensity exercise and sticking to plan (including logging everything, and adjusting cals and macros as I lost weight), hit a longish plateau. I decided to try IF and chose 16:8, which fit very easily into my lifestyle. I felt hungry in the AMs for a day or two, but now I don't at all. I eat all my meals between 12:30 and about 8 PM. It helped me bust through the plateau, without adjusting my calories down or changing anything else. I feel really good. It may not be for everyone, but it is working for me.
If I can track down the article I read, I will post the title and author.7 -
redhed1971 wrote: »This is paraphrased from an article, written by a dietician, that I read recently on IF (wish I'd copied the title and author): Fasting triggers beneficial hormonal changes. Insulin levels drop when you fast, allowing your cells to release stored fat and use it more effectively. Fasting also stimulates a housekeeping process called “autophagy.” With no food around to process, your cells can use that spare time to remove damaged cells.
I was losing quite well on keto, and even with 5-6 days of week of mod to high-intensity exercise and sticking to plan (including logging everything, and adjusting cals and macros as I lost weight), hit a longish plateau. I decided to try IF and chose 16:8, which fit very easily into my lifestyle. I felt hungry in the AMs for a day or two, but now I don't at all. I eat all my meals between 12:30 and about 8 PM. It helped me bust through the plateau, without adjusting my calories down or changing anything else. I feel really good. It may not be for everyone, but it is working for me.
If I can track down the article I read, I will post the title and author.redhed1971 wrote: »This is paraphrased from an article, written by a dietician, that I read recently on IF (wish I'd copied the title and author): Fasting triggers beneficial hormonal changes. Insulin levels drop when you fast, allowing your cells to release stored fat and use it more effectively. Fasting also stimulates a housekeeping process called “autophagy.” With no food around to process, your cells can use that spare time to remove damaged cells.
I was losing quite well on keto, and even with 5-6 days of week of mod to high-intensity exercise and sticking to plan (including logging everything, and adjusting cals and macros as I lost weight), hit a longish plateau. I decided to try IF and chose 16:8, which fit very easily into my lifestyle. I felt hungry in the AMs for a day or two, but now I don't at all. I eat all my meals between 12:30 and about 8 PM. It helped me bust through the plateau, without adjusting my calories down or changing anything else. I feel really good. It may not be for everyone, but it is working for me.
If I can track down the article I read, I will post the title and author.
This?https://www.dietdoctor.com/fasting-affects-physiology-hormones
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SFLiminality wrote: »I've been doing IF for about 4 1/2 weeks, and I've lost 23 lbs (probably about 3-5 lbs of water weight) and 3 inches off my waist. I've dieted on and off throughout the years, and this has been the easiest plan to stick to for me personally.
It's not for everyone, but the narrow eating window makes it easy for me to stick closer to my calorie goal of 1200-1600, and not eating throughout the day gives me tons of time to focus on other things as well as having the side benefit of saving tons of money on not eating out since my eating window starts at 10 pm.
The reason I've lost so much weight on IF is that I've been doing a combination of a lot of suggested eating habits along with the fasting. Keto, OMAD, and 30 minutes to an hour of cardio a day averaging 150 bpm.
I think my favorite part about it overall is that the flexibility. Some days I don't eat all that great, but I can just pick it up the next day and not feel like I've ruined my diet. I've had about two weight loss plateaus so far due to letting loose and eating whatever, but I broke through them both in about 3 days of sticking to it.
Before and after.
I'd be more convinced if the before picture were from the same angle so we could see your posture.8 -
SFLiminality wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »when you put your info into mfp youre activity setting is what you do daily for a job. so you need to put that in and you need to eat the calories it gives you, your deficit is built in without exercise aside from your job. you are seriously underfueling your body. even doing IF you need to make sure you get enough calories in. you are not doing your body or organs even any justice eating so little. your TDEE should be more than 2500 if you lug around boxes all day.so go back and re enter your height,weight,and your day to day acivities and how much you want to lose(if its more than 75lbs you can put 2lbs a week. and eat to your calorie goal. any extra exercise you will need to eat at least some of those calories back and gauge in a a month or so how your weight loss is going. right now you are eating too little and burning too much. a lot of lean mass is definitely being lost even if you dont feel it your organs and heart is also a muscle. so damage can be done there too.
UPS is only 3 hours a night, and I'm mostly gaming the rest of the day, so I figured that about evened out to lightly active. As far as underfueling goes, I have more energy than I've had in years, and my body isn't telling me I'm hungry all of the time like it did when I was eating 2500-4000 calories a day, so I'm not inclined to argue with it really. I've got plenty of fat stores to with for now.
I was at the doc not long ago about high blood pressure. She said try diet and exercise. My blood pressure is now lower than ever. Around 117/80, so my heart is probably fine? Used to be 168/90 range.
I'll hit my goal weight soon, and then I'll take your suggestion and bump up my calories closer to maintenance range, and keep up with MFP for about a month to see how that goes. My next challenge is building muscle, because I've never done it intentionally, so I'm not too concerned about losing muscle mass. Lifted a friend that's pushing 220 without much effort yesterday, so I'm still where I like to be on strength.
just because you arent hungry now doesnt mean nothing is happening. that happens at first with low calorie diets then your body will signal for you to eat more or it will start trying to reserve energy you may become tired or feel worn out. as for blood pressure it has nothing to do with your heart being bad or not. I have heart issues and my blood pressure is fine. my hubbys heart is fine and he had high blood pressure(change in diet helped his and hes not even overweight) my daughter is obese due to a thryoid issue and no high blood pressure either, she has no heart issues .
so normal blood pressure has no indication on heart issues,you can have high blood pressure whether you have a healthy heart or not. if youve lost weight that can bring blood pressure down. as for having fat stores. if your pics are accurate you do NOT have the fat stores to eat so little. yes you have fat to lose but its not like you are over 300 lbs.as for losing muscle building it back up later on is a LOT harder than you think and why would you want to do that? but you do you1 -
CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »just because you arent hungry now doesnt mean nothing is happening. that happens at first with low calorie diets then your body will signal for you to eat more or it will start trying to reserve energy you may become tired or feel worn out. as for blood pressure it has nothing to do with your heart being bad or not. I have heart issues and my blood pressure is fine. my hubbys heart is fine and he had high blood pressure(change in diet helped his and hes not even overweight) my daughter is obese due to a thryoid issue and no high blood pressure either, she has no heart issues .
so normal blood pressure has no indication on heart issues,you can have high blood pressure whether you have a healthy heart or not. if youve lost weight that can bring blood pressure down. as for having fat stores. if your pics are accurate you do NOT have the fat stores to eat so little. yes you have fat to lose but its not like you are over 300 lbs.as for losing muscle building it back up later on is a LOT harder than you think and why would you want to do that? but you do you
Like I've said before. I've done low calorie diets before. They sucked. I was pretty much always hungry because I kept trying to have evenly spaced 400-600 calorie meals. This feels different. I'm not hungry and lethargic all of the time. Week one and two was me being cranky, and generally bleh feeling, but 3, and 4 have been pretty decent. Week 5 now is easy mode. I might even stick with fasting on and off during my maintenance since I'll already be adapted to it.
Either way. My blood pressure being lower is putting less stress on my heart. Outside of a doctors visit, I have no idea what's going on in there. I'm actually planning to get some labs done soonish, so I'll have to see if they measure heart health somehow.
As far as muscle gain goes, I'm not concerned about it being hard. I don't think it will be easy in fact. I'm just curious as to what I can accomplish.
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lynn_glenmont wrote: »I'd be more convinced if the before picture were from the same angle so we could see your posture.
I thought of that after the fact. All I can do is update the after picture obviously, haha.
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SFLiminality wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »just because you arent hungry now doesnt mean nothing is happening. that happens at first with low calorie diets then your body will signal for you to eat more or it will start trying to reserve energy you may become tired or feel worn out. as for blood pressure it has nothing to do with your heart being bad or not. I have heart issues and my blood pressure is fine. my hubbys heart is fine and he had high blood pressure(change in diet helped his and hes not even overweight) my daughter is obese due to a thryoid issue and no high blood pressure either, she has no heart issues .
so normal blood pressure has no indication on heart issues,you can have high blood pressure whether you have a healthy heart or not. if youve lost weight that can bring blood pressure down. as for having fat stores. if your pics are accurate you do NOT have the fat stores to eat so little. yes you have fat to lose but its not like you are over 300 lbs.as for losing muscle building it back up later on is a LOT harder than you think and why would you want to do that? but you do you
Like I've said before. I've done low calorie diets before. They sucked. I was pretty much always hungry because I kept trying to have evenly spaced 400-600 calorie meals. This feels different. I'm not hungry and lethargic all of the time. Week one and two was me being cranky, and generally bleh feeling, but 3, and 4 have been pretty decent. Week 5 now is easy mode. I might even stick with fasting on and off during my maintenance since I'll already be adapted to it.
Either way. My blood pressure being lower is putting less stress on my heart. Outside of a doctors visit, I have no idea what's going on in there. I'm actually planning to get some labs done soonish, so I'll have to see if they measure heart health somehow.
As far as muscle gain goes, I'm not concerned about it being hard. I don't think it will be easy in fact. I'm just curious as to what I can accomplish.
it would take echocardiograms,ultrasounds,stress tests and so on to check if you have heart issues. you are still in whats called the honeymoon phase of a low calorie diet. it will catch up to you when you least expect it if you keep up for any length of time. kidney stones is one issue that can crop up,hormones can become out of whack,sex drive can go down,brittle nails and hair loss are another issue that can come from too low of calories.my sisters heart was fine until she decided to do cycles of low calories then do high calories and then low calories.
of course she abused laxatives and so on but for the most part she starved herself. she now has to have stents put in due to the abuse she put her body through because she was losing weight so fast not eating enough,it damaged her heart. not to mention that toddlers over a certain age eat 1200 or more calories to fuel their bodies, so do you really want to eat the amount a toddler eats? does eating that little make sense to you?
a grown man needs more calories than a toddler. but like I said you do whatever it is that floats your boat. you will have to decide whether or not you want to put your body under excess stress from eating too little. and stress means cortisol levels can go up,injuries can happen ,the list goes on and on.doesnt it say something to you that a woman who is sedentary can eat more calories than you and still lose weight?if you think you dont need more than 1200(or less) calories you really need to see someone because that to me is a sign of disordered eating when you think eating too little to fuel your body is ok to do.3 -
SFLiminality wrote: »CharlieBeansmomTracey wrote: »just because you arent hungry now doesnt mean nothing is happening. that happens at first with low calorie diets then your body will signal for you to eat more or it will start trying to reserve energy you may become tired or feel worn out. as for blood pressure it has nothing to do with your heart being bad or not. I have heart issues and my blood pressure is fine. my hubbys heart is fine and he had high blood pressure(change in diet helped his and hes not even overweight) my daughter is obese due to a thryoid issue and no high blood pressure either, she has no heart issues .
so normal blood pressure has no indication on heart issues,you can have high blood pressure whether you have a healthy heart or not. if youve lost weight that can bring blood pressure down. as for having fat stores. if your pics are accurate you do NOT have the fat stores to eat so little. yes you have fat to lose but its not like you are over 300 lbs.as for losing muscle building it back up later on is a LOT harder than you think and why would you want to do that? but you do you
Like I've said before. I've done low calorie diets before. They sucked. I was pretty much always hungry because I kept trying to have evenly spaced 400-600 calorie meals. This feels different. I'm not hungry and lethargic all of the time. Week one and two was me being cranky, and generally bleh feeling, but 3, and 4 have been pretty decent. Week 5 now is easy mode. I might even stick with fasting on and off during my maintenance since I'll already be adapted to it.
Either way. My blood pressure being lower is putting less stress on my heart. Outside of a doctors visit, I have no idea what's going on in there. I'm actually planning to get some labs done soonish, so I'll have to see if they measure heart health somehow.
As far as muscle gain goes, I'm not concerned about it being hard. I don't think it will be easy in fact. I'm just curious as to what I can accomplish.
What about muscle loss while you're undereating? Your heart is a muscle. You don't want to damage it from long-term steep deficits.0
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