Intermittent fasting

lgfrie wrote: »

Usman70lbs wrote: »

I understand that it doesn't provide magic but it helps me stay within my calories goal for the day if I have a cut off. It also helps me avoid having unhealthy snacks in the evenings which is when I am most likely to eat things I shouldn't.

Exactly. I figure I gained somewhere between "most" and "all" of my excess weight binging and grazing at night. Getting into IF and slamming the lid shut on nighttime snacking, along with learning to be a little hungry some of the time and just make do without feeding that hunger, as IF trains you to be, was truly an eye-opening experience. IF is the best thing I have ever done for myself. My wife and I have already agreed after 6 months of IF that this is the "forever" plan, regardless of whether we're in losing or maintenance. We really love it as a lifestyle.

That's great to hear. In my experience, unwinding at the end of the day often means a snack or two that's often got sugar. Having your wife on board must be great. I often get asked by my wife if I can have some but over time she has also become supportive of it and actively supports me by putting away the unhealthy foods in the evenings. This has proved to be especially helpful on days where I have low willpower.

tigrig wrote: »

I do go between the 20:4 and OMAD version of fasting and focus on getting high protein intake during my feeding period. It works for me cause I'm better at controlling over eating doing it this way. Ive been dropping anywhere from a pound to two pounds a week and have been maintaining muscularity while increasing some of my lifts. Needless to say I love it

This is exactly what I am doing also. For the ones doing IF, you need to remember that after fasting for 20 hours plus your blood sugar levels are low. When you eat your first meal with carbohydrates you wil spike your insuline a lot. So dont have carbohydrates with fat. The only days I eat carbohydrates are on heavy lifting days.

This approach has been effective for me as well, similar to other posts. I've lost 20 lbs in six weeks since rebooting my efforts on MFP, roughly following the 16/8 method. One thing I like is that if I miss a day of exercise, I'm still maintaining or slightly losing weight due to the IF method and careful food choices. Most of my cravings are within the 8 hour window, so I try to choose healthy low-cal snacks.

So I have been doing 5:2 fasting since January 1. I lost 40 pounds. Down to a size 0 or 2. The best part is that my body has completely changed. Like it dissolves stubborn fat deposits. I don't think I will ever stop.

I have been IF since July...not for weightloss though. I lost almost all of my weight (54lbs) in August/September. IF has given me more energy and focus, my workouts are better and all my blood work has come back perfect. I still eat pretty much the same amount of calories (I track Macros actually) I did before, may be slightly less, but not by much.

CardinalComb wrote: »

IF without cutting carbs will be hard. You will crave food all day long.

This wasn't the case for me. I did non-keto OMAD (one meal a day) for a few months and my fasting window was 23/1. I ate a "balanced" diet including carbs and one reasonably portioned dessert every single day. I did not crave food the whole time. If I saw something I wanted to eat, I bought it, but ate it during my OMAD.

shunrei18 wrote: »

So motivated by all this comment. I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions.

I need to loose weight by end of March (about 10 kg), to reach that target it was recommended that i stick to 1200 cal per day. So 7 x 1200 = 8400 calories per week.

I'm thinking of mixing this with intermittent fasting with a mix method
"Regular" day: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday --> IF 16:8 with calorie count at 1500 cal = 7500 calories
"Real Fasting day": Monday, Thursday --> calorie control at 500 cal per day = 1000 calories
Total 8500 calories per week

I know I'm starting this at the worst time somehow (December month of festivities + 2 weeks of business trips...), but i'm thinking that if can pull that off at the hardest time of the year, it will be easier to become steady from January.

I have a question though regarding the app, i tried to set up those different daily goal in the app, but i couldn't do it. because somehow it's not matching my overall goal ?
Anyone has an idea how to set up in the app?

Thanks in advance

Well, different approaches work for different people and maybe this will all work for you, but it sounds pretty complex. As someone who has done 16:8 seven days a week for over six months now (and lost 67 pounds doing it), I totally get the interest in IF as a way to diet. But I think mixing that with a 5:2 approach is perhaps not a great idea, or maybe try it for a week but be ready to discard it quickly if you find it depriving. Honestly, just getting in the groove of 16:8 and repeating it consistently takes some self-discipline and determination, and adding onto that two days a week of basically starving yourself is not the easiest way to go about things. You might wanna think about just getting things up and running with 16:8 for a while. Your 1 lb per week weight loss goal as expressed does not require anything as extreme as 500 calorie per day fasts.

As for the 1200 calories, you probably already know that is the rock-bottom minimum, lowest level of calories that is even considered safe, for the smallest, most sedentary possible person. Why did you pick that number? Suggest you make a trip to the MFP Goals tool, set your goal for one pound a week, and eat however many calories it tells you to eat, which will likely be a lot more than 1200 and will lead you straight to your weight loss goal by end of March. Then, with all those additional calories on tap, there will be no reason to starve yourself twice a week, something that sounds doable in theory but in practice leads many people to throw in the towel and binge. Straight-up 16:8 on the other hand is for a lot of people sustainable and successful over time without the starvation/binging problems of 5:2.

By the way, you don't need 16:8 either. Personally, I really like it as a dieting system, but you could just get your calorie figure from the MFP goals tool, and eat those calories however you want, whenever you want.

In a nutshell: I would simplify things a bit if it were me and just focus on the calories for now. I've learned that with dieting, simpler is usually better. The more rules and rigidity, the more onerous and tiresome it becomes and the easier it gets to just walk away from the whole thing. That all said, I do like 16:8 as a way to organize my eating day - basically two big meals instead of three or more smaller ones, and no snacking at night. For me, that works. I think 16:8 is worthy of being tried out, but again, you don't really need it - you can just eat the calories MFP allots you and you will lose the weight.