I. F. Question

stv1520 · October 2021

I’ve been interested in trying IF for a little while now, but as usual everything I read about it is contradictory. For example, one article states that when you fast, fat burning doesn’t happen. Instead- you burn off muscle mass. Others say you do burn fat. So I’m thoroughly confused!! I’m really active- playing hockey a few nights a week and gym after work in the afternoon.

SuzySunshine99 · October 2021

Fat burning happens when you burn more calories than you consume. It doesn't matter when you consume those calories.

Some people find that fasting helps them control their calories, which helps with their weight loss.

You'd have to decide for yourself if that strategy would work for you. It's possible that for a strenuous activity like playing hockey, you might not want to be fasted.

Thewonderofitall · October 2021

I best as I know you would have to fast yourself to starvation level before your body starts burning muscle only after the fat is gone!
I have been doing a five day 16:8 fast for a few months now and have had great success. I also try to keep my daily calories in the 1600-1700 range.
On weekends I "Zig-Zag" deit and allow the calories to go up to around 2000. This keeps my metabolism from getting too comfortable. I also exercise 5-days a week.
Once a month I do a 23-hour fast to reach autophagy. I have also done a 35-hour fast. It was all rather easy, just drink water whenever you're hungry and it will go away!
Let us know how it works out for you!

Xellercin · October 2021

Don't worry too much about what you read about IF.

Give it a try if you want to and see how your body reacts. However, if you are female, know that continuous IF can have very negative effects on hormonal regulation over time. (I make no assumptions on the internet even when someone claims to be male).

Otherwise, experiment and see what works for you.

I personally do 18:6 IF 5 days a week. I throw in two non-fasting days because I'm female and don't want my hair to fall out and crap like that.

I have WAY more energy when I'm fasting, because I also eat fairly low calories and easily slip into ketosis, and in ketosis, I'm very energized. So if I played sports, I would want to do it fasted.

That said, I take a salt supplement daily to raise my blood pressure. If I don't take it, fasting drops my blood pressure too much and I become non functional.

I'm sharing all of this to show how each experience is individual. You may have none of the effects and factors that I do.

I had to figure it out for myself by trial and error and paying attention to my body.

One thing I will say though is that IF works best, like any diet, if it's a long-term lifestyle goal. I've seen a lot of people balloon transitioning out of IF.

sollyn23l2 · October 2021

Thewonderofitall wrote: »

I best as I know you would have to fast yourself to starvation level before your body starts burning muscle only after the fat is gone!
I have been doing a five day 16:8 fast for a few months now and have had great success. I also try to keep my daily calories in the 1600-1700 range.
On weekends I "Zig-Zag" deit and allow the calories to go up to around 2000. This keeps my metabolism from getting too comfortable. I also exercise 5-days a week.
Once a month I do a 23-hour fast to reach autophagy. I have also done a 35-hour fast. It was all rather easy, just drink water whenever you're hungry and it will go away!
Let us know how it works out for you!

This is 100% untrue. ANY time you fast and lose weight, a percentage of that will be muscle. No exceptions.

AnnPT77 · October 2021

Thewonderofitall wrote: »

I best as I know you would have to fast yourself to starvation level before your body starts burning muscle only after the fat is gone!
I have been doing a five day 16:8 fast for a few months now and have had great success. I also try to keep my daily calories in the 1600-1700 range.
On weekends I "Zig-Zag" deit and allow the calories to go up to around 2000. This keeps my metabolism from getting too comfortable. I also exercise 5-days a week.
Once a month I do a 23-hour fast to reach autophagy. I have also done a 35-hour fast. It was all rather easy, just drink water whenever you're hungry and it will go away!
Let us know how it works out for you!

Researchers believe there's an approximate limit on how much fat one can metabolize per day, per pound of fat on the body. Seemingly the most accepted estimates recently are something in the mid 20s to low 30s of calories per pound of current fat per day, with some individual variation around the mean presumed, if I recall correctly. Beyond that, more likely other - more useful - tissues may be burned to make up the energy deficit.

It's not like you can eat zero calories, lose only fat until all the fat leaves your body. That's clearly not what happens.

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

Thewonderofitall wrote: »

I best as I know you would have to fast yourself to starvation level before your body starts burning muscle only after the fat is gone!
I have been doing a five day 16:8 fast for a few months now and have had great success. I also try to keep my daily calories in the 1600-1700 range.
On weekends I "Zig-Zag" deit and allow the calories to go up to around 2000. This keeps my metabolism from getting too comfortable. I also exercise 5-days a week.
Once a month I do a 23-hour fast to reach autophagy. I have also done a 35-hour fast. It was all rather easy, just drink water whenever you're hungry and it will go away!
Let us know how it works out for you!

This is 100% untrue. ANY time you fast and lose weight, a percentage of that will be muscle. No exceptions.

Wellllll, maybe. A percentage of any meaningful weight loss will be lean tissue. With meaningful weight loss, I'd *want* to lose some lean mass: I've lost almost 60 pounds, just under 1/3 of my body weight. If I still had the blood volume (which is lean tissue) that I had at my high weight, now that I weigh 2/3s as much . . . I don't think that would be a good thing. That's an extreme example, but not the only one.

Slow weight loss, with some strength challenge happening to remind the body that it needs and ought to keep muscle, good nutrition alongside (especially but not exclusively adequate protein) . . . maybe not much (measurable) *muscle* loss.

There are a lot of relevant variables in this issue of relative fat/muscle loss IMO, with most common IF schedules maybe well down the list in importance among them. I'm no expert, though, for sure.

lorib642 · October 2021

I find it confusing. Proponents of IF say you want to fast until insulin goes down so you can burn fat. (image)

There was a study comparing same calorie consumption but one group did every other day fast, in lean individuals. Both groups lost weight but the non fasting group lost more fat.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34135111/

I have type 2 diabetes. My dr does not recommend I fast over 14 hours and I am not lean. It is good you are active. That will help prevent muscle loss, I believe.

I wish I had advice, but I have been stalled in weightloss. I was hoping fasting would help but so far no change

.

lgfrie · October 2021

I've been doing IF since May of 2019, noon to 7 pm. This approach helped me lose 80 pounds and then (mostly) keep it off. Whenever I stop doing IF, which has happened a few times for a week here, a month there, I immediately start regaining. I've given back about 10-12 pounds due to not being diligent with IF sometimes. When I'm diligent, I can easily maintain. I think it's just a matter of finding what works for you - for some people, IF provides a good structure for staying within a calorie target; for others, it doesn't work, or something else works better.

Wouldn't recommend spending time fussing with fat vs muscle burning and all that jazz. If you eat less, you'll lose weight, and it'll be the right kind of weight unless you're flat out starving yourself to death.

It takes a few weeks to get used to IF. At first you may be really hungry at times. This passes. Like many others who do IF, I was ravenously hungry for a few weeks, and then I got used to it and found myself having much less appetite than before - and it has basically stayed that way, for 2.5 years now.

SLLeask · October 2021

Just to give another personal insight into IF. I naturally do 18:6, (some days 21:3 if I've been busy at work!) have done for many years, not knowing it was a "thing". I have a black coffee when I first get up, then nothing until about midday and have an early dinner as I eat with my daughter, so tend to be done by about 6pm.

But let me tell you, I can easily trough more calories than I need in those few hours! Until I sorted out what I was actually eating I was quite over weight. It's only the last couple of months that I've got a grip of what I am shovelling into my mouth and have started back at the gym after a loooong absence, doing a bit of cardio and some weights that I'm beginning to shift some lard. 5kgs down with 7kgs to go to get back to where I was a few short years ago.

TL:DR - IF can be a great tool for some people if used in conjunction with careful consideration of other aspects of lifestyle!

cmriverside · October 2021

@stv1520

You don't mention what you're hoping to accomplish/achieve by fasting nor do you mention what type of fasting you are considering.

There are dedicated Intermediate Fasting groups on this site, you'd have to join it to post, but it has a lot of people that could talk more in depth with you. Here, from the search of Groups:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/groups/browse/search?Search=intermittent+fasting

This one from the search has nearly 900 members, looks pretty active:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/120735-fasting-diet-intermittent-fasting

And then there's OMAD (One Meal A Day)
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/20634-omad-revolution

NYPhotographer2021 · October 2021

I try to do 16:8 every day, sometimes I can make it to 18:6 and on the very rare occasions, I get to 20:4. I don't know about the fat burning aspects of it, but I find for me, that it helps me control what I eat. Being conscious of a smaller window of eating, I tend to make my meals count instead of mindless grazing like I used to do. I've been doing it for 2 months now, and hair loss is minimal. I have lost 20 lbs.

stv1520 · October 2021

cmriverside wrote: »

@stv1520

You don't mention what you're hoping to accomplish/achieve by fasting nor do you mention what type of fasting you are considering.

There are dedicated Intermediate Fasting groups on this site, you'd have to join it to post, but it has a lot of people that could talk more in depth with you. Here, from the search of Groups:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/groups/browse/search?Search=intermittent+fasting

This one from the search has nearly 900 members, looks pretty active:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/120735-fasting-diet-intermittent-fasting

And then there's OMAD (One Meal A Day)
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/20634-omad-revolution

I’m currently down 28 lbs. I have around 32-33 more to go to reach my goal weight. 2 weeks ago I played hockey 5 out of 7 days. I also had a deficit every day. I was excited to weigh in on Monday but was frustrated to see that I gained a pound. Fortunately this past Monday when I weighed in I did lose 2 lbs. I’m wondering if IF would aid me in losing more weight quicker by shaking up my system. I’d probably try 16:8 to see how it goes.

cwolfman13 · October 2021

Muscle mass isn't a particularly good fuel source and not something your body is going to reach for to burn just willy nilly. Fat is always the primary source of fuel when in a calorie deficit. Most muscle wasting in a deficit is due to not using those muscles as they are a use it or lose it type of propositiong.

You burn fat in a calorie deficit regardless of how you time your meals...it's pretty irrelevant. IF also doesn't default to losing weight...if you're not in a calorie deficit you won't lose weight even if you're doing IF. I do IF during the summer to help me better maintain my weight because we have a lot more social gatherings, pool parties, BBQs, etc going on all summer long. I don't do IF to lose weight in the summer, I do it to help me maintain weight.

cmriverside · October 2021

stv1520 wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

@stv1520

You don't mention what you're hoping to accomplish/achieve by fasting nor do you mention what type of fasting you are considering.

There are dedicated Intermediate Fasting groups on this site, you'd have to join it to post, but it has a lot of people that could talk more in depth with you. Here, from the search of Groups:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/groups/browse/search?Search=intermittent+fasting

This one from the search has nearly 900 members, looks pretty active:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/120735-fasting-diet-intermittent-fasting

And then there's OMAD (One Meal A Day)
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/20634-omad-revolution

I’m currently down 28 lbs. I have around 32-33 more to go to reach my goal weight. 2 weeks ago I played hockey 5 out of 7 days. I also had a deficit every day. I was excited to weigh in on Monday but was frustrated to see that I gained a pound. Fortunately this past Monday when I weighed in I did lose 2 lbs. I’m wondering if IF would aid me in losing more weight quicker by shaking up my system. I’d probably try 16:8 to see how it goes.

Well, just so you understand that IF doesn't "do" anything magical.

A calorie deficit is what is needed for weight loss. How you get there is highly individual. IF won't hurt you, so try it (keep logging food) and see how you like it.

Personally I pretty much eat 16:8 anyway - ya know, three meals and eight hours sleep.

lorib642 · October 2021

For people confused by terms 16:8 is 16 hr fast with 8 hr eating window, OMAD is one meal a day. 5:2 is eating regular meals 5 days, restricting calories 2 days/week.

SuzySunshine99 · October 2021

stv1520 wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

@stv1520

You don't mention what you're hoping to accomplish/achieve by fasting nor do you mention what type of fasting you are considering.

There are dedicated Intermediate Fasting groups on this site, you'd have to join it to post, but it has a lot of people that could talk more in depth with you. Here, from the search of Groups:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/groups/browse/search?Search=intermittent+fasting

This one from the search has nearly 900 members, looks pretty active:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/120735-fasting-diet-intermittent-fasting

And then there's OMAD (One Meal A Day)
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/20634-omad-revolution

I’m currently down 28 lbs. I have around 32-33 more to go to reach my goal weight. 2 weeks ago I played hockey 5 out of 7 days. I also had a deficit every day. I was excited to weigh in on Monday but was frustrated to see that I gained a pound. Fortunately this past Monday when I weighed in I did lose 2 lbs. I’m wondering if IF would aid me in losing more weight quicker by shaking up my system. I’d probably try 16:8 to see how it goes.

Weight fluctuates all the time for a variety of reasons (water retention, waste in your system, etc).

Increased activity leads to water and fluid retention.

After playing hockey 5 out of 7 days, the fact that the scale only went up one pound means you probably LOST fat weight.

Do not get hung up on small scale fluctuations. It sounds like you're trying to fix something that's not broken.

AnnPT77 · October 2021

stv1520 wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

@stv1520

You don't mention what you're hoping to accomplish/achieve by fasting nor do you mention what type of fasting you are considering.

There are dedicated Intermediate Fasting groups on this site, you'd have to join it to post, but it has a lot of people that could talk more in depth with you. Here, from the search of Groups:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/groups/browse/search?Search=intermittent+fasting

This one from the search has nearly 900 members, looks pretty active:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/120735-fasting-diet-intermittent-fasting

And then there's OMAD (One Meal A Day)
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/20634-omad-revolution

I’m currently down 28 lbs. I have around 32-33 more to go to reach my goal weight. 2 weeks ago I played hockey 5 out of 7 days. I also had a deficit every day. I was excited to weigh in on Monday but was frustrated to see that I gained a pound. Fortunately this past Monday when I weighed in I did lose 2 lbs. I’m wondering if IF would aid me in losing more weight quicker by shaking up my system. I’d probably try 16:8 to see how it goes.

I'd encourage you to have a good think about what constitutes body weight: Water (which is around 60% of body weight for the average adult), fat, muscle, bones, other useful tissue. In addition, there are things that show up on the scale that strictly speaking aren't one's body at all: Digestive contents on their way to being waste, and one's microbiome.

Of those things, water and digestive contents are going to account for most scale-weight shifts that are quite quick and multi-pound, like 2-5 or so pounds over a day or so. A sensible rate of fat loss is slower, more days to a few weeks to show up clearly on the scale, because it plays peek-a-boo with the water/digestive contents. The other stuff is even slower/smaller in a healthy person.

If you don't usually play hockey 5 of 7 days, it's very possible that your water retention was higher than normal (for muscle repair, basically). One needn't have sore muscles in order for that to be an explanation, but if you *did* have sore muscles, there's a high probability that water was retained.

We're trying to lose fat, right? If so, it makes sense to figure out how the water/digestion aspects work in one's own body, and ignore them. Trying to game them for weight management is profitless, IMO.

If you haven't run across it before, I'd recommend this as a really good, useful read:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

If it works better for you to weigh weekly - like if the scale stresses you out - that's fine. However, that does limit your ability to gain experiential knowledge of how water weight in particular fluctuates in your body. I'm a daily weigh-er, have been for years (totally unstressed and unobsessed by it). I've had many weeks during around a year of loss, almost 6 years of maintenance since, where weights 7 days apart would've given me an extremely inaccurate view of what my weight had been doing, by hitting a lowish weight on day 1, and a highish one on day 8, when somewhere mid-week there were new lows.

It's just my opinion, but I don't think you *need* a new weight-loss strategy, probably, in order to keep losing weight. I think it would help you to have a clearer understanding of how *fat* loss works, and how it's not always exactly the same as weight loss. If you want to pursue a fasting strategy for variety or better sustainability or something like that, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. Sensible fasting strategies can be a good tool. But I think it's kind of a tangent, outside of those variety/sustainability things, given what you've said about your goals and recent experience.

heybales · October 2021

To the confusion about burning off muscle-mass.

Many times it is referenced like that - but it's more a slow matter of you have such a deficit and/or lack of protein, that muscle which is broken down every day anyway (just like other body tissues) and rebuilt - just isn't rebuilt because the body sees the muscle is energy intensive when resources are low, and amino acids are required for more life sustaining systems.

There are studies that show even without lifting, but a reasonable deficit and enough protein (for not lifting), can retain muscle mass. Not sure how someone would find that fine line without being in a research study though.

Not Lean Body Mass (LBM) necessarily can be retained - as that is muscle and everything else not Fat Mass, and with smaller body you should have less water needed in many systems - that's less LBM.

OP - whatever site said when you fast you don't burn fat - ignore that site, bunch of baloney for the fact you burn fat majority of the day already and main energy source - fasting increases that during most the day.
Of course when you eat equal calories during your window you balance that right out so it doesn't matter in the end when you view the day as a whole.

Eat whatever schedule is going to allow you to perform well in your sport.

You aren't going to shake up your system by doing IF that will do anything magical.
You may discover you could skip breakfast and not actually be hungry and be more alert as many here have reported.
Then again you could make your workouts suck, and be dangerous on the ice from falling over, and not worth it.
Your experiement.

As to faster fat loss - that's not better when it becomes extreme - that can be a way to make your body adapt, have workouts that suck, and indeed lose some muscle mass.

With only 33 lbs to go, 1 lb weekly would hopefully be reasonable and hopefully avoid the negatives of being in a diet.
At the last 10 lbs to go - 1/2 lb weekly becomes reasonable.

Don't go for extreme, or likely to become part of the 80% that fail to reach or maintain goal weight over 6 months, and it becomes easier to gain the fat back and harder to lose next year when the attempt starts again.

cmriverside · October 2021

lorib642 wrote: »

For people confused by terms 16:8 is 16 hr fast with 8 hr eating window, OMAD is one meal a day. 5:2 is eating regular meals 5 days, restricting calories 2 days/week.

Are you talking to me? Just because I wrote that I sleep eight hours doesn't mean I think I'm supposed to eat the other 16.

16:8, yes. I know what it means.

If eat at 9AM, Noon, and 5PM and then don't eat from 5PM to 9AM, that's 16:8.

lorib642 · October 2021

cmriverside wrote: »

lorib642 wrote: »

For people confused by terms 16:8 is 16 hr fast with 8 hr eating window, OMAD is one meal a day. 5:2 is eating regular meals 5 days, restricting calories 2 days/week.

Are you talking to me? Just because I wrote that I sleep eight hours doesn't mean I think I'm supposed to eat the other 16.

16:8, yes. I know what it means.

If eat at 9AM, Noon, and 5PM and then don't eat from 5PM to 9AM, that's 16:8.

Thanks for the clarification.

Maybe I am the only one who gets confused by terms sometimes. Please disregard my post.

coryhart4389 · October 2021

Avoiding all the technical stuff, I will give my opinion to your IF question. You stated you play hockey a lot, do you think Brad Marchand or David Pastmak uses IF to increase performance and maintain weight? I would guess no. Why not do what the best do in your chosen activities? Eat a nutritious diet, burn more than you eat, and use playing better hockey as your motivation, JMHO.

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