Fasting

Getting ready to do mine tonight into tomorrow. 12 hour

Hi I am starting to do a 16/8 fast. I have had success with IF in the past so starting over now. I will eventually get to doing a modified alternate day fasting but will be in a few months. I have about 60 lbs to lose. Feel free to friend me if anyone would like an IF buddy. Good luck everyone!

I’m fasting 36 hours M-W-F to get some autophagy. At 63, I need all the help I can get there with loose skin and the like. When I fast, I start right after dinner and go until breakfast 2 days later. I enjoy water, mineral water, and black coffee. I don’t do tea on an empty stomach as it will nauseate me. I do add a pinch of salt to all my fasting drinks to prevent dehydration. I actually enjoy fasting as it gives me so much energy and brain power!

Yes, allowing extended fasting periods would be helpful. I have been doing OMAD (one meal a day) My longest fast was 20 days, but you need to be very careful with the refeeding phase of long term fasting, so I’m sure any more than 48 hours there could be some hurdles.

I started fasting again January 3rd after a fairly stressful year with weight gain and 60 lbs to lose. I’m 63. I’ve fasted 36 hours every other day since then with a calorie counted Mediterranean Diet 12 hours in between. I take a walk every day for 15-45 minutes. I’m 10 lbs down!

I have been doing IF for over 10 years, doing minimum 16/8, mainly 20/4 with occasional up to 10 days. I was please to see IF added to app, but when I explored it further was capped at 16/8. Please change to allow custom fasts. Until then, I will be using Zero app.

I'm not sure if any of MFP staff monitors topics here but it would be great if fasting feature include "custom/free" fasting...For example I'm doing 36h fast once a week and rest days 16/8...so MFP can't really measure my 36hrs fast. This is unique future and I haven't seen such option also in competitors apps.

I'm on day 4 of an extended fast. My fast is water only plus an occasional non-calorie electrolyte tab. I have done a number of 10-day fasts, but I decided to change it up this time. I'm not fasting for a specific amount of time... I'm fasting until I reach a goal weight. My goal is to lose 40 pounds. When I started on Monday, I was 220 lbs. My goal, 180 lbs, will put me at a BMI of 25 (which is just shy of overweight), so there will be no danger of me being identified as a starving Armenian or Ethiopian. In previous fasts, I have lost about 20 pounds in 10-day fast. That's 2 pounds a day, so this might be a 25-day fast, but it may take me longer, because the first few days is rapid weight loss, then it tapers off. When I start eating again, I expect I'll quickly gain back 10 pounds.

The reason for the quick loss at the beginning of the fast is because I lose the contents of my intestinal tract, plus all my glycogen and the associated water. When I start eating, I quickly refill my intestinal tract, and since I usually eat some carbs, my liver and muscles go back to tanking up on glycogen, which explains the quick regain of 10 lbs. Except for that 10lbs, everything I lose during a fast is body fat.

So, for a 10-day fast where I lose 20 lbs, I lose 10lbs of body fat and that's my net loss. The other 10 lbs is not fat. It's the other stuff (both the loss at the beginning and the regain at the end).

For some reason, when I fast, I never get brain fog or headaches. Hunger goes away a day or two after I start fasting. I don't quit exercising either. I maintain a normal activity level. I once did a 125-mile bike ride on day 7 of a planned 10-day fast.
I was slower than normal for that distance, but I felt fine when I was done and finished within the time limit. (I started eating again the evening of day 8, because of a family event.)

My fasts are not medically-supervised fasts. I'm in good health and take no medications, including over-the-counter ones. I can start eating again at any time if I feel the need or desire. I'm fasting, not starving.

I'm considering doing a keto diet when I start eating again. I think it may help me maintain my weight.

Side note: Every time I read a nutrition article written by an RD talking about how carbohydrates are essential, I want to scream. I want to ask them for their explanation of how the Inuits survived before they met Europeans. According to those RDs, the Inuits shouldn't have survived even one generation, let alone been healthy and active, with low incidences of all the Western-Diet diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. (The diseases supposedly caused by eating a diet high in saturated fat.)

Side note 2: I've been a MyFitnessPal premium member since they first offered it. I love the new IF implementation, but I wish it were more flexible, allowing extended fasting. MyFitnessPal is my tool of choice, not my nanny or my doctor (or even my RD).

Beginning the journey on the 15th of March, I was 227lbs. Over the period of 5weeks I have almost consistently used intermittent fasting and calorie counting in a deficit. I have fasted on average 14hrs within each week with IF (a few fasts were unintentionally discarded in the beginning because I didn't exactly understand the feature at the time😅). Fasts usually went over the goal and not under. In the first 3 weeks I would only meet my Carb goals and occasionally my Fat goals as my protein goals were too high for me. After adjusting my goals I started meeting protein goals which I now prioritize. Since the beginning, I have only execeeded calorie goals once, on Sunday, ig it's because I seemed to hit a plateau in weight loss🥲. I then planned to do ADF, which I started at 7pm on Monday until 7am this morning. During my fast I only had tea and water. I started another fast at 7pm, really wished MFP would log the entire fast.😀