The FastDay Forum

HEAR HEAR
Good baguette with a drop of olive oil. Nom Nom.

To all those worrying about calorie counting when they thought they had got away from it. .....
You will.
BUT
First you have to understand how many calories you are actually eating.
I no longer calorie count other than fast days.

I've not fasted this week because its cold and its half term (well I did do 24 hours, but not the 500 calorie bit) - and my jeans tell me I've put on about two pounds.

For those who are new to it, MFP is great for understanding what you are eating, what your carb balance is etc

and YES YES YES
No more "diet" food, no more "low fat", no more "sugar free"
they are all processed junk full of cheap stuff (like horse meat and gelatin from hooves and protein from feathers)
get back into cooking from scrath and take control.

I think there are some who may have slowed metabolism. For that reason I think we should stick to the standard advice of eating to TDEE x 5 on average and ¼ TDEE x 2. Or to achieve an average of 80% of TDEE over the week.

The only flaw is you don't know the TDEE, especially if they have a slowed metabolism. People seeking to lose weight will have to respond to trends and not be slave to a predicted number.

The "slowed metabolism" people will see no weight loss at TDEE - 20% if their TDEE is already 20% below the guesstimate.

In the ADF dieters their RMR averaged 1500 calories, * 1.2 = 1800 for sedentary activity level. That was after 3 weeks of ADF where the average RMR fell by 90 calories/day (adjusted for fat-free mass and fat mass) but not statistically significant (small sample). Study of 22 BMI women and 25 BMI men.

A more aggressive regime in terms of continuous daily calorie restriction dropped the RMR by ~200 calories - again NS due to sample size but the highest RMR at the end was below the lowest RMR at the beginning. This one has thyroid data for interest. Average RMR was initially 1250 kcals/day or 1500 TDEE if sedentary, before the calorie restriction started. Study of obese women.

I think there are some who may have slowed metabolism. For that reason I think we should stick to the standard advice of eating to TDEE x 5 on average and ¼ TDEE x 2. Or to achieve an average of 80% of TDEE over the week.

The only flaw is you don't know the TDEE, especially if they have a slowed metabolism. People seeking to lose weight will have to respond to trends and not be slave to a predicted number.

The "slowed metabolism" people will see no weight loss at TDEE - 20% if their TDEE is already 20% below the guesstimate.

In the ADF dieters their RMR averaged 1500 calories, * 1.2 = 1800 for sedentary activity level. That was after 3 weeks of ADF where the average RMR fell by 90 calories/day (adjusted for fat-free mass and fat mass) but not statistically significant (small sample). Study of 22 BMI women and 25 BMI men.

A more aggressive regime in terms of continuous daily calorie restriction dropped the RMR by ~200 calories - again NS due to sample size but the highest RMR at the end was below the lowest RMR at the beginning. This one has thyroid data for interest. Average RMR was initially 1250 kcals/day or 1500 TDEE if sedentary, before the calorie restriction started. Study of obese women.

If we find out that we have slowed metabolism by eating 20% of TDEE and not losing any weight, is there anything we can do about it? I'm guessing that eating less will just slow the metabolism even further.

The "slowed metabolism" people will see no weight loss at TDEE - 20% if their TDEE is already 20% below the guesstimate.

As someone with 'slowed metabolism' due to no thyroid gland, I can confirm that this is true, at least for me. I initially undertook the 5:2 regime last September after watching the Horizon programme. I worked out my BMR to be 1668 with my TDEE at 2001 - I am very sedentary with mobility problems. I used Myfitnesspal to track calories over a couple of weeks because I had no idea how many I was eating, especially on 'fast' days when I was allowed 500 calories. I generally ate between 1600-1800 calories on non-fast days which was sufficient for me and didn't feel deprived, following the recommendations of Dr Mosley. At the end of September I weighed myself and had lost no weight and my waist/hip measurements hadn't changed. I abandoned the eating regime.

In January I looked at it again, principally because I was informed by my GP that I am pre-diabetic and have high cholesterol/blood pressure. My arthritis is also getting worse. I wanted the health benefits promised by IF but I also desperately need to lose weight. I decided to do 4:3 instead of 5:2 and this has proved to be a good move - I'm losing weight very slowly but consistently which I have found virtually impossible on any other eating regime or diet. If/when the weight loss stalls again, as I think it may, I will have to re-evaluate but for now 4:3 seems to be the best IF regime for me.

If we find out that we have slowed metabolism by eating 20% of TDEE and not losing any weight, is there anything we can do about it? I'm guessing that eating less will just slow the metabolism even further.

We have individual metabolic rates and the equations used to estimate them are not accurate to 5 significant figures and there are several equations that give different results for the same person, so my first observation would be that you don't know your BMR or TDEE that well in the first place.

While metabolism does slow in response to eating less, to weight loss and other medical factors it is extremely rare for resting metabolic rate to be measured below 1000 cals/day which would be about 1200 cals/day of TDEE by being sedentary.

I'm yet to read a clinical trial result where obese people on 600-800 calories a day for several weeks don't lose substantial weight (and fat). Lean people that exercise a lot may be a different story. I make this observation to point out that your metabolism is not proportional to what you eat and one guy ate nothing for a year while losing considerable weight, so while you may fail to lose weight making modest reductions from a predicted TDEE that just tells you the TDEE is wrong - in the absence of a medical condition I've yet to read about.

[carorees]

I suspect that the answer to slowed metabolism is not to eat less on feed days but to eat more AND add another fast day. I think that having a big variation in intake (feast-famine) helps to prevent the slow down in metabolism (and by this I do not mean the reduced TDEE due to a weight decrease or to the inaccuracies of the calculators but due to the physiological processes that change, particularly reduced thyroid function and increased skeletal muscle efficiency). I also think that a high intensity exercise regime may help. Also studies have shown that lowering the ambient temperature by just a small amount can increase bmr.

Going to a very low calorie diet will, of course, result in weight loss but unless you plan on dieting forever it is certain to go back on again. We need to avoid the slow down rather than exacerbate it. Studies have shown that in people exhibiting this slow down in metabolism it persists for at least a year after stopping dieting.

I thought I had posted a link to a study showing reduction in thyroid function with dieting. (Away from home at the moment and browsing from my phone, so no time to look for it, but will try to find it next week.)

this has reminded me of an old weightwatchers trick called the wendie plan where you ate high number of points one one day, very low on a couple and normal on the rest. It certainly helped people who were stuck.

Going to a very low calorie diet will, of course, result in weight loss but unless you plan on dieting forever it is certain to go back on again.

I have never understood this line of "thinking". An overweight person can restrict calories to below requirements until the weight is off, then increase their intake progressively to retain their target weight, surely ?

The above suggests that once you lose weight you inevitably put it back on. While this is observationally correct in the majority of cases - once an overeater always an overeater perhaps - there isn't any logic or physiology that I can see which makes it an inevitability.

If it is an inevitability then it may well be the same for Intermittent Fasting too, or is the fashion to carry on "dieting forever" using 5:2 ?

In the end controlling weight requires the desire to lose weight to exceed the desire to eat and drink too much, which is where most of us fall down.

For most people, life intervenes and that rigid control goes out the window.

I'm not 'dieting' - with a BMI as low as min that would be silly
I'm just managing my food intake in a way that allows me to enjoy what is available without putting on weight
and that means fasting two days a week

and when I chat to skinny friends, it turns out they have always, always skipped meals, just felt under pressure to pretend they did not.

When you see a Daily Fail picture of Miranda Kerr scoffing a burger : its real - because she will have fasted the day before and will probably fast the day after

[carorees]

Phil, please read my post on weight regain in nerdy stuff. I review a paper that explains exactly why weight regain after weight loss is not a question of lack of control on the part of the dieter (or at least that is only a small part of the problem). A host of physiological processes are put in train by calorie restriction, that include increased desirability of fattening foods, increased hunger, greater pleasure response to food, slowed metabolism, increased efficiency of skeletal muscle and reduced sensitivity of stretch receptors in the stomach. The body is programmed to encourage weight regain. I have also, in another thread, posted about various theories about the "set point" at which the body "wishes" a persons weight to be and how this can drift upwards with repeated dieting. There are also scientific studies showing TSH levels are reduced with calorie restriction (I can't remember if I posted about this yet as I was looking into it last week before I went off for a weekend break).

I have included links to the original papers in my posts so you can see that there is plenty of evidence that weight regain is almost inevitable.

There are also studies that show that obese people put on a weight loss diet and who, having lost weight, are maintained on a diet that exactly meets their TDEE feel continually hungry, and when followed up after 12 months of the maintenance diet felt exactly as hungry as when they started the maintenance phase. This is why you have to have strong willpower forever to maintain weightloss by continual calorie restriction.

I and most others here are hoping that by using the feast and famine approach either the physiological changes described above will not happen (anecdotally appears to be the case for at least a couple of days after each fast) or that fasting will become a permanent feature in our lives and so we will be able to keep the weight off long term without having to be on a permanent "diet".

it would be useful for phil to make their stats public ...
mine will be a bit depressing when I weigh myself on Monday, but will motivate me to get my backside into gear

im well and truly confused now !! this is just blinding with science , im doing ok yes watching what i eat on non fast days but losing , but am i doing wrong by the way of eating and it will all go back on AGAIN . So far i have lost 10kg just over , i need to lose about another 6 stone , but just to do 4 more would be great , i am to afaid to eat on non fast days exactly what i want because when i have bee really good all week by 2 days of eating , and by no means stuffing myself i put on or be it a lb or 2 so i cant win , i just feel so desperate sometimes that turning 50 i am going to be an overweight person forever like i have for most of my life , with people looking down on me because they think i eat and sit around all day , with that being not true working 60 hour weeks and exercise dvd at least 3 times a week in the 4 hours im home in the week !! sorry to rant just on a low today !! thanks all

All this talk of counting calories worries me. I am not going to do that. I am going to fast 2 days - ie, have a healthy light breakfast - I don't mean 'lite milk!' - and then live on black tea and water until dinner time when I will have a light vegetable/protein rich small dinner. On the other days I will not worry about food. I will eat when I am hungry and stop when I've had enough. I will eat as few processed food as possible. I will eat a big variety of different kinds of food. That is a healthy diet. That is my understanding of the 52fast diet. Keep it simple.

[carorees]

im well and truly confused now !! this is just blinding with science , im doing ok yes watching what i eat on non fast days but losing , but am i doing wrong by the way of eating and it will all go back on AGAIN . So far i have lost 10kg just over , i need to lose about another 6 stone , but just to do 4 more would be great , i am to afaid to eat on non fast days exactly what i want because when i have bee really good all week by 2 days of eating , and by no means stuffing myself i put on or be it a lb or 2 so i cant win , i just feel so desperate sometimes that turning 50 i am going to be an overweight person forever like i have for most of my life , with people looking down on me because they think i eat and sit around all day , with that being not true working 60 hour weeks and exercise dvd at least 3 times a week in the 4 hours im home in the week !! sorry to rant just on a low today !! thanks all

If it's working that's fine. The weight you lose will not go on again as long as you continue with the same eating pattern. What happens with traditional diets is that by reducing calories every day so that every day you are a bit hungry, when you reach target weight/get bored with the diet, you start eating more, and of course the weight goes back on. This is why it's important to find a way of doing 5:2 that is sustainable because it is highly likely that to maintain any weight lost, this way of eating must be continued for a very long time. So eating below TDEE every feed day is potentially a problem if it is not sustainable.

Sounds like what you are doing is working well and you're comfortable with it. I think you are right to say that if you don't reach your 6st target you'll be happy with say 4st, because if you have to do something extreme to get the last 2st off they won't stay off! My policy is for me just to carry on doing what I'm doing and see where it takes me. My main target is to get my waist to measure less than my height, anything else is a bonus!