The FastDay Forum

Hiya,

Just questioning something hypothetically, I was just curious as I know sometimes advice is given to someone who is disappointed with their weightloss that they are consuming too little calories, as in doing 5:2 but not keeping up with the TDEE on feed days. But then how does ADF become sucessful? Or are you eating a lot lot more calories on the feed days?

Sorry if this post makes no sense, I do tend to ramble

[carorees]

Hi, we don't really know what goes on. For some reason eating up to TDEE on feed days seems to help with weight loss for some people. On fast days there may be a point for some where the low calories influences thyroid function but for most probably a complete fast would be fine.

People doing 4:3 or ADF do lose more than the 5:2ers, but not spectacularly more according to the progress tracker.

The total calorie deficit over the week is, of course, what is needed to lose weight but there seems to be some subtle differences between simply cutting down each day (as in standard diets) and cutting down really dramatically one day and eating well the next. For example, with a normal diet you lose fat and muscle but with fasting you lose almost all fat. The study that Krista Varady did on ADF where some people ate healthily on feed days but others ate a high fat diet showed similar weight loss in the two groups. So it seems that it is the fast days that influence weight loss more than feed days, and under eating on feed days does not necessarily produce greater weight loss. However, everyone is different so it's still hard to know if the advice to eat more on feed days is good or not!

Not v helpful I know but we're all fumbling in the dark at the moment. The are lots of scientific studies underway which we hope may help us to understand the process better.

Thank you for your reply Carorees, guess we just have to see what works out best for us, we are all different