This topic contains 18 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by Apricot 8 years, 10 months ago.
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Hi Mrs and welcome:
You will not necessarily lose weight better with a 24 hour fast. Whether or not you lose at all will depend on how much you eat before 7 pm on the day you start your one day fast and after 7 pm the next day. It is simply a matter of whether or not you eat less than your TDEE on both of those days. It really is an every day reduced calorie diet.
If you did OK on 5:2, I guess I would recommend you keep doing it. There is simply nothing magic about not eating for 24 hours.
The less you eat, the more you lose.
Good Luck!
Or you could just eat all your 500 cals at 7pm after fasting 24 hours, then you get the natural fast while you are asleep, this is what I’ve just done (though I ate my last snack at 1000 last night so won’t have breakfast tomorrow until about 10). Tthat’s your 36 on 500 plus your 24 hour fast. There’s more going on, isn’t there, than just the maths.
I suppose it depends on what you need to do the next day. Dr.M fasted for 4 days (drinking lots of water and tea), he just felt it was too hard for most people to sustain long term.
Sorry, that’s not very clear. I mean do both: fast for 24 hours, then have 500 cal meal. Go to bed normal time. You’ll sleep for probably 6-8 hours ( your natural fast), then have breakfast after 7 and bingo! 36 hours on 500 cal including a 24 hour fast.
As Michael Mosley points out, we naturally fast overnight, so it’s only the day we’re playing about with foodwise. If you make sure that you eat breakfast at least 12 hours after you’ve had your evening meal, you are making good use of that sleep period.
Dr M recently included info on research that showed that you make best use of calories consumed in the daytime and the digestive/ knock on processes from it start to slow down in the evening. Hence the advice you sometimes see not to eat beyond 7/8 pm if you can manage this.
Here’s what he says in one of the newsletters:
“But some people do prefer to avoid food altogether when fasting – sometimes abstaining entirely feels easier than cutting down. In general, we say that there is no need to start chopping and changing the numbers, but then again, there is no reason why you can’t – the thing we love about the Fast Diet is that it’s not a series of hard and fast rules. Simply do what feels right for you and your body.
If you do feel like you want to consume fewer calories on your Fast Days, we still recommend two simple points: making sure you do eat some protein, thereby maintaining muscle mass when fasting; and always staying hydrated.”
Actually it’s not only about the maths. Sure, you can starve, but do it for too long and you lose health as well as weight. The whole point of this dieting system is to stay healthy and keep the weight off. There is general agreement in many expert fields that it’s more than calories in, calories out. For example, people who eat more fat in their normal diet burn more calories in a resting state than people on low fat diets.
Hi Apricot:
The longest documented water fast lasted for over 54 weeks, and the gentleman that did it was quite healthy the entire time.
Could you please give the citation for the clinical study or studies that showed that ‘people who eat more fat in their normal diet burn more calories in a resting state than people on low fat diets’?
Thank you.
Personally, I think the real question is would you be better served to STICK WITH 24hr complete fast or 36hr 500cal.
I know the answer for me. You probably need to experiment to figure out the answer for you. But I’m certain the best results will come from what you can do for the longest period and, probably, rely on from this point forward.
Hi. After a considerable search, I found one of the papers I referred to above. The research was led by Cara Ebberling, who works at Harvard with David Ludwig ( he of the “Always Hungry?” Book recently published).
The main focus was related to looking at after 10-15% of weight was lost and what food regime would keep weight off. This study indicated that Resting Energy Expenditure and Total Energy Expenditure were higher when people were on a lower Carb, higher fat diet rather than on a low fat, lower cal diet.
Ebberling and Ludwig are just starting a huge research project comparing long term effects of different diets.
“Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance”
Dr Jason Fung discusses intermittent fasting in a series of online articles. He looks at fasts of different lengths. He is a Canadian Nephrologist who, a few years ago, became concerned by the rising number of patients with kidney problems resulting from Type 2 diabetes that were being referred to him, and also the commonly held view of the prognosis for them – ie it would inevitably worsen. After a lot of research, he started working with some of them using fasting and found that even these very serious cases could be reversed. Of these articles, no 7 refers to Michael Mosley’s work and the 5:2 diet.
I put the link to article 7 below, but each one has links to the others. They are well all worth reading and not long. Here’s what he says in article 9, which is interesting:
“Some would argue that the beneficial effect of fasting is due to the caloric reduction. But why is there such a striking difference between reducing calories and fasting? Caloric Reduction as Primary (CRaP) has been tried innumerable times, and failed virtually every single time. Yet fasting is often effective where simple caloric reduction is not. The short answer is that the beneficial hormonal changes that happen during fasting are entirely prevented by the constant intake of food. It is the intermittency of the fasting that makes it so much more effective. This prevents the development of resistance as detailed in the previous post.”
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/longer-fasting-regimens-part-7/
Hi Apricot:
Thank you for taking the time to look up the research! I appreciate it as I had not seen that paper.
Dr. Atkins postulated before his death that there was a ‘metabolic advantage’ to eating a low carb diet, but it was not proven at that time. This research gives some credence to his postulation. The fact that this research only covered four weeks is a weakness in the findings, but it is more than nothing. And the magnitude of the ‘advantage’ is not great, but it seems more than zero.
Overall, the paper seems to confirm the current science that high fat, low carb diets are more healthy alternatives to the former low fat diet recommendations.
I’m glad you have discovered Dr. Fung. His six part series on diet is exceptional, and his approach to controlling or curing Type 2 diabetes is exceptional in its combining fasting with the ketogenic diet.
I believe changing diets to a high fat/moderate protein/very low carb combination, perhaps combined with fasting, is the best thing most people can do for their long term health. Time will tell.
In the mean time, the less you eat, the more you lose!
Good Luck!
Really, I’m going nuts! I’ve just realised where I first read the item about higher daily burn of cals. In our own Dr Mosley’s new book, “The 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet”. Here’s what he says:
“….Ludwig put 21 overweight young men on diets ranging from low fat to low carb. Despite eating the same number of calories, those on the low carb [high fat, my addition from the research] diet burned 325 more calories per day than those on the low fat diet. About as much energy as you would use in an hour’s jogging.”
Hope that helps, Simcoeluv and others. It is the same research I think as Carla Ebberling’s, or else related, as they both work in the same place and often run either parallel or related studies.
All these discussions plus the work of Dr Robert Lustig show why calories are not all equal.
Well done Happynow. That’s encouraging, as the last time I lost 10% of my body weight I kept it off for two years then lost the plot! So I’m looking for success stories like yours, as now I really want to succeed at the loss AND the maintenance. Early days for the first of those, though pleased I’ve lost 6 lbs in three weeks, one of which was on the 5:2 (I picked up a bug in week 2 so didn’t fast properly, breaking the bug induced fast with oat biscuits, and week one I was just trying to get off hi carbs).
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