I’d like to summarize what I learned and what works with me and what I learned and still didn’t put into practice. I don’t have to be right in all statements, but this is what I believe and understand.
1. Weight loss works well if you have one meal a day and not divide it into more portions during the day. This works for me and I also read that the point of the fasting is to stay without the meal as long as possible. Eating simply stops the cell repairing and this fasting benefit can be destroyed, even if you may lose the weight. Dr. Varady’s statement on this topic is actually the same, however the reasoning of hers is different. She simply thinks, that if you split your food, you will cheat more, because e.g. instead of 200Kcal you will eat 100 more and to do it 3 times a day is already risky. However later she admitted, if you follow 500Kcal you can do it either way. But I eat one meal, because references to other articles about fasting are saying this approach is better.
2. Exercise on fasting days. If you fast during a day, your organism switches into special regime (not necessarily ketosis) and your fat cells are more accessible. If you do your training on fast day, it is more effective in fat burning than on the other days. I read somewhere here it is dangerous or you are tired and so on, but this simply is not true. Also is not true as some poster stated, that your fat cells are turned into muscles during the training. This myth was disproved years ago, but seems some people are still following this demagogy. Fat cells and muscles are two completely different items. There is no way how fat could turn to be a muscle unless you are Harry Potter. Only disadvantage of fast day training is, you must do it in the morning or before your meal. If you work out after that, you probably will be hungry and tend to cheat (Dr. Varady says so and it is actually true). However I do ran only on my fast days and I have much more energy than other days. Running is so easy and I make more distance and run faster. You don’t keep the water as was stated before as well. You keep the water only in case you don’t drink enough during your training. However even if you keep the water during training, it comes off very soon after that. So this cannot be the reason of gaining the weight at all. To avoid uncontrollable hunger after training try to keep your heart rate in the range of fat burning. If it is too high you run on sugar, below is nothing. You can calculate it or simply check, if still can talk during your training, you are in right range, you shouldn’t be able to sing, though.
3. If you don’t exercise quite often and if you don’t do body building exercise you cannot lose inches with the same weigh. If you don’t exercises ok, but if you lose inches in this case, you must lose weight as well. Where otherwise would that energy disappear? Inches losing without weight losing is only in case you work out quite hard. 1 kg of muscle and 1 kg of fat weigh the same of course, however they don’t have the same volume. If you take two extremes for imagination 1 kg of feather and 1 kg of iron, you will get two different packs. For one you must work hard to gain for one you must work hard o loose. However it is so easy to gain fat, but not so muscle. So don’t be afraid you will gain the pile of kg because of training. But in case you do this body building, then you really lose inches but not weight. If you don’t exercise and don’t lose weight you eat over your TDEE and there is no way you lose inches without the scale shows lower numbers. You probably lose fat, but kg must go down too. If you don’t lose weight, don’t exercise than even your inches don’t go down. By this logic you would stay slim model with 100 kilos. That’s my experience also with previous diet (Atkinson).
4. If I want to be more free with food I must fast every other day. It was Dr. Varady’s statement you can eat what ever you want on the other non fasting days. But she did research with EOD not 5:2. And even she stated that with the mind, that you never are able to eat 200% of your TDEE the other day. Her research showed that people binge only 10% over it, whilst she expected 175%. That is why she said you can eat whatever you want, don’t need to cut any food you like. Dr. Mosley tried more manageable way of fasting, but then you are not free to eat whatever quantity you want.
5. Health. This I cannot say is my experience, but fasting helps to prevent diabetes, however if you are already diabetic you cannot fast, because you need to keep your blood sugar consistent. My grand father and uncle suffered this disease, so most likely it would be my case in the future too. What I only can say from female’s point of view, I don’t convulse in pain during my period anymore. This is huge benefit for me. But there are pending researches on cancer, too.
6. Don’t check calories only during your training. You burn more of them after the training too and your metabolism speeds up for the next 48 hours. Calories counting right during the training is not a good indicator, there are much more of them burned after the training. E.g., if I go to run I burn around 500 Kcal, but then I go to make some shopping and walk home (10 mins from shop) and my calories go up to 800, so 300 more for doing shopping only. It is because your body is still in training regime at least 2 hours after. If you do it on fasting day with 500 Kcal and lose 800, you are actually in negative rate and lose more.
7. Eating 5 to 6 meals a day is a myth. We never did it in the past as a human beings. This is the trend of last 70 years and people get fatter. Reasoning was the metabolism rate speeds up, however it has no logic for me, because in reality metabolism doesn’t work alone, but needs this help (eating to work). I have an example, not scientific of course and maybe I am wrong here. But I need glasses for reading, I have office job and work with notebook all the time. Notebooks are smaller and smaller with modern technology, so I bought glasses because it made me upset I cannot read comfortably without developing special effort to watch the screen. But once I put the glasses, it was perfect, however in the moment I put them down, I can see much worse than before. It takes several hours my eyes adjust to normal “mode”. My notebook at home is bigger, so I can read perfectly. But the point here is, the glasses made my eyes quite lazy. If they don’t get help, they must work, if they do, I am blind (not really, but can’t read). That’s why I think metabolism can be the same principle, it’s still the body, so the same organism. If you let it some time without food, it simply works alone and maybe much better. However this conclusion I read also in another article about fasting, actually metabolic rate is much higher during fasting, process of food processing keeps it in permanent stress to work, but not actually help to speed it up. On my feast days I don’t snack anymore, I eat 3 meals a day and I am fine. I never can reach my TDEE, even if I take some sweet (I am sweet tooth). I wouldn’t give up sugar completely, after all brain runs on sugar.
I am sorry for long post and some grammar faux pas, but English is not my first language, but was thinking it might be helpful for some.
3:53 pm
26 Feb 16