My first thought is to wonder if you’re eating more than your TDEE on non-fast days. I suggest counting calories for a week and finding out just how big your TDEE plate looks like.

BenOtt, One thing that comes to mind to ask is whether or not you’ve had your thyroid fully checked out? You can do a preliminary check by taking your temperatue. Generally, the average temperature of an adult with a healthy thyroid and a healthy metabolism is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37.0 degrees Celsius, and that occurs around mid-afternoon or 3 pm. So if you take your mid-afternoon temp and find it in low 98’s or even in the 97’s, you have been given a strong clue that you may be hypothyroid and/or undertreated (or your low cortisol is keeping you hypothyroid) even if you are being currently treated).

I’m a thyroid patient and have had previous difficulty losing weight no matter what I did prior to being treated with proper type and amount of thyroid replacement medication.

The only thing that wouldn’t add up, is what bigbooty pointed out, which is if you were truly hypothyroid, you would be lethargic and cold, like I was. In that state I wasn’t able to exert myself much. Anyway, just thought to mention this.

If youre avoiding grain based foods and are eating “normally” on non fast days and putting on weight then that only leaves portion size. Perhaps what you consider to be a normal amount is in reality a lot higher than your TDEE requirement. Otherwise Im at a loss as to why you should be putting on weight. Perhaps do a very strict calorie count for a week to tally up what you are actually eating.

Correction: “This would mean using TWO of your eat-days as warrior diet days”.

You are very welcome 🙂

Now that I reread your posts, I realised that most of your fast days are water-fasting anyway.
Wow.

At first sight I fully agree with you and with the other commenters on the thread, the fact that your 4:3 diet – combined with such an amazing exercise level as yours – not producing any results is kind of crazy, defies the laws of nature.
But when I think again, I figure your case fits well in Dr. Fung’s research who referenced case-studies whereby they found no evidence for the calorie in and calorie out theory. In other words, many in the study who were overfed and under-exercised hence expected to gain weight, gained no weight or even lost some, while others who ate little and exercised a lot did not lose weight at all or even gained some.

As Dr Fung explains, this is because the body works very differently than what we expect as per the calorie in calorie out theory. I can’t recommend enough to check out his lectures – all 6 parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpllomiDMX0
Long, but amazingly rich in essential information the mainstream medical profession won’t reveal to us.

He has a more recent and shorter video on the topic, “The Calorie Deception”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F5o0a4p_3U (I haven’t watched it yet):

In your case it is indeed possible that only a longer period of fasting could trigger a fat-loss effect. As for my own experience with more than 24-hours fasting, as far as I remember the longest period I went without eating anything at all, was ca 3 days. But it was a long ago – I was only in my 30’s then. This experience was a water-fasting, an odd one that I did not choose for myself, it just happened (long story).
There were times when the fasting itself hurt, but then the process of feeling energised got longer and longer. Without wanting to achieve any of these goals, I did lose a whole lot of weight in a short time. I don’t know what exactly I lost, fat or muscle, since I didn’t care, but I remember I felt much lighter and stronger than before, which indicates losing fat.

Later on, when I became addicted to food and developed a sort of phobia against not eating, I forgot all the wonderful effects of fasting.

I too have recently thought of trying again a multiple days water-fasting, but there seem to be so many mainstream warnings against it that I don’t dare to go into it, nor would I advise it to anyone without an expert’s supervision.

As for other cases, what I am aware of is the curious case of a morbid obese person who ate exactly nothing almost for a year (!), stayed alive, felt all right, became healthy, lost tons of weight and thereafter kept it off. Well-documented, true story, and Dr. Fung mentions it in one of his lectures.

Another example I know of is Dr Mosley himself. He also experimented with multiple days fasting, with one Mizo soup a day.
Part of his documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl7TWm9lemw

Maybe this article could be also helpful to offer some insights regarding longer fasting and its effects: http://www.allaboutfasting.com/effects-of-fasting-ketosis.html

In case after all else fails, what I would do: try to find a trustworthy medical expert/doctor/dietician whom I could approach with a request for a personalised advice on the basis of all details of my blood-test and diet.

Then, if your diet indeed does not contain anything that can reverse the effects of fasting, what could help is a more profound blood-test targeting the specific question why you can’t lose weight.

On this forum the only thing that might help us to find an initial clue, is if you could provide a fully detailed precise list of what and how much exactly you eat and drink on a typical fast and an eat-day.

Another thought: whenever you eat meat or fish, eat it with lots of fiber-rich raw vegetables, olive oil and red vinegar, in order to reduce the insulin-boosting effect of animal-source protein. (Based on Dr Fung’s lectures – he specifically advised apple cider vinegar, but all kinds of red vinegar works.)

5:2
NFD: Max 2000 calories
FD: 600 calories

Well Im at a loss. You eat below your TDEE. Food choices appear to be reasonable. You exercise, although what you do I wouldn’t describe as HIT. But that’s neither here no there really. Grasping at straws here. Get rid of the oats. Is the fruit dried or whole fruit? What is the fat and sugar content of the yogurt? Get rid of the potatoes. Take apple cider vinegar with every meal, although your BG is supposedly OK.

I feel depressed now after reading all of that 🙁 You poor thing..it must be so frustrating. Well done for persevering. Nice of everyone to give such indepth replies.

To add to the final point: my TDEE is above 2000 kcal, yet I feel entirely full on eat days, after a warrior diet feast dinner, even when it does not exceed 500 kcals. Conversely – and ironically – on many fast days I wish I could add another 100 or 200 kcals to the 500 kcals. Then, on eat-days when I force myself to eat even when I am no longer hungry, yet within my TDEE, the weight-loss slows down.

On eat days I almost never feel the need to reach my TDEE at all, many times I don’t even reach the half of the limit. So what I do is just eat when I hungry and only then.

When Dr. Mosley first experimented with fasting, he lost a lot of weight and resumed to a healthy state by eating 800 kcals per day for months.
So I think, maybe the idea of TDEE calculation is just to indicate the upper limit of calorie-intake in the case it is needed.

Another clue the experts in this field do emphasize is the essential difference between real hunger and artificial cravings. My experience has been that the more I have fasted, the more my body learns the difference between the two and gives signals of real hunger and being full.

I think BigBooty is right on the target when tackling the TDEE question in your case. Maybe you just need to eat much less than your TDEE, and when your real hunger is gone and your system wants to stop you eating, just listen to it.

Hi Ben:

It appears that whatever you are eating, whenever you are eating it, how much of it you are eating and however much you are exercising you are neither gaining nor losing weight.

That is the definition of TDEE. So you now know your TDEE.

To lose weight, you need to eat less than your TDEE over time.

So my radical suggestion for you to lose the weight you want to lose is to eat less than you are eating.

Good Luck!

Hi:

Some random thoughts on the starvation mode.

It seems the starvation mode myth is alive and well, and has been confirmed and enhanced by a recent diet book that claims a body goes into starvation mode by simply following an everyday reduced calorie diet. What is more, it is claimed that once in starvation mode, a body is there for the duration. So there is much concern that the body not go into the mode in the first place, and despair if a body is already there by accident and can’t get out of it.

It seems the starvation mode ruins a body’s metabolism by causing the body to become more efficient. A body in starvation mode needs fewer calories to perform its functions. I have not read of any other effects, like death or illness or injury. So the body in starvation mode is a body doomed to require fewer calories to function than a ‘normal’ body requires. This leads to the awful situation where a person cannot eat as much food as they used to eat without gaining weight. This seems to be a true disaster for a body that has unlimited and good food available to eat whenever it desires. It seems much better to have an inefficient body, one not in starvation mode, so the body can eat more food without gaining weight.

It would be interesting to test the metabolisms of water fasters before and after their water fasts. To date, anyway, it is scientifically documented that the quickest way to lose weight is to eat nothing. Bodies that water fast for shorter periods, like four to eight weeks, uniformly lose about a pound a day. Their bodies do not seem to go into starvation mode in the sense that the rate of weight loss does not decline over time – it stays right around a pound a day. Of course the longest medically supervised and documented water fast was for over 54 weeks. The gentleman lost an average of three-quarters of a pound a day over that period without ill effects. He was only followed for five years after his fast, but in that time he only regained 10 pounds, going from 180 to 190. He must have learned to eat to his new, lower starvation mode induced TDEE.

The only study I am aware of that actually looked for and documented a starvation mode is known as the Minnesota study. It was commissioned by the U.S. government before the end of WWII to try to determine how much food refugees would need after the war was over to not starve to death. The study would not be done today, but those were different times.

The study took a group of average weight male volunteers and starved them. They were required to eat only 1500 calories a day and to walk 20 miles a week – a situation estimated to be the plight that refugees would face after the war. The question was really when would they die from starvation? That would let the government know when and how much food it would have to get to the refugees so they would not die. Of course, they stopped the study before the volunteers died, but pictures of the volunteers at the end of the study confirm the volunteers looked like the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.

Along the way, the researchers, led by Ancel Keys (some of you may have heard of him), took detailed measurements of the men’s metabolisms, among many other things (the study is about 1000 pages in length). What they found was that the men lost weight at an expected rate of loss (i.e. their rate of weight loss did not slow down) until their body fat levels declined to about 5%. At that point, when the bodies only had 5% fat left and were still being subjected to calorie restriction and exercise, the volunteer’s metabolic rates declined about 40%. This drastic decline in the metabolic rate coincided with the time the bodies began to use quite a bit of muscle matter (read heart) for energy. People that die of starvation usually die from heart attacks resulting from the heart muscle being eaten to the point it can no longer function. So the bodies fought for life by drastically slowing the metabolism. However, the men continued to lose weight – just at a slower pace reflecting their slower starvation mode metabolisms.

Research has always shown that as a person loses weight their metabolisms slow because they have less weight to carry around and need less energy to keep themselves operating. Someone on a diet simply cannot expect to lose weight and keep their metabolic rates where they were when they were heavier. But this study showed that the metabolism does not radically slow until and unless the body gets to the point where it must start seriously eating muscle mass to survive. Its measurements also support the experience of water fasters, whose rates of weight loss continue at a standard pace as long as the fasting continues and the body has sufficient fat stores to fuel its operation. So the concept of a fat person on a diet going into a medically defined starvation mode seems flawed. A fat person continues to have more than sufficient energy stores for the body to function without harming itself and there is no solid evidence I am aware of from studies specifically focused on the subject that proves a fat person will go into a true, medically defined starvation mode from water fasting, much less from going on a diet.

Throughout the years, diet book writers have constantly, it seems, used the starvation mode in various forms to explain away problems people face when dieting. Many use the mode to explain why people on diets stop losing weight. There is nothing a person on a diet likes to hear more than they are eating too little food and to lose weight they really have to start eating more! Personal trainers use the mode to explain to their clients paying them money to help them lose weight why all of the exercise is not causing rapid weight loss. They say (I have heard it many times) that their clients are not losing weight because, while the exercise is working, their diets have put them in starvation mode so they can’t lose weight. Now it is being used to explain why people that have successfully lost weight seem to regain it. It seems to be an all-purpose excuse.

So believe in the starvation mode if you want to, and worry about it if you are the worrying kind. But even if it exists, you will still be faced with the fact that to lose weight you will have to eat less than your TDEE, and to maintain your weight loss you will have to eat no more than whatever your TDEE is. The dream of having the same ‘fast’ metabolism you had when you were fat so after you become thin you can eat how you used to eat and not gain weight is, well, a dream. But a nice one!

The central concern here is not what the term ‘starvation mode’ actually covers but the question of how to tell how much to eat exactly under the TDEE-defined calorie-intake in order to stay/become healthy and avoid any adverse effects of the weight-loss diet.
This is a matter far from being as trivial as just telling someone: eat less.

The main point of my post was not to discuss starvation mode. (on a side note, if starvation is mode a myth, how come there is detailed scientific explanation of what starvation mode is about?)
Nevertheless, it goes without saying that anyone who stops eating or eats too little for a long time, eventually loses weight until the point when he gets sick and dies.

Hence the question is never what to do to lose weight. The real question is how to lose weight in a sustainable way, which does not lead to regaining that weight, meanwhile staying healthy, energised, fit, strong, satisfied, happy, capable of exercising, studying, working, socialising, sleeping, etc.

In short, the goal is not to lose weight at all costs, but to lose weight and keep it off in a sustainable manner that improves one’s health rather than ruining it.

Thus the general question pertaining to all of us: why and where exactly to start and stop a weight-loss agenda? In this society that breeds anorexia and wrong body-image, this is a burning question.

Or isn’t it a fact that we have forgot what normal means when it comes to one’s body/shape? When I look around, all I see are either grossly underweight or overweight and that goes for all generations, including the young.

Obviously, not everyone who is trying to lose weight should be, and not everyone who should be trying to lose weight are actually on a weight-loss diet. And most of us who are, are following the wrong diet, following the wrong medical advice to simply lower calorie intake and increase exercise. Research shows, including Dr. Mosley’s book, that this advice is dead-wrong in most cases. What matters in the first place is the pattern of eating and what we eat.

I copy here what I recently wrote on another thread:
“The research underlying intermittent fasting is the evidence that the mainstream advice ‘reduce calories and exercise more’ does not help, to the contrary, it yields an adverse effect on weight-loss, since it reduces the metabolic rate.

This is exactly why the very idea of intermittent fasting was introduced in the first place and this is why IF (or fasting as such) is the only kind of diet that actually works for those who can’t see results via mere calorie-reduction.

I have found the respective part in Dr. Mosley’s Fast Diet book referencing a research that compared the weight-loss effect of eating the same kind and amount of food (and obviously same number of calories) as 2 meals or 6 meals. The former yielded significantly more weight loss. See page 13, “Science of Fasting”

The whole idea of IF seems to be introducing a special (more doable) way of fasting rather than just reducing calories in some way. The aim is to introduce an eating pattern that mimics our ancient/natural eating habits, and which leaves enough space between 2 meals in order to obtain the benefits of fasting itself. The longer the periods without food-intake the more time is given to the body to rest without any insulin-spikes, to burn the waste, to improve overall hormone performance, etc.”

That said, I can’t recall any of us advising Ben or anyone “to eat more to lose weight”. Most of our hints have been centered around possibly changing the eating pattern and to focus on the right foods that reduce or contribute less to insulin-spikes. Turns out Ben has been doing all this correctly. He is not only grossly reducing his calorie intake, he has done so via a 4:3 schedule, mostly by water-fasting (!), he is eating healthy and on NF days he has been staying below his TDEE. And he in an athlete, as his highly intense exercise level indicates.

At this level of exercise I would absolutely NOT advise him to eat less, and definitely not without a doctor’s advice and supervision.

Let me explain why, just in case it might be of interest.

Just because Ben can’t lose weight, it does not mean he should force weight-loss by further lowering his otherwise significantly lowered calorie-intake.

After reviewing Ben’s posts, my gut feeling has been that he is not really overweight. He is an extremely active sport-person with an actual normal weight.

Just like TDEE is not an objective indicator, how to define what is normal weight/BMI in an objective sense, is another open question.
Maybe his built is such that his normal weight yields higher number of lbs than the average, maybe he is extremely muscular with bones heavier than the average, and his bones and his extra muscle-mass is what makes up most of what he considers “extra” weight.
On this point I refer to Dr Mosley who often points out that in many cases obsessing with one’s weight is not the right approach. For example: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/more-on-what-to-do-if-youre-not-losing-weight/

The only reference point indicating that Ben could lower his TDEE and his calorie-intake is his mentioning that on eat-days he often struggles to eat up to his TDEE-level.
Only on this basis it is possible that his system needs less food than the estimated TDEE, and lowering his food-intake on eat-days could indeed trigger some weight-loss.
However, as an ex-athlete I can testify that at his level of exercise it is hard to imagine that eating less is sustainable for him without significantly lowering his exercise level. Even his current combination of calorie-intake and exercise is a sort of miracle.

What is more likely the case, his metabolic rate is slowing down to adjust to his IF routine and calorie-restriction, and his body desperately tries to preserve energy to keep up with his extraordinarily high energy-expenditure. Following IF for such a long time yet not losing weight at such intense workout routine, is such an exceptional case that one should look much closer in order to understand why.

The other concern is the question about Ben’s so-called ‘actual TDEE’.

When someone is really overweight or obese, then eating less is obviously not a concern. Then the main concern is one’s eating pattern and what to eat exactly. But in the given context, ie when someone is not really overweight, the question persists, how to tell that one’s chosen TDEE-level at any point in time is still within the OBJECTIVELY healthy range or under it?

If TDEE is not an objective guideline, then anyone’s calorie-consumption at any time could be considered one’s TDEE. This definitely can’t be the case. None of the expert advices I encountered so far mentions that anyone can lower his/her TDEE as per one’s weight-loss wishes. Then a guideline is needed to tell us exactly how much lower one can/should stay under the currently calculated TDEE.

Finally, to emphasize the main point again: Ben has already been eating less, much less, than what he normally does, this is why it makes no sense to advise him to eat even less than less.
He has been following IF for months, even at 4:3, including water-fasting, he is young and healthy, and keeping such a calorie-restricted, healthy diet as Ben’s does, at the level of an athlete’s workout does not result in any weight-loss whatsoever, the issue must be somewhere that can be identified only by personal medical consultation and profound medical checks.

Although this conclusion is derived upon a layperson’s intuition and responsibility, my guess is that Dr. Mosley, and all experts in the area would probably agree.

I have just taken half hour or so reading through all of these posts and they make a really good read! Some very valid points here. I, also like Ben am really struggling to lose weight. I am 22, 5’3 and weigh 140lbs. It doesn’t sound a lot but because I am so short it all gathers round the middle! An area of myself I am trying desperately to improve. I LOVE fitness, I am training 5/6 days a week mixing it up with weights, cardio, HIIT and boxing alongside the 5:2 diet. I have currently been fasting for 2 weeks and only lost 1lb last week despite the amount of training I am doing. On my ‘normal’ days I am still strict and do not eat above 1400 (my fitness pal indicator)

I would love it if anyone has any usefull tips or words of wisdom they could pass to me please!

Hi Kele:

Here are some tips: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

Good Luck!

Kele and Ben: to add to my former comment, no you are NOT alone when experiencing difficulties in trying to lose weight.

As it turns out, at present this is what’s happening to me as well. Again, confirming Sim on this point, while I was overweight I could lose 30 lbs via 4:3 quite fast, whereas ever since am down to my so-called normal BMI zone (for weeks now) I have hit plateau even at 4:3, and even while strictly keeping 500 kcal or even less on fast days and staying way below my TDEE on NF days.

So my conclusion for the time being, I don’t see any reason to go for any further weight-loss, and I continue my own version of IF (4:3 and warrior diet) only for maintaining my weight and to retain the IF-associated health-benefits. If it yields further weight-loss I will take it as a bonus.