Alternate day fasting or 5:2??

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TishTash2

5:23 pm
7 Jun 16
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Hi I started 5:2 around 6 weeks ago and within that time I had one week where I was on holiday and didn’t fast. I’m a female, 5ft 10 and have recently had a baby. At my heaviest while pregnant I weighed 115kg, was 100kg when I started 5:2 and am now down to 96.7 kg.

I’d like to speed up the weight loss a lit bit and wonder if anyone can tell me their experience of Alternate Day Fasting compared to 5:2, does it make much difference and woild it be harder to keep off when going back to a 6:1 type maintenance diet?

Apricot

1:30 am
8 Jun 16
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I don’t see any reason why it would be harder to keep the weight off, TishTash. Yes the metabolic rate does slow rather but I don’t think there’s much difference in that. I found that with alternate day fasting (ADF) the fast days came up so often that you were constantly having to think about it, and it isn’t as flexible as you can’t swap days usefully. I sometimes use 4:3, which gives me the weekend off, and I’m keeping the carbs fairly low. I often don’t eat till lunchtime either, giving a longer fast period in the morning. These seem to have worked, keeping things moving even when I have broken the diet intermittently.

bigbooty

2:22 am
8 Jun 16
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Cant comment about ADF as I did 5:2. When you say you are fasting are you talking about reduced calories (i.e. 500) or true water only fasting? I think there is a danger involved in speeding up the weight loss too much and some people experience weight rebound.

Why not try and do a true water fast only, on one of your fast days? A constant long term reduced caloric intake does tend to reduce your metabolic rate. Intermittent water only fasts do not seem to have the same effect (see blogs by Jason Fung). I can also attest that this has been the case for me. A typical side effect of reduced caloric intake is that many people complain of always being cold. This is true for my wife who relies on reduced caloric intake every day (i.e. weight watchers). As much as I have tried for her to do proper fasts she just cant/wont. Being cold is the way your body conserves energy, it doesn’t feed the furnace to save energy. Me on the other hand, I actually run hot during my fasts. Its not my imagination and I even asked the question on Peter Attia’s blog. It is a known phenomenon.

So give a true water fast a try. It takes about a month to get used to it. You might get slight headaches to start with. Drink lots of water and add a little bit of salt. Broths are good.

Amazon

9:41 pm
8 Jun 16
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Hi TishTash,

ADF will increase your rate of loss but as Apricot says it can be difficult as it is somewhat inflexible. I have tried it. I’ve also tried 4:3 and 3:4. They all work it just depends on what suits you.