I do the same but it will depend on my weight measurement. If I am under my perceived desired goal after a fast day I will just have something small to eat, otherwise I will wait as long as I can.

I weigh myself 3 days a week, the day after my fast day (I use 4:3)

Does anyone believe or remember differnt nutritionists saying that if you don’t eat enough or skip meals your metabolism slows down and then you can gain weight? Or not be able to eat as much? Do we think that’s BS? A myth? I’ve heard gat often. Love to hear from someone experienced on this topic.

Well nutritionists are not regulated in the UK, are not clinicians, and should only be giving healthy eating advice. So I would take anything a ‘nutritionist’ says with a pinch of salt.

I am not an expert (but then neither are they 🙂 ), but in my experience (and observations of my fellow fasters here and in the real world), intermittent fasting/ meal skipping/ 5:2 does not slow your metabolism and lead to weight gain. Eating more than you need, and keeping your insulin levels high by constantly eating, leads to weight gain…

You ask if it’s BS. It’s certainly poppycock!

Desperate,

You really don’t need Dr M to comment on this!

In general, the heavier you are, the higher your metabolism.

As you eat less and lose weight, your BMR (basal metabolic rate) reduces. The smaller you are, the lower your metabolism.

So as you lose weight you need to correspondingly reduce the amount you eat to keep losing. So it may get harder to keep losing weight as time goes on (although I have not found this to be true).

But as you say, people who don’t have enough to eat are skinny not fat!

As you eat less and reduce your weight, your BMR will reduce. However, your TDEE will be influenced by your activity level.

I’m not entirely sure I’m following your logic here. But are you suggesting that people are in fact overweight because they aren’t actually eating enough?

Hi desperate:

There is nothing easy in the world of weight loss.

Happy is correct – the heavier you are, the higher your ‘metabolism’. And as you lose weight, your ‘metabolism’ slows down. However, I’m not sure that means someone should keep eating at high levels so their ‘metabolism’ stays elevated! That would mean they could not lose weight! There is nothing magic about a person’s ‘metabolism level’ – it is what it is, and your really can’t manipulate it that much.

But, of course, it is not that simple.

Research has shown that some people’s ‘metabolisms’ are more efficient than others. And very few people conform to whatever the ‘numbers’ say should happen. They can put people on highly controlled, identical levels of calories and exercise and observe extremely large differences in weight loss or gain. What is more, research has done this with twins, and found similar differences – between pairs of twins! So one set of twins will lose a little, and another set of twins on the same levels of calories and exercise will lose a lot. In this study, weight loss variations between sets of twins ranged between 5.9 and 12.4 kg, everything else being equal. http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v25/n4/full/0801559a.html

So it appears that how much a person gains or loses given a certain level of caloric intake and exercise is at least partially genetic. If you watched Dr. M’s program on high intensity exercise, you saw something similar. Going from memory, some people gained much more benefit from the exercise than others, and they could figure out in what camp a person was quite quickly with a couple of fairly simple tests.

This ‘difference in genes’ tends to explain all sorts of things. Why some people can eat anything and not gain, while some can just look at food and gain weight. Why some people swear that exercise helps them lose weight, while some can work out constantly and see little improvement in weight loss. Why someone can work out their TDEE on a calculator, only to find it is way too high and they don’t lose weight if they do ‘everything right’ and why some do so much better. Why it is dangerous from a weight loss point of view to believe the ‘calories burned’ display on their fitbit or exercise calculator or exercise equipment – especially if they decide it is OK to ‘eat back’ their ‘calories burned’. They very well may not have burned that many!

The fact is, a person has to eat fewer calories than they are burning to lose weight. But everyone is different. You cannot go on something read in a magazine article or book, or ‘the numbers’ of how many calories are burned doing this or that exercise for whatever length of time, because the odds are very high that those numbers do not apply to you. You have to start somewhere and adjust. The people that simply say they are ‘doing everything right and not losing weight’ do not understand that if they were ‘doing everything right’ – for them, their bodies – they would be losing just fine. They just have to adjust their caloric intake (usually down) to get and keep their weight loss going.

Nothing is simple.