Sue,

I am at a loss to understand why you find 5:2 so difficult and it may be linked to what you eat rather than how much.

What do you mean by eating a healthy diet. Can you give me an example of what you would eat on a non fast day and on a fast day.

@sue. The concept of TDEE, use it as a very rough guide. Your TDEE will vary and depends not only on your weight and physical activity but on the foods that you eat. Eat the wrong foods and your TDEE will drop. So on the assumption that you are not overeating your TDEE is dropping down to compensate.

If what you are doing isn’t working then you need to change something. I hope you agree with that statement. Doing the same thing will produce the same results. Your diet seems reasonable but there are a few things you can change. Change one at a time and see what happens.

The whey protein shake. First off why? Read the label carefully, how much sugar content does it contain to make it palatable? You want protein have some cheese or nuts rather than whey. Veggies. What kind of veggies. Stick to your cruciferous ones. Avoid potatoes and sweet potatoes. On a glycaemic index they are worse than white bread. Greek yogurt. What is the sugar and fat content. You want less then 5% sugar content and 10% or more fat content. Read the label, what does yours contain? Oat cake, read the label how much sugar? Grain based products aren’t that good for you in any case.

Eliminate one of those things at a time and monitor for a few weeks. Better or worse? If better stick with it. Then move onto the next food and eliminate it? Better or worse. You will then find out what the problem foods are and which are fine. Good luck.

@suebedoo – A personal trainer? Protein shakes? Are you body building?

I have a hard time losing weight, but it is because I’m working on building muscle. My fat is slowly going down though. If you are working out hard, the scale is the last metric you want to trust.

I know that I’ve been building up my weight and frankly I’m not sure it is a good thing for my heart, I’m thinking now I should lower my BMI some. (Currently 26) I do know it doesn’t take much muscle gain to really push up the weight because muscle can hold a lot of water. Fat is actually pretty dry, at least compared to muscle.

Another point, I really don’t think that much of your diet. It is high in protein. We do need protein but we only need enough. If you are coupling strength training, high protein along with the fasting which pushes up things like Human Growth Hormone, you shouldn’t expect to easily lose weight. You maybe are just replacing fat with much heavier muscle.

@suebedoo – I have no idea what a balanced diet really is. I do eat a diet where I don’t have to worry about taking any vitamins or supplements.

Your diet still sounds like it is a typical bulk building diet used by bodybuilders and it also sounds like that amount of food I eat on a heavy eating day. For the life of me I can’t understand why you would add a supplement like whey protein to your diet. We really don’t need that much protein even to build muscles. It probably helps build muscles faster but it also seems designed to pack on the weight. Bodybuilders are often using bulk building and then fat cutting diets. Even without the whey protein you are getting a lot of protein in your diet.

Suebedoo: What you eat on your non-fast days does matter, as I have found out myself. Essentially, we are all different and have to ‘play’ with the diet a bit to find out what suits. For me, a long fast seems to work (approx 18 hrs). Also, you do need to pay attention to the GI because some things are much higher than you might think – melon you might think is low and all water – wrong. So look everything up.
In addition, I have in the past tried to exercise the fat off and it doesn’t work, unless you can exercise for hours at a time. Might I ask what you mean by ‘plenty’ of protein, because plenty may be too much.

Hi Suebedoo

Fascinating reading this thread and the story you have shared – Apart from your age you haven’t share much – would love to know your height, weight and what you consider to be your TDEE…etc and how overweight you think you are??

For example I’m 59y.o female – post menopausal – 164cm tall – weight 54kg – My TDEE is around 1500cal (worked out for lightly active level) and I eat 1/3 of that on my 2 FDs. I lost over 20kg in a year and have been maintaining for the past 9 months following this regime.
For exercise I do 2 x 1.5hr Yoga classes, 1 x 1hr Pilate class, 1 x 1hr Aerobic class and walk 6km x 2 a week with friends.

If you are eating to your target TDEE and fasting 2 days a week you should lose weight unless you have other health issues – Being menopausal or peri-menopausal should not really be an issue in losing weight.

If you are truly following the above and not losing weight then it would make sense to be checked by your GP for the following potential issues:-
1. Thyroid hormone
Some people, especially women, suffer decreased metabolism as a result of thyroid hormone deficiency – hypothyroidism. Common symptoms are:
Fatigue
Cold intolerance
Constipation
Dry skin
Weight gain
In these cases, weight gain resulting from decreased metabolism usually do not exceed fifteen pounds.
2. Women can suffer from the endocrine disorder PCOS – polycystic ovarian syndrome – which elevates testosterone and insulin levels. This can mean weight gain and menstrual disorders (very common), infertility, acne and male pattern hair growth (such as facial hair). A low-carbohydrate diet is a good treatment for this.
3. During menopause, a woman’s level of the female sex hormone estrogen drops. This often causes some weight gain, especially around the gut (so-called central obesity). Any excess weight gained after menopause will tend to be less femininely proportioned, less curvy.
4. Stress hormone
The final possible culprit behind stubborn weight issues may be the stress hormone, cortisol. Too much cortisol will increase hunger levels, bringing along subsequent weight gain. The most common cause of elevated cortisol is chronic stress and lack of sleep, or cortisone medication.

I wish you good luck in your health journey

You say you have a PT. Have you told your PT what your goal is? i.e. I want to lose XX amount of weight. I don’t want to build muscle. They will then set a program in place to do that. I know that some people don’t weigh themselves as there are associated psychological reasons they wish to avoid. But if you don’t measure how do you know when you’ve reached your goal? You could easily be +/-3 pounds and not know it. Read the label on the protein packet. You might be surprised at the sugar content. It has to be made palatable. What’s the sugar content?

@suebedoo – 80g of protein a day seems like a high amount. There are people that do a eat more protein but there are also risks as one increases protein levels higher. It is probably good that you aren’t able to eat that much protein.

I’m a man that has been building muscles and losing body fat and I get by on a lot less protein than 80g / day. I think you need to decide what your goal is and then focus on that level.

For high school freshman boys who want to bulk up their muscles to play football, it is recommended that they do strength training and eat 90 grams of protein per day. Sue, are you a 15-year old boy who considers himself a 98-pound weakling?
I agree with dykask and bigbooty: too much protein! ordinarily I am urging people to eat more protein, especially when they Fast. On Fast breakfasts, I aim for 15+ g protein. For Fast dinners, the goal is 25+ g. I think your trainer is steering you in the wrong direction.

You said that years ago you Fasted 2 days/week, then ‘ate chocolate’. I will assume you ate more than chocolate on the Slow Days. Then you said you were amazed by the change in advice you find now on this site. What do you mean by that? It has always been assumed that on a Slow Day you would ‘eat sensibly and in moderation’ because otherwise you would be undoing the work of the Fast Day.

Looking at your Slow Day diet: handful of nuts + water = 164 calories 14.4 g fat 6 g protein bowl of oats with blueberries = if that’s 1/2 cup of cooked oatmeal with 2 Tbsp berries, then it =258 calories 4.1 g fat 14.1 g protein
salad either with cheese or chicken = Cesar Salad made with 2.5 cups romaine, 3 oz chicken, and 1 tsp olive oil =222 calories 9 g fat 20 g protein if we add 1 oz Swiss cheese = 106 calories 7.8 g fat 7.5 g protein meat [let’s assume pork] = 4 oz roast =236 calories 10.9 g fat 32.3 g protein lots of veggies: 2 cups broccoli – 60 calories 6 oz Greek yogurt= 100 calories 0 g fat 18 g protein
handful of nuts + water = 164 calories 14.4 g fat 6 g protein peanut butter = 1 Tbsp 94 calories 8.1 g fat 4 g protein
TOTALS: 1404 calories 68 g fat 107 g protein

The calories work for a Slow Day, but the fat and protein are too high, in my opinion.

I’m with bigbooty: get a new PT

Hey, Moggy, don’t get down on yourself — you can lose that weight and get back to the size 12 of your twenties. I got down to my weight in grade 8 [that was below my original goal] and might get to a smaller trouser size, if they make that. Slow and steady, as you say.

Sue, it is true that fat doesn’t make you fat. But it is empty calories as far as I’m concerned, so I like to keep it low unless eating salmon or mackerel which are high in Omega 3s. I get my food values from the website CalorieKing. This keeps them consistent. The food values I used when I calculated your diet are based on menus which I developed for Fasting [to be found in my twice-weekly blog] and might be lower than the values for someone else’s salad with chicken or bowl of porridge oats. I know you use FitnessPal, with which I am not familiar. BTW, when I saw the fat and protein I’d calculated for you, I added them up twice because they looked SO wrong. I have calculated the food value of every meal we eat on a Fast Day: calories, fat, fiber, protein, carbs, Calcium. Just to make sure we’re getting enough of everything. The rest of the week, no calculating.

dykask, what protein guidelines do you use? I’ve seen 30-35 g per day. Of course older people [i’m 68] need to combat sarcopenia, but muscle training is key in that as well.

Liath, gaining muscle for older people used to be thought to be difficult, but fairly recent research has shown that it is indeed possible. It’s more a matter of how much the muscles had atrophied in the first place.

@fasting_me I didn’t say that gaining muscle when you are older is more difficult, I was just explaining the optimum conditions needed to build muscle. There are a number of common misconceptions about building muscle mass which particularly put women off of resistance/weight training as they are concerned about “bulking up”. Maybe I didn’t explain well but the point I was trying to make is that easily stacking on tons of muscle mass is a challenge for anyone, but especially so for women as we generally lack the testosterone to do so, hence the limits of around 0.5lbs of muscle gain a week.

There seems to be a common belief on here that it’s possible to convert fat to muscle which is biologically impossible. It has been proven via various studies that outside of initial rapid gains when starting resistance training there are fairly consistent limits on the rate of gain for both men and women even with optimum training and nutrition.

It is much more straightforward to change body composition via dietary controls in combination with exercise to target maintenance of muscle mass.

In addition it is hard/nearly impossible to gain muscle whilst in a calorie deficit, especially without a very focused strength training regime and appropriate macro nutrition. Again, the only way to confirm whether absolute muscle mass increase has occurred is via measurement of body composition using some of the more reliable methods such as Bodpod or DEXA scan. Using skinfold measurements or tanita scales will give you an estimate of body fat percentage but won’t tell you if you have in fact gained any muscle mass.

From a bodybuilding perspective the bulking phase requires a carefully calculated calorie surplus and macro nutrient controls in combination with a very regimented training program allowing sufficient recovery time for each muscle group in order to maximise muscle gain. This will inevitably include some fat gain hence pre competition cutting which is combination of calorie restriction and carb cycling focused on when carbs are eaten to fuel workouts and not gain fat.

Sorry if this wasn’t relevant on this thread, but I do find the lack of understanding of how muscle gain works a little frustrating.

@fasting_me – I’m doing a lot of experimenting with protein, but my general guideline is that if my muscles are healing and improving then I have enough protein in my diet. I did start some emails I got from Brad Pilon and he also has a book about it but I haven’t acquired it. (I have several of his books) In short he seems to believe the a lot of push for high protein is actually just to market supplements that people don’t really need. I’m still trying to find good sources. His books are kind of hard to get as you have to go through his website. He only self publishes.

Personally I know from first hand experience that I wasn’t able to build muscle when I was just using constant calorie restriction and high amounts of cardio. Now I’m back to similar levels I was back in college, maybe more in my arms. Most of my protein is from eggs, nuts, vegetable combinations and some meat. I’ve pretty much found that at the low end, just doing general HIIT I was getting really good improvements even with relativity low amounts of protein, less than 1g / kg of weight. I’ve only started to maybe hit some issues when I’m starting to really stress some muscles. I’m not sure though if it is from lack of protein or because I seem to be fighting a virus. However I’m still gaining so these are not serious issues. What tipped the balance for me was fasting. Learning to push hard in the fasted state greatly improved my muscle development. I think it boils down to as long as our bodies have enough protein we aren’t held back.

Personally, I believe we get more than enough protein form a typical diet that is low in processed foods. Some of the strongest weight lifers are actually vegan and those guys are getting a lot less protein than most. The problem with eating just to get more protein is that it is generally more calories we probably don’t need. I firmly believe that if you have to take supplements, you are probably doing something wrong with the incredibly rich food choices we have available today.

Sorry, I know that I’m not giving a great answer here.

Just an FYI I did purchase Brad’s how much protein book. His best recommendation is in the 70g – 120g protein / day range for people trying to build muscle with resistance training, but it is a long book and it will take me a while to read it. There is something about going up to 150g day if you are also doing cardio. He also notes that the typical American diet is already at 90g protein a day. So there really isn’t any need for protein supplements. I probably don’t hit 70g a day on average, but I’m fasting two 36h fasts a week. However since I’ve been doing hard workouts before breaking fasts, I haven’t really had issues with building muscles.
Brad pushes a couple 24h water fasts a week. He likes to have at least one meal everyday.

I also see a recommendation that most people should be fine at 60g protein a day, but older people trying to lose weight could go higher.

@liathanail a calorie surplus or even “balance” isn’t needed for muscle development. Over eating leads to fat storage and that is what I took from your position. However when it comes to muscle repair, calories aren’t a controlling factor. If a hormone like insulin is low enough then all the energy needed can easily be taken from fat reserves. While some insulin is needed for muscle repair and growth, it isn’t much since muscle fiber tends to be very sensitive to insulin. Even protein isn’t typically much of an issue because proteins are the most common compounds in the human body. While we do need to consume some protein, a lot of the so called recommendations don’t seem to be based on anything other than selling more supplements. I know for a fact it is pretty easy have good muscle development with out high levels of protein consumption. Consuming more protein likely helps some, but it is clearly a curve of diminishing returns. I seem to be doing very well and I rarely consume more than 1g/kg of body weight of protein. Extremely low by most recommendations.

What is needed:
> Resistance training – without stressing the muscles they don’t development much unless you have the hormone levels of a teenage boy. Weight training works but there are many approaches too like body weight exercises. For older people this the driving factor.

> Hormones help a great deal and it isn’t just testosterone which women also have. I think fasting helps a great deal because it helps elevate HGH and glucagon. HGH production is quickly stopped when eating even a small amount. Glucagon tends to be inversely proportional to insulin and promotes the lipolysis which can supply the necessary energy. In most people even fasting levels of insulin are adequate. In my case I’m pretty sure it is changes in HGH that really made a difference. Not just with muscle development but a lot of things. The differences are shocking and that was my primary motivation for only doing water fasts.

> Enough nutrition in the body. Just enough is all that is needed. I personally believe that enough is far lower than most people realize.

I find the many weight lifters tend to lack muscle definition while they often have more muscle than say someone doing body weight exercises. The primary reason is they tend to have too much body fat. The bulking / cutting diet cycles often used don’t seem healthy or natural to me or even effective for many. On the other hand fasting seems to work extremely well, at least for me. It did take some adjustment time though before I could work out hard enough in the fasted state. I guess you could look at fasting as cutting and eating as bulking, but few weight lifters would do multiple diet cycles a week.

Body weight based exercise doesn’t typically promote as much muscle growth for isolated muscles, but it tends to be more balanced across muscle groups and muscle definition tends to be much higher than with weight lifters. That being said, by far the strongest person I ever saw mostly did yoga. His muscles didn’t even seem that big but he was far stronger than any weight lifters at that company gym. That was 20 years ago and I wished I had learned more about what he did. But I know for a fat that his workouts normally were only yoga based. At the time I was young enough that the typical move more and eat less was working very well for me. Even into my 40’s it was easy to maintain my weight although I didn’t do as good of a job as I should have. So I just didn’t pay enough attention.

EDIT: Think of this way. Someone eating 100g+ protein / day would typically consume more than 1/2 their body weight a year in protein. It is crazy if you think about it that way. Many weight lifters consume more than their full body weight in protein over a year. I guess they think that the body can’t reuse proteins. (Really the amino acids that make up the proteins.)

So my conclusions so far:

* I’m going to bump up my protein intake a little, shooting for 400g to 500g / week. There could be some benefit for going a little higher. No point in going higher than that as there isn’t any evidence that high levels of protein promote muscle growth.

* Timing of protein consumption isn’t important.

* Fasting may be also elevating my testosterone levels which is very beneficial for muscle growth. There are studies of people just taking steroids gaining more lean body mass than people not taking steroids and activity doing resistance training.

* I’m going to continue to focus on getting everything from just my diet, no supplements. Protein is easy as it is in most foods.

@liathanail, my body type is such that I can quite easily build muscle and I have. Trouble is there is lots of the white stuff on top. When my body weight is less and fat percentage less then I look great, like this not so much.

However the muscle is good to have at 63, covered or not.

I eat quite a lot of protein as it kills appetite if I cut the carbs.

I have to work very hard to maintain the muscle, I do body pump 3 to 4 times a week usually and I spin as it’s kinder to older joints.

Am thinking of HIIT next, although I did years of Tabata with little effect.

I did join the bodybuilding forum but it didn’t help with the weight loss overall. It did help with building muscle and strength. In order to build the muscle I did over eat the protein and cut the sugar. I suppose I lost fat as my weight stayed the same. I have kept the weight room use although because of recent depression not as much as I could.

Could it be the Whey protein that caused the problem with the slow fat loss?

Mari

Actually it occurs to me that it should be pretty easy to measure how much protein one’s body really uses, although not very appetizing. The main thing to avoid is protein gluconeogenesis, or in other words the conversion of protein to sugar. So this is the steps:

1) Measure blood glucose
2) Eat a meal consisting of just protein and fat. Track how much protein it should be.
3) Measure blood glucose every 30 minutes for a couple hours. If there is a spike in blood glucose, then there was more protein consumed than the body needed.
4) Adjust the protein amount and try again maybe the next day.

With a binary search one would be able to zero in on a “safe” protein level in 5 or 6 meals.

The key point is too much protein causes insulin spikes and that in general means fat gain. Below the point at which that occurs one could be consuming more protein than actually necessary, but at least it would be contributing to fat gain.

Cutting diets used by weight lifters are typically very high protein levels. However overall they are probably pushing a large calorie deficit. While protein can be converted to glucose, it is a more energy intensive conversion than carbs to glucose. Over short periods of time calorie reduction can be very effective, it is just ineffective over longer periods of time because of adaptive thermogenesis and general misery caused by it. Very few have the will power to keep at it.

Thanks for sharing all your research with us, dykask. Good info to have. I know that I have added muscle in the past few years while on this Lifestyle: Triceps larger and leg muscles stronger. Exercise, Fasting, and moderation do the trick so far for me.

I graduated last week and have additionally been looking what I eat with My fitness pal. up to now I even have solely lost a pair of pounds over the full ten weeks! however – within the last period some my form has positively begun to modification and I am getting down to see some muscles emerge and a few flaccid bits retreat, even supposing I weigh a lot of or less an equivalent. I am hoping that this can be the beginning of an even bigger modification, we tend to shall see.
The other sensible issue is that you simply dynamical your habits – you recognize from WW that it is the modus vivendi changes that you will keep on with which will facilitate lose however additionally keep the burden off, and that is what I am hoping for with the running – affirmative that I will slim down however additionally keep it off and not place it straight back on once more once a diet ends.
Good luck and do not be discouraged, the labor can begin to pay off shortly I am certain.