From time to time I talk to people who started doing Intermittent Fasting with the goal to loss weight, but they don’t know how and why it works. Moreover, they are not even interested to gain this understanding.

I strongly disagree with this approach to Intermittent Fasting. Without such understanding it’s difficult to stick with Intermittent Fasting in the long run because you can lose your motivation very quickly.

Also, without knowing what you are doing you and why fasting works you don’t know what to adjust to keep losing fat when the weight loss plateaus.

Instead strive to understand how and why fasting works by reading books, papers and videos that explain scientific basis of the fasting.

For example,

• Books by Gin Stephens, Jason Fung, Benjamin Bikman, Mark Mattson are a good place to start
• YouTube videos by the same authors
• Scientific papers about Intermittent Fasting (Time Restricted Eating) at PubMed

Mission accomplished, the weight is 75 kg (165.3 lb)!

• Today is the day when I achieved my initial goal of 75 kg (165.3 lb) of weight. Body fat is at 23.7 %.
• It is a weight loss of 15.6 kg (34 pounds), since the beginning of fasting on June 13th. It took 20 weeks to get here. From 90.6 kg (200 pounds) -> 75.0 kg today. Hooray.
• Well, the scale also showed 74.9 kg at first.

Up to date results

This post is a continuation of the posts where I wrote about my progress following Intermittent Fasting eating regimen. I remind you that my end goal is a body fat of 20% and later 15%. Today I will provide a status update at the end of the 20th week.

This week I had a flexible eating window, which on average was 5 hours long. And on average I ate two meals in that eating window.

My current weight as of 2022-10-29 is 75 kg (165.3 lb) and body fat 23.7 %.

• Weight loss so far: 34 pounds (15.6 kg)
• Body fat loss so far: about 6.3 %

Legend

• Fast Hours stands for how many hours I do not eat anything except for drinking water, black coffee or tea (no milk or sugar).
• Eating window hours stands for the hours where I have two meals. I have no snacks between meals.

Same information as a chart

Detailed weekly regimen

• Here come this week statistics. As you can see weight fluctuates during the week, which is expected.
• What’s important that week over week there is a tendency for weight to decrease.

Useful references

Video

Intermittent Fasting with low carb diet works much better.

Link to the paper – Time-restricted eating with or without low-carbohydrate diet reduces visceral fat and improves metabolic syndrome: A randomized trial

Gaining weight with science

If you want to become fat and quickly then there is nothing like a scientific approach to follow to achieve this goal.

It is known that sugar, fructose and starchy food consumption is the best possible way to go. Eating foods that contain these ingredients causes Insulin hormone level in the blood to be high. If you eat frequently Insulin stays high for prolonged period of times. Insulin is the hormone, when elevated, that directs fat cells to store incoming energy as fat. When Insulin is low, the reverse is happening and your body starts tapping into fat storage (but we want to gain fat here. Aren’t we?).

When and what to eat to gain fat?

Now, armed with the science we know what to do. Eat sugary, starchy foods, aka processed foods, and do it as frequently as possible. Let’s say 6 times a day for simplicity.

Breakfast

Well, start eating as soon as you wake up. Don’t forget to select cereals with the highest amount of sugar possible. Add skim milk, honey and maybe maple syrup to the mix. Finish with a big glass of orange juice and maybe a cup of latte with sugar. Why not?

Snack time

Now, that you anticipate your lunch it’s time to eat a snack, any chocolate or energy bar will do. Don’t forget to drink a cup of tea or coffee with sugar or even sugar free sweetener, they cause the same Insulin spike, so never mind.

Lunch

Hooray, lunch time is here and it’s time to focus on pastas, pizzas, potatoes, you name it. Remember that catchup and sweet chilly sauce is the best to add a lot. Why not? At the end of lunch, for desert, indulge yourself with croissants with chocolate or jam while drinking tea or coffee with honey. If you don’t feel like drinking tea or coffee, then soft drink, diet or not makes the day.

Snack time again

It’s difficult to wait for a dinner, time is crawling. Solution? Eat some more snack bars. The more the better.

Dinner

This meal is almost like lunch: pasta, pizza, rice, potatoes, sweet sauces, lean meet etc. At the end it’s nice to have a cheese or chocolate cake. This time cappuccino with 2-3 teaspoons of sugar makes the day.

At night

It’s late at night and it’s time to open a fridge and get some beer and bring a pack of chips. You are watching your favorite show on TV or on the Internet. Don’t be shy, having one more beer and some more chips is okay just before going to bed. This will ensure that your Circadian Rhythm goes awry and you accumulate as much fat as possible during your sleep.

Next day

Repeat all over again.

P. S.

What I wrote above is a sarcastic description of how to become fat. Sadly it’s a Standard American Diet (SAD). If you want to lose fat, then stop doing everything mentioned in the post. Fasting can also help a lot.

Food for thought

• I see that after loosing 14.4 kg (31.7 pounds) within 4 and a half months current weight loss is comparatively small.
• As can be seen in the graph below the fastest rate of weight loss was during first 8 weeks of the fasting. And loss rate was 1.3 kg/week (2.87 lb/ week).
• Then during 8 – 13th week the rate of loss became less steep, 0.46 kg/ week (1 lb/ week). So this rate is almost three times slower.
• Finally from week 13 to week 20, the rate became even slower,
  0.24kg/ week (0.53 lb/ week). Which is six times slower than the initial rate of weight loss.

So beware that initial weight loss can be blazingly fast for you, but then plateau.
I went from 200 lb (90.6 kg) to 167 lb (76.2 kg) today. As a result of this weight loss I look already quite slim, so maybe my body doesn’t want to cooperate 

Useful references

A book to consider

Why We Get Sick by Prof. Benjamin Bikman.

Up to date results

This post is a continuation of the posts where I wrote about my progress following Intermittent Fasting eating regimen. I remind you that my end goal is a body fat of 20% and later 15%. Today I will provide a status update at the end of the 19th week.

Also this will be the last post in this series with the detailed updates, since I am very close to reaching my initial goal of 75 kg (165 lbs) of body weight.

This week I had a flexible eating window, which on average was 5 hours long. And on average I ate two meals in that eating window.

My current weight as of 2022-10-22 is 166.7 lb (75.6 kg) and body fat 23.9 %.

• Weight loss so far: 33.0 pounds (15.0 kg)
• Body fat loss so far: about 6.1 %

Legend

• Fast Hours stands for how many hours I do not eat anything except for drinking water, black coffee or tea (no milk or sugar).
• Eating window hours stands for the hours where I have two meals. I have no snacks between meals.

Same information as a chart

Detailed weekly regimen

• Here come this week statistics. As you can see weight fluctuates during the week, which is expected.
• What’s important that week over week there is a tendency for weight to decrease.

Useful references

Video

I highly recommend to watch this informative video about hormonal theory of obesity by Prof. Benjamin Bikman.

Dr. Benjamin Bikman | Insulin, Infertility, Fat, Calories, Fasting | Ep. 163

Up to date results

This post is a continuation of the posts where I wrote about my progress following Intermittent Fasting eating regimen. I remind you that my end goal is a body fat of 20% and later 15%. Today I will provide a status update at the end of the 18th week.

This week I had a flexible eating window, which on average was 5 hours long. And on average I ate two meals in that eating window.

My current weight as of 2022-10-15 is 169.5 lb (76.2 kg) and body fat 24.1 %.

• Weight loss so far: 31.7 pounds (14.4 kg)
• Body fat loss so far: about 5.9 %

Legend

• Fast Hours stands for how many hours I do not eat anything except for drinking water, black coffee or tea (no milk or sugar).
• Eating window hours stands for the hours where I have two meals. I have no snacks between meals.

Same information as a chart

Detailed weekly regimen

• Here come this week statistics. As you can see weight fluctuates during the week, which is expected.
• What’s important that week over week there is a tendency for weight to decrease.

Useful references

Video

I do recommend Dr. Jason Fung anytime

Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss : DHMOSH Public Health Conversations Series #7

A RULE OF THUMB I CAME UP AFTER DOING ALMOST 4 MONTHS OF INTERMITTENT FASTING IS

• That after 16 hours of fasting you are expected to lose 0.1 pound of body fat each hour on average.

It means that if you fast for 20 hours you’ll lose about 0.4 pounds (200 grams) of body fat.

With one caveat that the rule above is based on assumption that on 16th hour of the fast you body storage of glycogen is depleted.

And for this to happen, you need to eat Real Food: no sugar, no soft drinks, no juices, no sweets, snacks and starchy food.

PLAN OF ACTION

• Lose weight until 70 kg (154 pounds) in upcoming months (about 3 – 4 months).
• Then start doing resistive training at least 3 times a week with dumbbells to gain lean mass (muscle) until I reach back 75 kg (165 pounds).
• When lean mass is growing body fat percentage goes down.
• More lean mass means even more energy burn and this way I end up at 15 % body fat in the end.

Up to date results

This post is a continuation of the posts where I wrote about my progress following Intermittent Fasting eating regimen. I remind you that my end goal is a body fat of 20% and later 15%. Today I will provide a status update at the end of the 17th week.

This week I had a flexible eating window, which on average was 5 hours long. And on average I ate two meals in that eating window.

My current weight as of 2022-10-07 is 169.5 lb (76.2 kg) and body fat 24.1 %.

• Weight loss so far: 31.7 pounds (14.4 kg)
• Body fat loss so far: about 5.9 %

Legend

• Fast Hours stands for how many hours I do not eat anything except for drinking water, black coffee or tea (no milk or sugar).
• Eating window hours stands for the hours where I have two meals. I have no snacks between meals.

Same information as a chart

Detailed weekly regimen

• Here come this week statistics. As you can see weight fluctuates during the week, which is expected.
• What’s important that week over week there is a tendency for weight to decrease.

Useful references

Video

An interesting interview with Gin Stephens which I recommend to watch. Did you know that thanks to Gin’s book FAST.FEAST.REPEAT I started to fast intermittently.

Up to date results

This post is a continuation of the posts where I wrote about my progress following Intermittent Fasting eating regimen. I remind you that my end goal is a body fat of 20% and later 15%. Today I will provide a status update at the end of the 16th week.

This week I had a flexible eating window, which on average was 6 hours long. And on average I ate two meals in that eating window. You may notice that my weight is bigger than the one that was reported last week on Saturday Sep 24th. It’s okay since from day to day the weight oscillates quite a lot. What’s important is the overall trend of the weight to decrease from week to week. For example, this week on Wednesday the weight was the lowest in 11 years, and it was 168.2 lb (76.3 kg).

My current weight as of 2022-10-01 is 169.5 lb (76.9 kg) and body fat 24.5 %.

• Weight loss so far: 30.5 pounds (13.7 kg)
• Body fat loss so far: about 5.5 %

Legend

• Fast Hours stands for how many hours I do not eat anything except for drinking water, black coffee or tea (no milk or sugar).
• Eating window hours stands for the hours where I have two meals. I have no snacks between meals.

Same information as a chart

Detailed weekly regimen

• Here come this week statistics. As you can see weight fluctuates during the week, which is expected.
• What’s important that week over week there is a tendency for weight to decrease.

Legend

• l – lunch

Useful references

An Interesting observation

This long weekend I allowed myself to indulge in eating deadly poison, which is also known as sugar.

On average I ate one ice-cream cone and drank 355 ml of a soft drink. These both had about 50 gm of sugar. This is resulted in about 2.2 lb (1 kg) of weight gain in a weekend. If it doesn’t sound alarming I don’t know what is.

For your information

The AHA suggests a stricter added-sugar limit of no more than 100 calories per day (about 6 teaspoons or 24 grams) for most adult women and no more than 150 calories per day (about 9 teaspoons or 36 grams of sugar) for most men.

source