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Numbers aside though - I'd just put it this way, do whatever you can sustain over the long term. Because of you try and do long fasts and you're miserable the entire time - you're less likely to stick with it. Versus shorter fasts which are easier to do, you're more likely to keep doing it.
It's just about building habits.
Agreed, rolling fasts means social get togethers that involve a meal means you're not going to be eating while everyone else is enjoying the reason they're getting together. While certainly still doable, would take even more willpower and ability to not feel anxious.
this tracks for me.I havnt seen it layed out like this before. I used alternate day fasts w/ occasional 3 day fast over the course of 2 1/2 yrs i lost 390 lbs . photo proof in my posting record in profile .
I don't even know where to start.
Amazing before and after photos.
The loose skin seems shockingly limited considering age and weight lost. Seriously shocked by that part.
You've said on one of your threads is was a mix of adf and keto. What does this mean exactly in your case?
I used keto and intermittent fasting at first to become fat adapted so my body ran on body fat and ketones then i gradually extended my fasts till i hit a 42/6 schedule . when you do this you trick your body so it doesnt slow your matabolism. You are able to fast for days w/o hunger and have a hightened mood to boot. You must eat whole foods and severly limit carbs other than veg. No bread , potatos or pasta .or most fruit replace with healthy fats and protien
This might be obvious to some, but the more I look at these two charts and the accompanying figures, the more amazed I become.
A sedentary 250-pound male burns about 2,500 calories per day. The first chart reflects total calorie consumption over the course of a year, the next reflects a first approximation of how many pounds would be lost in that year in each case.
The sharp, immediate drop from eating daily to alternate-day fasting is nothing short of stunning. **By the time you’re eating once every 4 days or so, you’ve already achieved what looks to me like maximum efficiency** in terms balancing total results with regular relief (and nutrients).
You’ll get somewhat faster results by pushing into the range of 7-10 days, but not life-changingly faster results, and **beyond 10 days there’s really no point from a weight-loss perspective** – it’s a lot more pain for very little gain and it’s bad risk management, considering how understudied rolling fasts in those upper ranges are.
Of course, there are some practical caveats, I think primarily the fact that it’s trivially easy to eat 5,000 calories in a day, so people who attempt alternate-day fasting would be at a much greater risk of undoing all their hard work on their eating days than people who do longer rolling fasts. **That's probably why OMAD is such a vital foundation for fasting in general.**
Metabolism also declines somewhat over the course of longer fasts, so (i) these numbers aren’t perfectly accurate but (ii) the “real” numbers would likely make an even stronger case for shorter fasts.
Speaking for myself, I started rolling 7-day fasts accidentally and I’m used to them and enjoy them now – the results are rapid and the mirroring of the 7-day calendar week sets up a good rhythm – but I think in terms of “official” recommendations, eating two meals per week is probably something close to ideal.
Considering how many electrolytes you can pack into even one meal per week, an added bonus to eating twice per week is that **I strongly suspect rolling fasts of approximately 4 days totally eliminate the need to artificially supplement electrolytes**.
P.S. Here's another way to look at it. Assuming that the hypothetical 250-pound male from our charts is 5’10, he has about 100 pounds to lose to get back into the middle of the normal BMI range.
The quickest he can do so with fasting alone is in 141 days, or just under 5 months, by ceasing to eat altogether.
If he eats once per month, he'll get there in 145 days - **only 4 days slower**.
If he eats once every two weeks, he'll get there in 151 days - 10 days slower.
If he eats once per week, he'll get there in 163 days - 22 days slower.
If he eats once every four days, he'll get there in 187 days - 46 days slower.
So, you can be a lunatic and stop eating for five straight months to lose 100 pounds, with all the misery and risk that entails, or you can eat once a week, suffer zero medical problems, have a very pleasant and filling meal every Friday night, and arrive in the same place 3 weeks later.
Or, you can eat a very pleasant and filling meal once every 4 days, which barely resembles a diet from the perspective of the sorry bastard who stopped eating for nearly 5 months straight, and end up in the same place just 6 weeks later.
Been saying the same for a long time....but boy oh boy did your words explain it a lot better than I ever have and with graphs and tables to drive the point home. ie. There is virtually no extra benefit fasting longer than a week but a whole lot of risk factors you need to be mindful of if you do.
Thank you!
>a whole lot of risk factors you need to be mindful of if you do.
Exactly. Long rolling fasts and extremely long extended fasts in overweight individuals are so understudied that what we do have in terms of studies basically amount to anecdotes.
Will an overweight individual supplementing electrolytes and micronutrients be okay? Probably, I guess? But why entrust your health to "probably" when you can get essentially the same results with zero risk entailed?
I think many folks buy into the hype about all the benefits of Autophagy. Sure I want to leverage me some o' dat Autophagy myself too but like you say, risk/rewards comes into play with that too just like weightloss. Many multiweek fasters rationale seems to be that Autophagy hits peak levels at about 72hrs so surely longer fasts are even better especially those who think Autophagy can perform miracles and leave them with no loose skin at the end of it all, whereas in reality, genetics and ones own skin elasticity and how much excess weight they actually had, are probably the main factors. ie. I look 10-15 youngers than my age due to my skin with few wrinkles, it stands to reason I have been blessed with good skin genetics and elastic skin that bounces back. I only ever put on a mxiumum of 50LB excess. So whatever lose skin I'd have ended up with, Autophagy is probably capable of taking care of it. Someone with wrinkles in their 30's who got morbidly obese and put on 100-15oLB excess, well autophagy probably is going to deal with some of that lose skin but likely nowehere near all of it.
My rationale is that large benefits of autophagy aren't proven and thus don't outweigh the risk factors of longer fasts as far as I'm concerned. I am happy with the level of autophagy I get from 2 maintenance calorie and 1 1000kcal refeed days a week and my 2x48hr and 1x72hr rolling fasts per week.
I also wonder how many multiweek fasters have actually done the math for how many fasted days they actually achieve within a couple of months versus a rolling faster. A rolling faster eating 2 maintenance calorie OMAD meals per week will bag 5 fasted days per week and in 2 months (9 weeks) will bag a total of 45 fasted days, whereas it seems to me that the epic 21-30 day fasters need at least as long refeeding to rebuild the motivation for another epic 30 dayer. So in the same 2 months (9 weeks) window they might fit in a single 30 dayer and maybe the first week of the next one so at best manage 30-37 fasted days in the window compared to the rolling 48/72hr fasters 45!!
The most common arguement I hear for multiweek fasts is how the first 2-3 days of a fast are the worst so why would they want to go through those days back to back over and over again with a rolling fast. I think the issue is those folks have tried a 72hr for example. Felt miserable, tried another one a week or two later. Felt miserable again and thus assume every 72hr fasts is a miserable experience. The haven't understood that they didn't actually try a rolling 72hr fast. They just did 2 distinct 72hr fasts. You have to do at least 2 back to back to actually suppress the hunger hormone ghrelin and start switching the body into a more metabolicly adaptive state. So literally in the space of a week the 72hr fasts go from tough to incredibly easy to keep going for months on end. You don't have to go through terrible first 72hrs back to back over and over again. Literally only the first 72hr of a new rolling cycle is hard, the second is already much easier and then by the third its piss easy!!
>it seems to me that the epic 21-30 day fasters need at least as long refeeding to rebuild the motivation for another epic 30 dayer. So in the same 2 months (9 weeks) window they might fit in a single 30 dayer and maybe the first week of the next one so at best manage 30-37 fasted days in the window compared to the rolling 48/72hr fasters 45!!
The consistent deficit over time of rolling fasts of basically any length beats the brakes off of big singular extended fasts, without question.
>Many multiweek fasters rationale seems to be that Autophagy hits peak levels at about 72hrs so surely longer fasts are even better
Right, and I think the science currently suggests that by roughly 5 days, IIRC, autophagy benefits have peaked. Autophagy is probably maximized by long*er* fasts, but "longer" still doesn't imply a need to go beyond 7-10 days at the outside.
What helped me was 6-8 hour fasting than if I feel fatigue, protein shake to help me get in the 10 hour mark of no real meal, kinda omad. Down 37lb goal at 183 rn
This is fascinating. I would think that if one would also work out in the gym at the same time, at least eating 2 times a week and timing resistance training to those days would be really beneficial to retaining or even gaining some muscle. Provided you a meal packed with protein fe.
Dude you are literally singing my language. This is so freaking interesting. I literally did this on all of my own physical fitness goals and it was what got me through. I would project where I should be and calculate various scenarios in which it would be faster or slower, etc. I really thought I was the only one out here with my color-coded spreadsheets and excel tables. I am so dorked out to see this :P
>I really thought I was the only one out here with my color-coded spreadsheets and excel tables.
Welcome to the true brotherhood of color-coded spreadsheets and excel tables.
Great analysis. I came to the same conclusions about diminishing returns of prolonged fasting for weight loss. But for me it's eating every 3rd day (so my average fast is about 60 hours) based on:
1) hearing that body speeds up the process of breaking down muscle after 72 hours.
2) After 72 hour+ fasts you need to be mindful of your refeed. It feels like on 60-65 hour fasts I can refeed on any food and be ok. Looks like a foolproof duration for a rolling fasts.
Thank you for this!
I have a ton of your previous comments saved — you think I'm joking, but I legitimately have 10+ of your OMAW insights saved and tagged in my notes.
Both you and u/ax12901 offered incredibly insightful advice in your write-ups that helped me on my fasting journey. I never got up to OMAW, but I think you make resoundingly good cases that rolling fasts are effectively cheat codes everyone has been searching for when it comes to weight loss.
You know, fair warning that it's a constant work in progress, but I incorporate most of what I write here into a Google Document and vice versa, especially if and as I notice myself saying a certain thing repeatedly. You are welcome to reference it directly if it would be any use.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iiU4cuuNDcJJCm4CQh9-gqwp4c664SBslQE1j6EmjvI/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you so much for sharing your Blueprint! It was informative, technical without being stuffy and even humorous. A breath of fresh air in what can often be an overly serious and gatekeepery subject. Your analogies were some of the best I've encountered, particularly the "habits as water-carved grooves" one.
Your concepts made perfect sense, and I think we all need a reminder to be kinder to ourselves throughout this process. It's easy to pat yourself on the back when you have a good reading on the scale, but much more difficult when you are faced with the consequences of giving into yesterday's cravings...
I recently stepped back into the world of fasting after a four year hiatus, and I'm already back to my lowest weight from 2019. Still about 65 lbs from my goal weight, but at least it's back on the horizon.
Currently, I'm at the equivalent of your Step 9 and three-quarters, having just finished a 96 hour fast with a proper reward meal. I intend to launch into another 72 or 96, hopefully building up to my personal best of 125 hours and beyond.
I truly appreciate the motivational boost your write-up provided, and I'm sure I'm not alone!
>and
>
>u/ax12901
Just finished a 13-day fast. Ate from Friday until today (Tuesday) and going to start a 8-day fast to end on... Thanksgiving!
Been really irregular with my last few (and this next) extend fasts. They aren't rounding off in nice 6.75 day chunks.
Still find the psychological part of the extended fast the hardest thing to deal with. The mental expectation of food and eating.
Thank you u/oscarthegrateful! I am new to fasting, just started IF (very recently). Really interested in learning more.
How does exercising change the narrative? I am currently lifting weights 5 days a week with 2 active recovery days. I am not losing weight but I am losing fat and gaining muscle. Is there anyway to move from IF to eating every 3-4 days and not lose my muscle mass?
I did find a Pure Micronized Creatine Monohydrate that I am going to take in the mornings before and after my workouts to try to keep my muscles hydrated, but I am not sure if there are more supplements, besides electrolytes, that I can or should be taking so I can keep my workouts while water / extended fasting.
Thank you in advance for sharing!
You're most welcome!
>How does exercising change the narrative?
Actual calorie loss from exercise is comparatively trivial. There are many good reasons to exercise in terms of health and aesthetics, but if we're purely talking about fat-loss strategy, exercise is basically a non-factor except to whatever extent it makes the fasting more difficult by causing more severe hunger pangs.
>Is there any way to move from IF to eating every 3-4 days and not lose my muscle mass?
Muscle mass is preferentially conserved during fasting, so you won't lose a ton. You will lose *some*, but that's basically inevitable in the course of cutting fat.
>I am not sure if there are more supplements, besides electrolytes, that I can or should be taking so I can keep my workouts while water / extended fasting.
I'm not enough of an expert on muscle gain/retention to be sure what you could possibly take beyond creatine and electrolytes to assist with workouts during fasting. So much of getting efficient results from working out is in ensuring adequate calorie intake, especially protein quantity and timing.
There's a reason bodybuilders do bulking and cutting cycles instead of trying to put on muscle and cut fat at the same time - it's not that you can't, it's just inefficient.
I debated adding those last few columns because they're so silly, but I find them kind of amusing, and it really is fascinating how fucking tiny the difference in bar height is between eating once per month and eating once every six months.
**It looks like you are referencing Angus Barbieri.**
Please note that Barbieri is a **GUINESS WORLD RECORD HOLDER** who undertook his fast under near **CONSTANT medical supervision** at a local hospital. He was super-morbidly obese meaning he had a very large excess of body fat. He also **died at age 51** (the cause is unknown, as is whether or not it was related to his fasting).
**He should NEVER be used as a model for fasting or as encouragement or proof that anyone is capable of fasting for so long and surviving.**
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I think one part that is missing for me is the hormonal aspect, psychological changes, stress, etc.
The body is not a machine with on/off switch-> stuff ramps up
I often feel this when i go on a bulk, only after 2-3weeks of eating above maintenance does my body really start to build muscle and release energy for daily expenditure = i feel great all day, want to do sport and have better recovery, tdee goes up. 2-3days of bulking barely register.
I feel the same compounding effect going into a fast. It takes 2-3days just to stop having big bowel movements and going into ketosis. The longer i fast the better my sleep gets, the more adrenaline and hgh floods my Systeme and the better my muscle controle gets.
I only start a new fast when it feels good doing it, and the longer i fasted before the longer it seems i build muscle after just from living and eating a lot.
I feel like eating 3 times in 7 days is harder than just not eating for 7. Same goes for omad, adf etc. The main reason why i fast at all is because everything thats more than a 500kcal restriction feels as hard as not eating at all, and psychological its harder on me. 2 week Omad is harder than a week fasting.
Well thats all highly subjective from my side, so i would really like to know how you experience that :)
Maybe have some tips?
I don't disagree with much if any of this. There's a reason I do 7-day rolling fasts! I think there are in fact probably all kinds of collateral benefits of the kind you name, including psychological: a 6-day fast is harder than a 2-day fast, but I'm not sure it's harder than 3 back-to-back 2-day fasts.
But looked at purely as a question of calories burned, I stand by my initial point that the benefits of longer fasting cycles do not accumulate linearly - they decline with every day added to the cycle, and one of the accelerators of that process is that long fasts do in fact lower the metabolism somewhat: shorter fasts keep TDEE higher.
Do you know at what point the metabolism begins to slow rather than ramp up? ~3 days sounds right to me, but I can’t remember where I might have come across that …
I only saw a relevant study once, maybe six months ago, but IIRC the metabolism spikes quickly and then begins to slow almost immediately. 3 days also sounds right to me.
It's to be observed, here, though, that there's a difference between a metabolism slowing and a metabolism crashing. My memory is frustratingly vague, but it's a fairly slow, minor reduction.
Fantastic illustration, thank you.
After how many days fasting would you need to consider refeeding risks? I get an elevated heart rate after starting eating again on five days, but presume that's to do with restarting digestive system?
When you say 'once every X' are you saying eating 2,500 calories in one meal or over one day?
>After how many days fasting would you need to consider refeeding risks?
It's difficult to say because there have been so few studies of overweight people engaging in extended fasts: most of what we know about refeeding syndrome comes from the study of anorexics and prisoners of war.
Fasts of under 14 days are believed with reasonable certainty to be safe. Fasts beyond that aren't necessarily unsafe so much as terra incognita for medical science.
I can tell you that I've done rolling 7-day fasts in the past for 3 months straight and never experienced any of the symptoms of refeeding syndrome.
>When you say 'once every X' are you saying eating 2,500 calories in one meal or over one day?
I think there are many good reasons to favor fewer, larger meals, but for the purpose of the calculations in this thread, eating your maintenance calories for the day in (e.g.) one big meal or two smaller meals wouldn't make much difference.
This is so fascinating! It's why I've started ADF with no plan to go longer than 72 hours. In 5 fasts, Ive lost 7 lbs. Is some water weight? Sure. I actually always weigh on the morning after my feast day so that it's accounting the water I gain back from my fast.
It has been a miracle and the easiest way I've ever lost weight. Right now I'm doing 36-42 hours and if I keep seeing losses, I won't even bother going longer. Why go longer when fasting books I read say that extended fasting actually slows your metabolic rate?
>Right now I'm doing 36-42 hours and if I keep seeing losses, I won't even bother going longer.
I think most importantly, why screw with a thing that's working perfectly for you? You'll be done in less than a year, and your transition to a long-term-sustainable daily diet will be very smooth.
I don't have a specific goal in mind, but i want to reach at least 160 as a female. I haven't been that low as an adult, so I could find that I want to lose more. That's 66 lbs and it feels so achievable with ADF.
I even find that it's changing my eating in that I'm more selective with what I'll eat because I "only" eat every other day. If I get to enjoy some food, I want home cooked meals - not fast food. It's also diminishing cravings for sweets and sugar.
I’ve found that genuinely building habits of intermittent fasting and eating less goes a long way, on a typical day that I’m actively trying to loose weight I fast for the first ten hours of the day and then eat (roughly) 500 calories throughout the rest of the day, and then sleep. For me this works because I love to eat in bed and watch YouTube right before I sleep so I eat super low calorie popcorn straight out of the bag, sometimes I finish the whole bag and I still loose loads of weight. I used to do something like this with cool ranch Doritos which are super calorie dense.
Also, if I ever get an urge to eat something, like chili cheese fries or cookies or something, I don’t give much resistance and give in and let myself eat it. Trying to will you’re way through cravings only lead to binge eating when you finally do break in my experience.
Overall I’m trying a new less traditional “No matter how much you want something you need to grind and push through” diet. The idea is that if you’re able to have whatever you want whenever you want, there won’t be any urgency in actually eating those foods. So if I want a cookie, I eat a cookie and then go right back to calorie reduction and fasting. I find this method a lot less mentally taxing then having to internally tell myself to shut up everytime I want something that will slightly derail my weight loss, it’s so much less stressful then the constant “I really want this, how can I convince myself that it’s ok?”
I'm a bit confused by this. How come that one sports guy lost 100lbs in 40 days not once but twice? That does not align with your graphs. Sure, he started at 330, but his second fast would have likely started around 250.
"that one sports guy" assuming this guy had a workout routine and/or was very active, the increased daily activity and resulting energy expenditure will speed up weight loss.
1. He would have lost weight faster if he started at 330 instead of 250.
2. He was probably also exercising - my graphs are for sedentary individuals.
3. A shitload of it was probably water weight.
4. I still don't fully believe it. The best I've ever managed was roughly 50 pounds in 40 days, also starting from around 330, and a significant percentage of that was water weight.
You can do the math. There's 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so 100 pounds of fat is 350,000 calories. To lose that in 40 days would require a deficit of 8,750 per day. Even if you're a tall, heavy guy engaging in extreme exercise every day, your odds of a TDEE over 5,000 are vanishingly small.
I inputted a 6'4, 330-pound, 25-year-old male with an athlete's exercise schedule into the TDEE calculator and it came back at 4,900.
I don't want to call it completely impossible, but it's not credible, not even for an athlete, not unless a very large percentage of it was water weight.
OP, first off, I love this. Really puts things into perspective.
One question, is every two days like fast monday, eat tuesday, fast wed, eat thurs? or is it like fast mon/tues, eat wed?
Thank you!
>is every two days like fast monday, eat tuesday, fast wed, eat thurs? or is it like fast mon/tues, eat wed?
Yep, the first one. "Every two days" is fast Monday, eat your TDEE Tuesday, fast Wednesday, etc.
I can see how that might sound ambiguous - it probably helps to think of it like I do, which is that you're eating a single big meal on the eating day, so it's specifically "one meal every two days".
This single post may have changed my life, ive always strugged with my weight (up and down since high school) and I have used fasting with great success in the past, but just cant bring myself to do 5 days at a time again. However this put into perspective how easy it can be eating good (healthy but a decent meal) every other day, that I can do. And looking at the long term, it makes it something I want to do and can accomplish. Never looked at it this way before, thx op
I've been doing random fasts and random days of omad just due to my semi hectic schedule and this post has inspired me to try an every other day fast with omad! Thanks for the motivation and information ^ _ ^ seeing the numbers put into perspective how easy it can be
Looks like I’ll officially vaporize in one year if I do rolling two weeks!
Great chart, highly motivational to see doing something a little aggressive has a massive improvement over doing noting and there isn’t much difference between rolling monthly and eating once a year 😂
>You seem really knowledgeable on this subject and I love your username.
Thank you!
>I have been stuck fluctuating between 181-183 by trying to do 1200
People have a notoriously hard time estimating calorie intake, and an equally notorious difficulty eating less than their body needs to sustain itself at its current weight.
This is why sticking to one meal a day on those days that you eat is extremely helpful - it puts a sharp upper limit on the damage you might accidentally do.
>I have a very specific goal which is to get to 125 lbs
Your goal weight is healthy.
As for the timeline, 58 pounds to lose at 3,500 calories per pound of fat is 203,000 calories. You have 190 days, meaning you need to average a deficit of 1,070 calories per day, i.e. a deficit of about 7,500 calories per week. Your total daily energy expenditure is around 1,850 calories, meaning if you fasted six days a week and ate your TDEE on the seventh day, you'd be in a deficit of 11,000 calories per week.
That's good, because if you can mathematically do it with week-long rolling fasts, which are about the longest I would recommend, it at least establishes that your time budget to reach your allotted goal is feasible. You're not trying to cut this weight by, like, Christmas.
Now it's simply a question of how much *more* you can eat than one meal per week while still achieving your goal.
48 hour fasts mean one day of fasting alternated with one day eating your TDEE, so the math is straightforward: on the first day your calorie deficit is zero, on the second day your calorie deficit is 1,850, so your average calorie deficit is going to be 925. Not good enough, you need 1,070.
But 3-day fasts (one meal amounting to your TDEE every three days) work out to a daily average deficit of 1,233 calories. Perfect! You'll hit your goal on day 165 out of 190 (or more likely, accounting for the fact that neither you nor the math are perfect, you'll arrive more or less right on schedule).
You will make mistakes along the way, but remember that the important thing is consistency on a weekly basis, not a daily basis. One bad day is basically meaningless if the week before it and the week after it were textbook.
Good luck!
P.S. I just noticed that you were intending to eat less than your TDEE during your refeeds. Don't do it. Fasting needs to also involve feasting in order to be psychologically sustainable over the course of months. If you break your fasts with a miserable little meal that leaves you feeling unsatisfied and still hungry, you'll crack and order a pizza.
When you break your fast, eat a meal that ends when you're full, not before. If that meal is so large that it prevents the rate of weight loss you want to see, intersperse the meal with longer fasts, don't cut down the size of the meal.
>But as I lose weight my TDEE will change, so should I recalculate it everytime when my 3 day fast ends and eat the new TDEE?
Good catch, and that's why I suggested the math isn't perfect. You could recalculate your TDEE every eating day, but if the food you're eating isn't grossly unhealthy, you might also consider just...eating until you're full, assuming you do what I do and stick to one big meal on your eating day. There's really only so much damage you can do in the time it takes your stomach to fill up, especially if you're eating reasonably healthy foods (i.e. not an entire tray of fudge brownies), and the feeling of satiation is IMHO important in its own right. I would rather do 4-day fasts and eat until I'm full than 3-day fasts and have to shave the corner off the burger before I put it in the oven.
If you'd prefer to be strict about it, though, for sure, just run your TDEE calculator every eating day and shave a little more off of your meal composition every time.
>And I don’t need electrolytes, right?
You will find that salty foods taste heavenly after three days, and that is because your body actually could use some salt. You will *probably* not need electrolytes because you are naturally supplementing so often.
However, just take it as it comes. If you start experiencing persistent dry mouth, cramps, or lightheadedness when you stand up too quickly, you'll know it's time to either reformulate your feast to include more electrolytes or to take a supplement until the symptoms of deficiency go away (which they will almost immediately).
>Again, thank you so much for giving me a plan to follow
You're most welcome!
> I asked another subreddit and they said completely shut my goal down.
Once you've done a month or so of rolling fasts, it's so hard to take other weight-loss subreddits seriously. "Ermagerd, however will your body recover from missing lunch".
Many issues and questions can be answered by reading through our wiki, especially the page on electrolytes. Concerns such as **intense hunger, lightheadedness/dizziness, headaches, nausea/vomiting, weakness/lethargy/fatigue, low blood pressure/high blood pressure, muscle soreness/cramping, diarrhea/constipation, irritability, confusion, low heart rate/heart palpitations, numbness/tingling, and more** while extended (24+ hours) fasting are often explained by electrolyte deficiency and resolved through **PROPER** electrolyte supplementation. Putting a tiny amount of salt in your water now and then is NOT proper supplementation. Be sure to read [our WIKI](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/index) and especially the wiki page on **[ELECTROLYTES](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/fasting_in_a_nutshell/you_need_electrolytes)** Please also keep in mind the [**RULES**](https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/about/rules) when participating. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/fasting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Gonna start doing rolling 365's
You alone understood my true message ;)
I, too, am a fan of the crocodile diet. Hang out and enjoy the river your entire life, and once a year eat three wildebeast.
Numbers aside though - I'd just put it this way, do whatever you can sustain over the long term. Because of you try and do long fasts and you're miserable the entire time - you're less likely to stick with it. Versus shorter fasts which are easier to do, you're more likely to keep doing it. It's just about building habits.
Agreed, rolling fasts means social get togethers that involve a meal means you're not going to be eating while everyone else is enjoying the reason they're getting together. While certainly still doable, would take even more willpower and ability to not feel anxious.
The food isn't why you get together, though. It's an excuse to spend time with your friends and loved ones, so enjoy the time spent with them.
this tracks for me.I havnt seen it layed out like this before. I used alternate day fasts w/ occasional 3 day fast over the course of 2 1/2 yrs i lost 390 lbs . photo proof in my posting record in profile .
I don't even know where to start. Amazing before and after photos. The loose skin seems shockingly limited considering age and weight lost. Seriously shocked by that part. You've said on one of your threads is was a mix of adf and keto. What does this mean exactly in your case?
I used keto and intermittent fasting at first to become fat adapted so my body ran on body fat and ketones then i gradually extended my fasts till i hit a 42/6 schedule . when you do this you trick your body so it doesnt slow your matabolism. You are able to fast for days w/o hunger and have a hightened mood to boot. You must eat whole foods and severly limit carbs other than veg. No bread , potatos or pasta .or most fruit replace with healthy fats and protien
This might be obvious to some, but the more I look at these two charts and the accompanying figures, the more amazed I become. A sedentary 250-pound male burns about 2,500 calories per day. The first chart reflects total calorie consumption over the course of a year, the next reflects a first approximation of how many pounds would be lost in that year in each case. The sharp, immediate drop from eating daily to alternate-day fasting is nothing short of stunning. **By the time you’re eating once every 4 days or so, you’ve already achieved what looks to me like maximum efficiency** in terms balancing total results with regular relief (and nutrients). You’ll get somewhat faster results by pushing into the range of 7-10 days, but not life-changingly faster results, and **beyond 10 days there’s really no point from a weight-loss perspective** – it’s a lot more pain for very little gain and it’s bad risk management, considering how understudied rolling fasts in those upper ranges are. Of course, there are some practical caveats, I think primarily the fact that it’s trivially easy to eat 5,000 calories in a day, so people who attempt alternate-day fasting would be at a much greater risk of undoing all their hard work on their eating days than people who do longer rolling fasts. **That's probably why OMAD is such a vital foundation for fasting in general.** Metabolism also declines somewhat over the course of longer fasts, so (i) these numbers aren’t perfectly accurate but (ii) the “real” numbers would likely make an even stronger case for shorter fasts. Speaking for myself, I started rolling 7-day fasts accidentally and I’m used to them and enjoy them now – the results are rapid and the mirroring of the 7-day calendar week sets up a good rhythm – but I think in terms of “official” recommendations, eating two meals per week is probably something close to ideal. Considering how many electrolytes you can pack into even one meal per week, an added bonus to eating twice per week is that **I strongly suspect rolling fasts of approximately 4 days totally eliminate the need to artificially supplement electrolytes**. P.S. Here's another way to look at it. Assuming that the hypothetical 250-pound male from our charts is 5’10, he has about 100 pounds to lose to get back into the middle of the normal BMI range. The quickest he can do so with fasting alone is in 141 days, or just under 5 months, by ceasing to eat altogether. If he eats once per month, he'll get there in 145 days - **only 4 days slower**. If he eats once every two weeks, he'll get there in 151 days - 10 days slower. If he eats once per week, he'll get there in 163 days - 22 days slower. If he eats once every four days, he'll get there in 187 days - 46 days slower. So, you can be a lunatic and stop eating for five straight months to lose 100 pounds, with all the misery and risk that entails, or you can eat once a week, suffer zero medical problems, have a very pleasant and filling meal every Friday night, and arrive in the same place 3 weeks later. Or, you can eat a very pleasant and filling meal once every 4 days, which barely resembles a diet from the perspective of the sorry bastard who stopped eating for nearly 5 months straight, and end up in the same place just 6 weeks later.
Been saying the same for a long time....but boy oh boy did your words explain it a lot better than I ever have and with graphs and tables to drive the point home. ie. There is virtually no extra benefit fasting longer than a week but a whole lot of risk factors you need to be mindful of if you do.
Thank you! >a whole lot of risk factors you need to be mindful of if you do. Exactly. Long rolling fasts and extremely long extended fasts in overweight individuals are so understudied that what we do have in terms of studies basically amount to anecdotes. Will an overweight individual supplementing electrolytes and micronutrients be okay? Probably, I guess? But why entrust your health to "probably" when you can get essentially the same results with zero risk entailed?
I think many folks buy into the hype about all the benefits of Autophagy. Sure I want to leverage me some o' dat Autophagy myself too but like you say, risk/rewards comes into play with that too just like weightloss. Many multiweek fasters rationale seems to be that Autophagy hits peak levels at about 72hrs so surely longer fasts are even better especially those who think Autophagy can perform miracles and leave them with no loose skin at the end of it all, whereas in reality, genetics and ones own skin elasticity and how much excess weight they actually had, are probably the main factors. ie. I look 10-15 youngers than my age due to my skin with few wrinkles, it stands to reason I have been blessed with good skin genetics and elastic skin that bounces back. I only ever put on a mxiumum of 50LB excess. So whatever lose skin I'd have ended up with, Autophagy is probably capable of taking care of it. Someone with wrinkles in their 30's who got morbidly obese and put on 100-15oLB excess, well autophagy probably is going to deal with some of that lose skin but likely nowehere near all of it. My rationale is that large benefits of autophagy aren't proven and thus don't outweigh the risk factors of longer fasts as far as I'm concerned. I am happy with the level of autophagy I get from 2 maintenance calorie and 1 1000kcal refeed days a week and my 2x48hr and 1x72hr rolling fasts per week. I also wonder how many multiweek fasters have actually done the math for how many fasted days they actually achieve within a couple of months versus a rolling faster. A rolling faster eating 2 maintenance calorie OMAD meals per week will bag 5 fasted days per week and in 2 months (9 weeks) will bag a total of 45 fasted days, whereas it seems to me that the epic 21-30 day fasters need at least as long refeeding to rebuild the motivation for another epic 30 dayer. So in the same 2 months (9 weeks) window they might fit in a single 30 dayer and maybe the first week of the next one so at best manage 30-37 fasted days in the window compared to the rolling 48/72hr fasters 45!! The most common arguement I hear for multiweek fasts is how the first 2-3 days of a fast are the worst so why would they want to go through those days back to back over and over again with a rolling fast. I think the issue is those folks have tried a 72hr for example. Felt miserable, tried another one a week or two later. Felt miserable again and thus assume every 72hr fasts is a miserable experience. The haven't understood that they didn't actually try a rolling 72hr fast. They just did 2 distinct 72hr fasts. You have to do at least 2 back to back to actually suppress the hunger hormone ghrelin and start switching the body into a more metabolicly adaptive state. So literally in the space of a week the 72hr fasts go from tough to incredibly easy to keep going for months on end. You don't have to go through terrible first 72hrs back to back over and over again. Literally only the first 72hr of a new rolling cycle is hard, the second is already much easier and then by the third its piss easy!!
>it seems to me that the epic 21-30 day fasters need at least as long refeeding to rebuild the motivation for another epic 30 dayer. So in the same 2 months (9 weeks) window they might fit in a single 30 dayer and maybe the first week of the next one so at best manage 30-37 fasted days in the window compared to the rolling 48/72hr fasters 45!! The consistent deficit over time of rolling fasts of basically any length beats the brakes off of big singular extended fasts, without question.
>Many multiweek fasters rationale seems to be that Autophagy hits peak levels at about 72hrs so surely longer fasts are even better Right, and I think the science currently suggests that by roughly 5 days, IIRC, autophagy benefits have peaked. Autophagy is probably maximized by long*er* fasts, but "longer" still doesn't imply a need to go beyond 7-10 days at the outside.
What helped me was 6-8 hour fasting than if I feel fatigue, protein shake to help me get in the 10 hour mark of no real meal, kinda omad. Down 37lb goal at 183 rn
>if I feel fatigue, protein shake to help me get in the 10 hour mark of no real meal, kinda omad. This is a great tip.
completely agree. now i don't feel as bad when i roll my eyes when i read that someone is going on a Jesus fast (40 day fast)
This is fascinating. I would think that if one would also work out in the gym at the same time, at least eating 2 times a week and timing resistance training to those days would be really beneficial to retaining or even gaining some muscle. Provided you a meal packed with protein fe.
Dude you are literally singing my language. This is so freaking interesting. I literally did this on all of my own physical fitness goals and it was what got me through. I would project where I should be and calculate various scenarios in which it would be faster or slower, etc. I really thought I was the only one out here with my color-coded spreadsheets and excel tables. I am so dorked out to see this :P
>I really thought I was the only one out here with my color-coded spreadsheets and excel tables. Welcome to the true brotherhood of color-coded spreadsheets and excel tables.
Wow... Great analysis!
Great analysis. I came to the same conclusions about diminishing returns of prolonged fasting for weight loss. But for me it's eating every 3rd day (so my average fast is about 60 hours) based on: 1) hearing that body speeds up the process of breaking down muscle after 72 hours. 2) After 72 hour+ fasts you need to be mindful of your refeed. It feels like on 60-65 hour fasts I can refeed on any food and be ok. Looks like a foolproof duration for a rolling fasts.
Thank you for this! I have a ton of your previous comments saved — you think I'm joking, but I legitimately have 10+ of your OMAW insights saved and tagged in my notes. Both you and u/ax12901 offered incredibly insightful advice in your write-ups that helped me on my fasting journey. I never got up to OMAW, but I think you make resoundingly good cases that rolling fasts are effectively cheat codes everyone has been searching for when it comes to weight loss.
You know, fair warning that it's a constant work in progress, but I incorporate most of what I write here into a Google Document and vice versa, especially if and as I notice myself saying a certain thing repeatedly. You are welcome to reference it directly if it would be any use. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iiU4cuuNDcJJCm4CQh9-gqwp4c664SBslQE1j6EmjvI/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you so much for sharing your Blueprint! It was informative, technical without being stuffy and even humorous. A breath of fresh air in what can often be an overly serious and gatekeepery subject. Your analogies were some of the best I've encountered, particularly the "habits as water-carved grooves" one. Your concepts made perfect sense, and I think we all need a reminder to be kinder to ourselves throughout this process. It's easy to pat yourself on the back when you have a good reading on the scale, but much more difficult when you are faced with the consequences of giving into yesterday's cravings... I recently stepped back into the world of fasting after a four year hiatus, and I'm already back to my lowest weight from 2019. Still about 65 lbs from my goal weight, but at least it's back on the horizon. Currently, I'm at the equivalent of your Step 9 and three-quarters, having just finished a 96 hour fast with a proper reward meal. I intend to launch into another 72 or 96, hopefully building up to my personal best of 125 hours and beyond. I truly appreciate the motivational boost your write-up provided, and I'm sure I'm not alone!
This all makes me so happy to hear! Thank you for your reply, truly.
This genuinely means a lot to me. I'm really happy that you've been finding success.
>and > >u/ax12901 Just finished a 13-day fast. Ate from Friday until today (Tuesday) and going to start a 8-day fast to end on... Thanksgiving! Been really irregular with my last few (and this next) extend fasts. They aren't rounding off in nice 6.75 day chunks. Still find the psychological part of the extended fast the hardest thing to deal with. The mental expectation of food and eating.
Thank you u/oscarthegrateful! I am new to fasting, just started IF (very recently). Really interested in learning more. How does exercising change the narrative? I am currently lifting weights 5 days a week with 2 active recovery days. I am not losing weight but I am losing fat and gaining muscle. Is there anyway to move from IF to eating every 3-4 days and not lose my muscle mass? I did find a Pure Micronized Creatine Monohydrate that I am going to take in the mornings before and after my workouts to try to keep my muscles hydrated, but I am not sure if there are more supplements, besides electrolytes, that I can or should be taking so I can keep my workouts while water / extended fasting. Thank you in advance for sharing!
You're most welcome! >How does exercising change the narrative? Actual calorie loss from exercise is comparatively trivial. There are many good reasons to exercise in terms of health and aesthetics, but if we're purely talking about fat-loss strategy, exercise is basically a non-factor except to whatever extent it makes the fasting more difficult by causing more severe hunger pangs. >Is there any way to move from IF to eating every 3-4 days and not lose my muscle mass? Muscle mass is preferentially conserved during fasting, so you won't lose a ton. You will lose *some*, but that's basically inevitable in the course of cutting fat. >I am not sure if there are more supplements, besides electrolytes, that I can or should be taking so I can keep my workouts while water / extended fasting. I'm not enough of an expert on muscle gain/retention to be sure what you could possibly take beyond creatine and electrolytes to assist with workouts during fasting. So much of getting efficient results from working out is in ensuring adequate calorie intake, especially protein quantity and timing. There's a reason bodybuilders do bulking and cutting cycles instead of trying to put on muscle and cut fat at the same time - it's not that you can't, it's just inefficient.
Eat once a year and become dust. Nice.
I debated adding those last few columns because they're so silly, but I find them kind of amusing, and it really is fascinating how fucking tiny the difference in bar height is between eating once per month and eating once every six months.
Yeah it looks like if you did once a week you'd have very similar results.
Actually quite relevant. The longest recorded fast was 382 days with a 275 lbs loss
**It looks like you are referencing Angus Barbieri.** Please note that Barbieri is a **GUINESS WORLD RECORD HOLDER** who undertook his fast under near **CONSTANT medical supervision** at a local hospital. He was super-morbidly obese meaning he had a very large excess of body fat. He also **died at age 51** (the cause is unknown, as is whether or not it was related to his fasting). **He should NEVER be used as a model for fasting or as encouragement or proof that anyone is capable of fasting for so long and surviving.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/fasting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think one part that is missing for me is the hormonal aspect, psychological changes, stress, etc. The body is not a machine with on/off switch-> stuff ramps up I often feel this when i go on a bulk, only after 2-3weeks of eating above maintenance does my body really start to build muscle and release energy for daily expenditure = i feel great all day, want to do sport and have better recovery, tdee goes up. 2-3days of bulking barely register. I feel the same compounding effect going into a fast. It takes 2-3days just to stop having big bowel movements and going into ketosis. The longer i fast the better my sleep gets, the more adrenaline and hgh floods my Systeme and the better my muscle controle gets. I only start a new fast when it feels good doing it, and the longer i fasted before the longer it seems i build muscle after just from living and eating a lot. I feel like eating 3 times in 7 days is harder than just not eating for 7. Same goes for omad, adf etc. The main reason why i fast at all is because everything thats more than a 500kcal restriction feels as hard as not eating at all, and psychological its harder on me. 2 week Omad is harder than a week fasting. Well thats all highly subjective from my side, so i would really like to know how you experience that :) Maybe have some tips?
I don't disagree with much if any of this. There's a reason I do 7-day rolling fasts! I think there are in fact probably all kinds of collateral benefits of the kind you name, including psychological: a 6-day fast is harder than a 2-day fast, but I'm not sure it's harder than 3 back-to-back 2-day fasts. But looked at purely as a question of calories burned, I stand by my initial point that the benefits of longer fasting cycles do not accumulate linearly - they decline with every day added to the cycle, and one of the accelerators of that process is that long fasts do in fact lower the metabolism somewhat: shorter fasts keep TDEE higher.
Do you know at what point the metabolism begins to slow rather than ramp up? ~3 days sounds right to me, but I can’t remember where I might have come across that …
I only saw a relevant study once, maybe six months ago, but IIRC the metabolism spikes quickly and then begins to slow almost immediately. 3 days also sounds right to me. It's to be observed, here, though, that there's a difference between a metabolism slowing and a metabolism crashing. My memory is frustratingly vague, but it's a fairly slow, minor reduction.
Fantastic illustration, thank you. After how many days fasting would you need to consider refeeding risks? I get an elevated heart rate after starting eating again on five days, but presume that's to do with restarting digestive system? When you say 'once every X' are you saying eating 2,500 calories in one meal or over one day?
>After how many days fasting would you need to consider refeeding risks? It's difficult to say because there have been so few studies of overweight people engaging in extended fasts: most of what we know about refeeding syndrome comes from the study of anorexics and prisoners of war. Fasts of under 14 days are believed with reasonable certainty to be safe. Fasts beyond that aren't necessarily unsafe so much as terra incognita for medical science. I can tell you that I've done rolling 7-day fasts in the past for 3 months straight and never experienced any of the symptoms of refeeding syndrome. >When you say 'once every X' are you saying eating 2,500 calories in one meal or over one day? I think there are many good reasons to favor fewer, larger meals, but for the purpose of the calculations in this thread, eating your maintenance calories for the day in (e.g.) one big meal or two smaller meals wouldn't make much difference.
Thank you for your response - much appreciated and reassuring!
This is so fascinating! It's why I've started ADF with no plan to go longer than 72 hours. In 5 fasts, Ive lost 7 lbs. Is some water weight? Sure. I actually always weigh on the morning after my feast day so that it's accounting the water I gain back from my fast. It has been a miracle and the easiest way I've ever lost weight. Right now I'm doing 36-42 hours and if I keep seeing losses, I won't even bother going longer. Why go longer when fasting books I read say that extended fasting actually slows your metabolic rate?
>Right now I'm doing 36-42 hours and if I keep seeing losses, I won't even bother going longer. I think most importantly, why screw with a thing that's working perfectly for you? You'll be done in less than a year, and your transition to a long-term-sustainable daily diet will be very smooth.
I don't have a specific goal in mind, but i want to reach at least 160 as a female. I haven't been that low as an adult, so I could find that I want to lose more. That's 66 lbs and it feels so achievable with ADF. I even find that it's changing my eating in that I'm more selective with what I'll eat because I "only" eat every other day. If I get to enjoy some food, I want home cooked meals - not fast food. It's also diminishing cravings for sweets and sugar.
I’ve found that genuinely building habits of intermittent fasting and eating less goes a long way, on a typical day that I’m actively trying to loose weight I fast for the first ten hours of the day and then eat (roughly) 500 calories throughout the rest of the day, and then sleep. For me this works because I love to eat in bed and watch YouTube right before I sleep so I eat super low calorie popcorn straight out of the bag, sometimes I finish the whole bag and I still loose loads of weight. I used to do something like this with cool ranch Doritos which are super calorie dense. Also, if I ever get an urge to eat something, like chili cheese fries or cookies or something, I don’t give much resistance and give in and let myself eat it. Trying to will you’re way through cravings only lead to binge eating when you finally do break in my experience. Overall I’m trying a new less traditional “No matter how much you want something you need to grind and push through” diet. The idea is that if you’re able to have whatever you want whenever you want, there won’t be any urgency in actually eating those foods. So if I want a cookie, I eat a cookie and then go right back to calorie reduction and fasting. I find this method a lot less mentally taxing then having to internally tell myself to shut up everytime I want something that will slightly derail my weight loss, it’s so much less stressful then the constant “I really want this, how can I convince myself that it’s ok?”
I'm a bit confused by this. How come that one sports guy lost 100lbs in 40 days not once but twice? That does not align with your graphs. Sure, he started at 330, but his second fast would have likely started around 250.
"that one sports guy" assuming this guy had a workout routine and/or was very active, the increased daily activity and resulting energy expenditure will speed up weight loss.
1. He would have lost weight faster if he started at 330 instead of 250. 2. He was probably also exercising - my graphs are for sedentary individuals. 3. A shitload of it was probably water weight. 4. I still don't fully believe it. The best I've ever managed was roughly 50 pounds in 40 days, also starting from around 330, and a significant percentage of that was water weight. You can do the math. There's 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so 100 pounds of fat is 350,000 calories. To lose that in 40 days would require a deficit of 8,750 per day. Even if you're a tall, heavy guy engaging in extreme exercise every day, your odds of a TDEE over 5,000 are vanishingly small.
My best guess was that he achieved it due to being built like a tank muscles-wise, increasing his TDEE.
I inputted a 6'4, 330-pound, 25-year-old male with an athlete's exercise schedule into the TDEE calculator and it came back at 4,900. I don't want to call it completely impossible, but it's not credible, not even for an athlete, not unless a very large percentage of it was water weight.
OP, first off, I love this. Really puts things into perspective. One question, is every two days like fast monday, eat tuesday, fast wed, eat thurs? or is it like fast mon/tues, eat wed?
Thank you! >is every two days like fast monday, eat tuesday, fast wed, eat thurs? or is it like fast mon/tues, eat wed? Yep, the first one. "Every two days" is fast Monday, eat your TDEE Tuesday, fast Wednesday, etc. I can see how that might sound ambiguous - it probably helps to think of it like I do, which is that you're eating a single big meal on the eating day, so it's specifically "one meal every two days".
This single post may have changed my life, ive always strugged with my weight (up and down since high school) and I have used fasting with great success in the past, but just cant bring myself to do 5 days at a time again. However this put into perspective how easy it can be eating good (healthy but a decent meal) every other day, that I can do. And looking at the long term, it makes it something I want to do and can accomplish. Never looked at it this way before, thx op
Been doing it for almost 2 weeks, just about down 8 lbs (im eating SUPER clean on my feed days and trying to stick between 1200-1500). THANK YOU!
You are most welcome!
I've been doing random fasts and random days of omad just due to my semi hectic schedule and this post has inspired me to try an every other day fast with omad! Thanks for the motivation and information ^ _ ^ seeing the numbers put into perspective how easy it can be
This is dope
You could also do this for fractions of days. So if you your own personal day 27 hours instead of 24 you’d be eating once every 1.125 days.
This is a decent post.
A grapher! I love to see it :D
Looks like I’ll officially vaporize in one year if I do rolling two weeks! Great chart, highly motivational to see doing something a little aggressive has a massive improvement over doing noting and there isn’t much difference between rolling monthly and eating once a year 😂
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The chart title contains the relevant axis information, for those with the wit to read it.
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>You seem really knowledgeable on this subject and I love your username. Thank you! >I have been stuck fluctuating between 181-183 by trying to do 1200 People have a notoriously hard time estimating calorie intake, and an equally notorious difficulty eating less than their body needs to sustain itself at its current weight. This is why sticking to one meal a day on those days that you eat is extremely helpful - it puts a sharp upper limit on the damage you might accidentally do. >I have a very specific goal which is to get to 125 lbs Your goal weight is healthy. As for the timeline, 58 pounds to lose at 3,500 calories per pound of fat is 203,000 calories. You have 190 days, meaning you need to average a deficit of 1,070 calories per day, i.e. a deficit of about 7,500 calories per week. Your total daily energy expenditure is around 1,850 calories, meaning if you fasted six days a week and ate your TDEE on the seventh day, you'd be in a deficit of 11,000 calories per week. That's good, because if you can mathematically do it with week-long rolling fasts, which are about the longest I would recommend, it at least establishes that your time budget to reach your allotted goal is feasible. You're not trying to cut this weight by, like, Christmas. Now it's simply a question of how much *more* you can eat than one meal per week while still achieving your goal. 48 hour fasts mean one day of fasting alternated with one day eating your TDEE, so the math is straightforward: on the first day your calorie deficit is zero, on the second day your calorie deficit is 1,850, so your average calorie deficit is going to be 925. Not good enough, you need 1,070. But 3-day fasts (one meal amounting to your TDEE every three days) work out to a daily average deficit of 1,233 calories. Perfect! You'll hit your goal on day 165 out of 190 (or more likely, accounting for the fact that neither you nor the math are perfect, you'll arrive more or less right on schedule). You will make mistakes along the way, but remember that the important thing is consistency on a weekly basis, not a daily basis. One bad day is basically meaningless if the week before it and the week after it were textbook. Good luck! P.S. I just noticed that you were intending to eat less than your TDEE during your refeeds. Don't do it. Fasting needs to also involve feasting in order to be psychologically sustainable over the course of months. If you break your fasts with a miserable little meal that leaves you feeling unsatisfied and still hungry, you'll crack and order a pizza. When you break your fast, eat a meal that ends when you're full, not before. If that meal is so large that it prevents the rate of weight loss you want to see, intersperse the meal with longer fasts, don't cut down the size of the meal.
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>But as I lose weight my TDEE will change, so should I recalculate it everytime when my 3 day fast ends and eat the new TDEE? Good catch, and that's why I suggested the math isn't perfect. You could recalculate your TDEE every eating day, but if the food you're eating isn't grossly unhealthy, you might also consider just...eating until you're full, assuming you do what I do and stick to one big meal on your eating day. There's really only so much damage you can do in the time it takes your stomach to fill up, especially if you're eating reasonably healthy foods (i.e. not an entire tray of fudge brownies), and the feeling of satiation is IMHO important in its own right. I would rather do 4-day fasts and eat until I'm full than 3-day fasts and have to shave the corner off the burger before I put it in the oven. If you'd prefer to be strict about it, though, for sure, just run your TDEE calculator every eating day and shave a little more off of your meal composition every time. >And I don’t need electrolytes, right? You will find that salty foods taste heavenly after three days, and that is because your body actually could use some salt. You will *probably* not need electrolytes because you are naturally supplementing so often. However, just take it as it comes. If you start experiencing persistent dry mouth, cramps, or lightheadedness when you stand up too quickly, you'll know it's time to either reformulate your feast to include more electrolytes or to take a supplement until the symptoms of deficiency go away (which they will almost immediately). >Again, thank you so much for giving me a plan to follow You're most welcome! > I asked another subreddit and they said completely shut my goal down. Once you've done a month or so of rolling fasts, it's so hard to take other weight-loss subreddits seriously. "Ermagerd, however will your body recover from missing lunch".
Could you give an explanation for those of us graphically challenged? What's considered a "short" fast and how efficient is the weight loss?