Fasting As You Near Your Goal Weight

[Franchesca]

Hey, I have a question that I’ve been trying to make sense of, and although I’m sure there’s some info here somewhere that would give me the answer, I’m having trouble finding it.

Does fasting change for you at all as you near your goal weight? I know that as a person gets nearer to his goal weight, that fat comes off more slowly, and I’m wondering how this affects fasting. I added in fasting early in my journey – Monday and Friday during the days, eating dinner both nights having not eaten since dinner the night before – which I think really helped. But now that I’m within 10lbs of my goal, I’m finding it harder not to binge once my fast ends. I’m wondering if others have found fasting more of a challenge as they approached their goal. Did you shorten your fasts from 24 hours? Did you increase the amount you ate after the fast ended? Perhaps the question is: how (or did) fasting change for you as you got closer to your goal?

[Kelly]

Absolutley Franchesca, yes this is quite normal. I can’t fast for very long any more and it’s been like this running on 2 years now. Nope, when you don’t have as much body fat, especially for females, the longer fasts just don’t work anymore. When I noticed this happening for me that’s when I did the research on fasted workouts because without longer fasts you miss out on the HGH benefits you get during hours 15-24.

The good news is that you get that same HGH benefit from fasted workouts. Don’t worry about how many hours fasted, just do the workout early in the day before you eat, that is all. From here on out remember that all that matters is the slight deficit for fat loss, and it might be less days per week and not as deep of a deficit when you have less body fat. There is no magic formula. Pretty much all the calculator is good for is telling you your maintenance number. Under that for a deficit. Don’t go over or you gain. That’s all you need to know anymore, you graduated and you go forth and keep putting in the miles.

[April]

Your hard work is paying off!

I’m in a similar situation with fasting. 24 hour fasts only work if I’ve eaten significantly over maintenance. Extended fasts are now posing a problem, too. It’s a learning curve for all of us. I’m now experimenting with eating a light breakfast on work days due to feeling “bingey.”

Since starting ESE in September I didn’t have a problem fasting until lunch each day. For the past month I’ve noticed that I’ve been obsessed with food, unable to maintain a deficit, and barely able to stay at maintenance. I’ve also noticed on the days that I eat breakfast I’m not obsessing over food. Light bulb moment. Putting 2 and 2 together, I’ve just started eating a light meal of an egg on a slice of lower calorie toast before I go to work. It did the trick yesterday. No obsessive foodie thoughts. I was completely satisfied with my lunch and had no desire to visit the vending machine for a packet of peanuts and I was able to stay at a deficit for the day. I made sure that my breakfast was under 200 calories, very balanced in macros, and delicious. I’ll stick with this eating pattern unless I’m not seeing progress or if my metrics increase.

[Franchesca]

Thank you for the replies!

I really relate to the idea of thinking about food constantly. Like I said, I’m just finding it harder and harder to stick to the plan and I’m wondering what others do/have done that works. I was feeling a little disappointed at losing that great boost from the 15-24 hours fast, but I had forgotten about fasting workouts, which I do every time. So that makes me feel a little better that I’m still getting a little bit of extra benefit. And I agree that it’s much, much easier to do a longer fast after over-eating, which, I am obviously trying NOT to do.

I’m started breaking my fast around 3pm or 3.30pm which gives me about 21 hours; still not bad. But when I pick my daughter up from school and she sits down to eat the rest of what she didn’t eat in her lunch, I start to go a little batty. And then because I have to cook on those nights (I work evenings the other nights of the week), there is simply no way I can prepare dinner after fasting all day.

So i think I’ll try shortening the length of my fast, maintaining the fasted workouts, and perhaps increasing my deficit calories. After all, they’re not really deficit days if I end up bingeing, right? I just wanted to get some thoughts on others who’ve been there before too, and make sure I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel.

[Author]

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