Hi Elky,
I have to head outside because the guests staying in the holiday let are doing something which is stressing out one of the farm dogs, she is barking constantly. But I wanted to quickly jump in to say you are quite correct. You will not be damaging your metabolism by fasting. – How we damage our metabolism is by counting calories but not getting our carb intake down low enough.
If insulin levels are high our bodies can not access our fat stores for fuel. – So after a time of using muscle and other tissue to make up the difference between the calories eaten and burnt, our bodies sensibly decide we are being starved and become more efficient, reducing the number of calories needed each day. – So you get on the roundabout of never ending diets.
If you keep your insulin level low and your body can access your fat stores, there isn’t a shortage of calories and the metabolic rate doesn’t change.
You may have heard of an American TV program, the biggest looser, where they take a group of morbidly obese people into a “house” and with the aid of fitness trainers working them hard and a restricted diet they compete to loose the most weight with the person who looses the least weight each week being evicted and the last one standing getting a large cash prize. They never have a reunion, because they all put the weight back on and more. – Apparently their metabolic rate drops on average by either 500 or 600 calories. _ I can’t remember which – —– I have heard a rumour that some of the x contestants are working with Dr Fung, he is doing some research to see if fasting can be used to reverse the damage to their metabolic rate and plans to publish the results later this year.
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Right, dog has shut up so will continue.
Weight loss rates. – The rapid weight loss some people achieve at the start is because a high carb diet causes our bodies to store fluid. – Cut out the carbs and that fluid is released. – If you are not seeing that rapid weight loss then I guess you must have been low carb before joining the forum?
Your weight will fluctuate by up to 3kg over the course of every day. A litre of water weighs 2.2 lbs, and we are aiming to drink 2 litres a day. Plus the weight of whatever is in your digestive system will vary. 800 cals of cheese weighs a lot less than 800 cals of celery. –
One lb of fat equals 3500 calories. – That means that the average woman has to fast for 2 days to burn off 1lb of fat.
Weight loss isn’t linear. – Our bodies don’t burn the fat out of a single cell at a time, they burn a little bit of fat out of a lot of cells replacing that fat with water, this is repeated, over and over until all the fat is gone from those fat cells and then you have a Whoosh moment, when the water is released, and there is a step change in the readings on the scales. How big these steps are depends on the area of fat cells the body is working on, and that seems be different for different people.
Finally, if you are fasting that means that other hormones are also getting the chance to catch up, including growth hormone which is responsible for bone and muscle strength. – Both of which weigh more as their strength increases.
That is why the scales are not a good way of measuring progress. Far better to monitor with the tape measure and the mirror. – Sadly, our bodies do not always tackle the fat from the places we want them to target. – Fat in organs doesn’t show in the mirror. But its really good for your body to get rid of that. – Quite a lot of use who had a lot to loose have reported changes in shoe size, and collar bones tend to emerge before hip bones.
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I hope those bullet points help answer your questions. If I have missed anything then please shout out.
Ohh, one thing I was going to say was to agree with another poster, if you having two meals a day, breakfast and lunch or lunch and evening meal is better than breakfast and evening meal. – The longer the period between insulin spikes from eating the better.