**** Official 2020 Fitness Thread ****

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by epitome1170

Question for the wise group in here (sorry for the backstory on it as I think it does have a role)...

Last year for lent, I decided I was going to fast. I needed to lose weight anyway (38 year old at 6'4" 250 at the time) and I liked the sacrifice of it. So for the 40+ days, I did not eat during the week... only on Sundays. The last few Sundays, in particular, I let my diet go to crap in order to try to gain as many calories as I could because without it I was afraid I wouldn't make it to Easter without losing too much weight. All said and done when I finished I was just under 200 pounds (197).

Fast forward to today... for the last year since then, I essentially IF... my eating window is 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm. In particular the last month, I have been working out 1-1.5 hours in the morning with my calorie intake always around 800-1400 calories (depending on the day). However, my weight (now at 243) will not go down.

So my question... did I do irreparable harm to my metabolism by my long fasting? How do I offset it? Or am I Low-T?

Thoughts?

Metabolic damage is likely. No one should fast that long. Sorry, it’s the truth.

I do IF and have for a decade. I would try increasing your feeding window to 8 hours. I’d eat around 1200-1500 calories per day and spread them throughout the caloric window. If you can try exercising right before your feeding window, that would be best. If you can supply calories immediately post workout, your insulin sensitively may return (it’s likely off with a fast that long). Try to have this as your highest carb meal too.

I’d be concerned about your body functioning first before further weight loss. At this point don’t focus on scale weight and increase the weight training to promote your BMR.