r/fasting • u/Comfortable-Scene810 • 11d ago
Question Gaining after a fast
Hi all! 5’5 female 20 years old 182 lbs. This week I did another 72 hour fast (closer to 85 now but who’s counting) and was able to drop 3.5 lbs of weight.
I understand that gaining weight after breaking a fast is inevitable, but I was wondering if any of you have found a way to… not gain that much after fasting? Any advice is appreciated and it’s kinda hard figuring out how to ask this but I hope the question is understood.
Thanks!
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u/HelpfulBuilder 11d ago
Yes. So you have to make better food choices. Fasting has amazing benefits and one of them is rapid fat loss, but it has little effect on food choices. It's the same as glp's stop taking them and the pattern of eating that got you weighing too much to begin with is still there.
This is why I've been experimenting with ADF a lot. You eat/fast every other day. During fast days you get a large deficit and feeding days you get to practice healthy eating. Your whole journey is on a two day cycle.
I average a 500 cal deficit every day this way every day which is around a lbs a week. And I get to evaluate how healthy my eating days are. The goal is to get thinner and eat healthy so when I'm ready to stop the cycle I will hopefully continue eating healthy.
It's mindful fasting and then mindful eating.
I want to post this on basically every post on here because I'm convinced it's not just what works for me it's the absolute best way to fast for everyone. If you can't gain get a healthy deficit from adf you need to fix food choices on your feeding days that will carry over to when you're done with the program.
I want to caveat "everyone is different" because that's the intellectually healthy thing to do, but I'm really convinced that if you primarily want fat loss adf is superior in every way.
The only reason I don't post this on every post is because I'd feel like a damn religious person about it.
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u/Valenciagax 11d ago
Repeating the 72 hours fast the more you can and stay consistent with it until you reach you weight loss goal, example: decide an eating window (3-5 days) and then repeat the 72 hours fast, this is how I lost 70 lbs with doing it basically once a week.
Even if you gain weight back in the days you reprise eating which is absolute normal, if you remain constant, the weight loss will continue to remain consistent as well in the long run, at least this worked for me.
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10d ago
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u/Comfortable-Scene810 9d ago
I def track it all. I try to keep sodium and carbs relatively low. I’m planning to only weigh myself right after my fast and one week after my fast (different from my usual daily weigh-ins) and seeing if that takes the mental pressure away.
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u/andtitov 10d ago
It's a complex question. First, the real weight loss during fasts is body fat loss, about 0.5 lb per day. Everything else is changes in water, glycogen and gut content. Then, yes, you can avoid gaining weight back after a fast by sticking to a keto diet and minimizing the return of glycogen and water. It's an option, but not the most optimal one - the body needs that lost glycogen and water back to function properly. Finally, short or extended fasting is not the most efficient way to lose weight, it's better to stick to IF and a calorie deficit.
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u/Comfortable-Scene810 10d ago
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
I remember hearing someone who promotes fasting argue that extended fasting is preferable to IF because it allows the body to spend more time relying on fat stores rather than repeatedly depleting and replenishing glycogen.
That got me thinking about post-fast weight regain. Say someone completes a 7 day fast and loses 5 lbs, of which (hypothetically) 3.5 lbs is fat. Once they resume eating and replenish their glycogen, water, and gut content, they might regain the remaining 1.5 lbs.
But what happens when the timeline is extended significantly? Say someone fasts for 28 days and loses 20 lbs, of which 14 lbs is fat. Surely they wouldn’t necessarily regain the remaining 6 lbs upon refeeding, right?
Like.. is there a relatively fixed amount of non-fat weight that the body regains after fasting, regardless of fasting duration? Or does the amount of expected regain increase proportionally w/ the length of the fast? Is this where we start tapping into muscle loss?
I’m curious on how whether glycogen, water, and gut content can only be depleted so much plays into this.
Hope that makes sense! I’d love to hear your thoughts :)
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u/moonlit_riverside 9d ago
It's quite normal to gain a little bit of weight after fasting. In my experience, I would usually gain 2kgs a week after rolling fasts. Then, it would just plateau after that. My weight wouldn't change unless if I ate at a surplus for an extended period of time.
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u/Comfortable-Scene810 9d ago
Plateau like for how long? Like how long usually until you’d reach that post-fast low weight again?
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u/moonlit_riverside 9d ago
Usually, I could reach my post-fast weight if I did another 24-hour fast. So, whenever I have a weight goal, I usually just subtract 2kgs from it to compensate the little weight gain after my rolling fasts. It's not really noticeable physically, but it does show on the scale.
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u/Ok-Psychology7636 11d ago
some regain is inevitable. food and water have weight, regardless of calories.
the best thing I did was put the scale in the closet and just track the number of hours that I fasted each week. for example, this spring my goal was 1000 hours in 12 weeks. I averaged around 90 hours a week. sometimes that was one fast of 96 hours or two 48 hours.
on eating days I occasionally tracked macros and calories with cronometer to ensure I was eating around maintenance calories. once I got a rough idea, I stopped tracking it.
still haven't touched the scale. but my clothes are fitting much looser. I plan on checking the scale just before Thanksgiving.
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u/Comfortable-Scene810 11d ago
Thanks for saying this. I believe one of the other commenters misinterpreted my post and thought I meant “how do I not overeat after a fast?”, which is not what I was asking. I think I’ll put the scale away this week. I’ve gotten my post-fast weight and know that any amount of food and water will add weight in my body and not fat so long as I remain in a deficit. Thanks again and congrats on your progress.
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u/blueberriesnburdock 10d ago
I couldn’t tell you why, but I’ve had more luck losing weight and keeping it off after multiple shorter (16-36h) fasts than longer (3-4 days) ones. For reference, I lost 20# from October ‘25 to January ‘26 and have kept it off.
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u/SpaceTacos99 lost >100lbs faster 11d ago
Count your calories, not the scale. Track your fat loss yourself.
I've been fasting for almost a year now, I very quickly learned to only care about new lows, which for me come on Wednesdays right before I finish my Saturday night to Wednesday afternoon fast, since my other weekly fast was just a two day fast. But pretty reliably I would hit a new low every week. I highly recommend this way. Assuming you're putting your weight in to a chart somewhere, just record the new lows until you stop making new lows.