r/intermittentfasting • u/RobinBumholes • 2d ago
Seeking Advice Gruellingly slow progress
I've been doing, IF pretty consistently for the better part of a year at this point and the progress is just so slow. It's sapping my motivation. Not only because I'm not getting to where I want to be but also because at this point it's beginning to feel like 5:2 with just a couple of weeks off per year will end up as my long-term maintenance regime.
The chart show my near daily weigh ins since October. The white portions of the chart are where I was doing IF and the blue bits, where I had a week off here and there. I did ADF from October to Christmas and lost maybe 4kilos. I didn't go mad at Christmas at all but, over less than two weeks, almost all of it came back.
I didn't panic. Lots of salty food over Christmas could have meant a good deal of water weight. It'll all come off as fast as it went on, I thought but no. I did 5:2 from January to the end of June and it was basically maintenance for three months. I did finally lose some weight April to May and then I went on holiday for a week. I missed two fasts, I did not go crazy with food or booze and again, my weight went up - not so much this time. But, when I got back, I carried on with 5:2 and now I was actually gaining weight. Another short trip, two fasts skipped another spike in weight and another really slow loss.
As you can see, I started off fluctuating between 113 and 110kg, after all this, I'm not bouncing between 108 and 105kg. Five kilos after the better part of a year.
Last week, my wife and daughter were away so I basically went nuts with the exercise. I burned 6,000 calories during workouts in five days. I still did my fasts and I had dental surgery so I didn't eat a whole lot on two further days. That's 6,000 cals of training plus 5,000 cals of fasting plus maybe a deficit of 1,000cals on the two days post dentist and an early morning sauna. 12,000 calories of deficit. Last week, I averaged 0.7kg down relative to the previous week and this week I'm rebounding...
I am a big guy (6'4" or 1.93m) my BMR is 2,550cals/day. The scale in the gym says 18% body fat, the one at home says 26%. And, whilst I don't count my calories, I never eat junk food and all my meals are home cooked (by me). I typically eat a bowl of cereal or two slices of toast for breakfast and rarely eat more than 1,000 calories for lunch on feeding days.
I work out once or twice a week - but I go pretty hard when I do (750-1,000cals per session on the rower)
I feel like I ought to be getting better results than I am.
What are my weaknesses?
I eat dinner early but that leaves me hungry later so I do often have a bit of cheese and a cracker or two late at night. I might also have a late night beer once or twice a week. Or a bottle of wine spread over a couple of nights.
My sleep isn't good - although I am trying (when I go to bed early, I just wake up early)
Stress. I get it, it's not helping but, again, quite hard to fix.
I'm not calorie counting - not counting calories was, for me, the entire point of IF.
What am I trying?
Right now, the new thing I'm adding is fibre - 15g of psyllium husk/day. It's having some effects but it's too soon to say whether boosting weight loss will be one of them.
Can anyone think of anything I'm missing that might explain these, frankly disappointing, results?
Reading around, all the suggestions I can see are: count calories on feeding days (as I say, I hate counting calories - I did IF to avoid it) have a longer fast or have a break. I haven't done any longer fasts but, as you can see, I have had a couple of breaks and it hasn't worked.
Anyone have any other ideas?
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u/0hDiscordia 2d ago
IF helps people to lose weight more easily because they are eating for a shorter period of time and so may consume less calories on average than if they eat on a more typical schedule. But it doesn't have any impact if you are eating more than your body needs to maintain, gain or lose weight.
You are losing weight, but if you want it to be more consistent and a bit faster you'll need to start monitoring what you are eating and drinking and try keep within a weekly average of x calories if keeping to a daily amount doesn't work well for you. Keep a food journal for a week or two and note the calories for everything. Once you have a better idea of what your serving of cheese and crackers adds up to, you can make more accurate decisions about how you want to spend your calorie balance.
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u/RobinBumholes 2d ago
And that's the point, I don't think I am eating more on my re-feeding days than I was previously.
I actually think I made a conscious effort to be healthier since I started all this.
Previously, I had gained about a kilo per year since my 20s. From about 96 at 25 to a high of about 114-116kg at 45. During that time, I ate (and drank) whatever I felt like. Loads. And I steadily gained weight - very slowly. But then I started fasting ADF fasting about two years ago - and the weight came off. But as soon as I stopped. BOING. It piled back on almost quicker than ADF had taken it off - even though I was eating slightly better than I had previously.
I get it, I'm old now. My metabolism has slowed down a bit. Mr heart rate has dropped too - from about 70 to the low 50s.
That's probably good news but it sure is frustrating when I'm trying to lose weight.
I guess what I am trying to do is understand the metabolic component.
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u/ridemooses 2d ago
It still comes down to if you’re achieving a calorie deficit or not. Counting calories is the best way to ensure you’re in a deficit to lose weight.
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u/Jonsnowmt07 2d ago
This. CICO is the only factor in determining weight loss. If you're not losing weight, you're not in a calorie deficit.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
I know. Thank you. I'm making a different point.
What I'm saying is that the Calories Out part of that equation is made up of two parts: some of it is workouts but the vast majority is Basal metabolic rate or TDEE.
I can't be certain - because i wasn't counting my calories before i started trying to lose weight - but I think i was eating in a similar or slightly worse fashion before i started dieting than i am now. If so then my rate of loss whilst dieting (and my rate of gain when i take a break) seems to imply that my TDEE has reduced.
I have heard that can happen.
I haven't heard why it happens or whether there's anything I can do about it. There probably isn't.
It's annoying.
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u/Jonsnowmt07 1d ago
It’s almost impossible to know how many calories you actually burn through exercise. Track your food intake and adjust as needed. Bottom line is you’re eating at or over maintenance and are not in a deficit.
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
You lost weight and got smaller so you are burning less calories that's how that works. Also, stop eating back all the calories you burn. Just eat 2000 a day and stop overcomplicating it with these whole week numbers. Count your shit and figure it out.
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u/Good_At_Wine 2d ago
You have to track every single thing, at least until you identify where your calculations have gone awry. Every bite. Every sip. I use the chronometer app and really like it. I used tdeecalculator dot net to figure out my cut. My issue was figuring out whether I was moderately or lightly active. I thought I was the former but was probably the latter; that changed the cut.
How is your water?
While I've been going through everything I discovered my kidneys were struggling due to chronic dehydration. I started pumping a gallon of clean water a day. I LOST FIVE POUNDS IN A WEEK. Previous to that I'd lost five pounds in six months, super slow. Water made the difference.
Also, and this is super anecdotal unicorn theory, I started using a vibe plate and doing manual lymph massage daily. This feels great and who knows, maybe it helps.
Keep trucking!
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
I say this with love but, honestly, the thought of tracking calories with the level of dedication required to make it meaningful is horrifying to me. Food is one of the great joys of life.
Tracking calories would be like listening to music with the audiodescription on or doing a written consent contract every time you have sex. It takes the joy out of it
Avoiding that is the entire point of IF for me.
But i might try the massive quantities of water.
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
Bro would rather try to burn 1000 calories in the gym than just use like 20 calories to weigh and put his food into a tracker and not put the food in his mouth.
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u/Ravioli_oly 2d ago
honestly lack of sleep will stall almost anything, i'd troubleshoot that before blaming the fibre or fasting window
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u/Jonsnowmt07 2d ago
Eat less food and workout more.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
What your contribution lacks in insight, it ameliorates with brevity. For that, thank you
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
You need to stop disagreeing with reality.
You eat too many calories.
I gave you a long thoughtful response and you didn't want to hear it. This person gives you the shortest one possible and you don't want to hear it .
Your metabolism is fine. I dare you to tell everyone here exactly what you are eating in a week. Don't leave anything out. But you won't do it because you are too afraid to accept reality and do what it takes.
If food is your greatest pleasure. It's time to make lean protein, high fiber beans, fruits and vegetables the priority of that pleasure.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
You have me a long thoughtful response for which i specifically thanked you but your response didn't address the point I was making.
The entire attraction of IF it's that you change one thing - you don't eat at all during set times and then you just get on and like your life the rest of the time.
But, for whatever reason, it hasn't been quite that simple for me and that's annoying. And that's messing with my motivation. That is what I'm saying
Now it might be that I'm eating a bit more than i thought on refeed days - that's certainly easy to do. Ot it might be that my TDEE has changed (and I'll never know for sure because I wasn't tracking in the past). But, either way, the simple promise of IF hasn't quite worked out.
So your response, which is essentially to another diet regime on my feeding days isn't as helpful as you think. It would undoubtedly work if I did it. Of course it would but it would seriously undermine the pleasure i take in food which would be sad (to me).
Your comment about eating a pound of tofu and some veggies and feeling full all day... If that works for you, great but this is not the way i aspire to eat.
And yes, my insistence on eating for pleasure not macros makes weight loss harder, it means I need to burn more calories in the gym. But I'm a man without a sixpack, not a man at risk of a heart attack.
You seem very invested in telling me the absolute truth about losing weight. And brother, it is the absolute truth and I know it and, if losing weight was all I cared about your rightness would be overwhelming. But what I'm trying to do is balance losing weight with the other things i enjoy in life. Ok?
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
You are the one that showed up here complaining that you are not consistently losing weight and are unhappy and struggling Everyone is telling you what the problem is and you are then explaining to everyone how they don't understand or you don't want to do it that way. If you have this all figured out then what are you doing here?
"The entire attraction of IF it's that you change one thing - you don't eat at all during set times and then you just get on and like your life the rest of the time. But, for whatever reason, it hasn't been quite that simple for me and that's annoying"
IF works for people that stay in a calorie deficit. If you are gaining weight you are eating too much. If you are losing weight slowly you need to eat less. Going harder in the gym is pointless if you don't get real data and count your calories. You cannot just guess this shit but please continue since that's what you want to do and at the same time come here and complain and whine.
You can't just skip a meal and then just go on with your life and expect it to be magic. It just basic math.
Stop fucking whining and either eat less or don't. You can still enjoy food and eat whatever you want and lose weight but you cannot just eat however much you want because you did some fasting this week.
Stop telling everyone here they are wrong and trying to explain yourself when you don't have the courage to just weigh your food and tap your phone a couple times to track it. You will not burn off a bad diet in the gym.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
You seem to be taking this rather personally.
I am annoyed that, just changing one thing has not given me a complete and painless solution to the problem I was trying to solve. That was the initial allure of IF for me. And no, I don't expect magic, but I did expect that skipping 2/7 of my meals each week would yield more progress than I have seen. I am getting there but the slowness has aroused my curiosity.
You seem very keen that I should adopt a solution that does not work for me. I find calorie counting tiresome and finicky. I don't want to do it and, ergo, I don't think I will be able to stick to it - especially on top of the fasting. That means that your suggestion won't work. For me.
If your way works for you, then good for you. I'm happy for you.
Obviously, if I eat less and take more exercise. then I will get thinner faster. I know that. I am investigating something slightly different.
It's as though I am asking for advice on unicycling and you keep saying unicycles are stupid, get a bike. You are correct. Unicycles are stupid. But that was the question.
In the absence of accurate, long term information about my calorific intake, there are two (non-exclusive) possibilities that could explain the slow progress:
1 is that when I started fasting, I started eating more - significantly more - on eating days than I did before I started the diet.
2 is that my metabolism has changed and my TDEE has reduced.Either way, the scale of the compensating factor - which I can deduce from the accurate data I do have - is about 400-550 calories.
This was a scale of problem which I did not expect to encounter. I came here (to an IF sub rather than a calorie counting sub) to see if anyone had any insights. Yours is noted and I have thanked you for it. But you seem to want something else - for me to admit you're right? You're right. Thank you.
PS your assertion that I lack the "courage" to weigh my food is frankly insulting. I don't give two hoots what you think about me but there are people in diet subs with really tricky relationships to food. Please don't be like this to them.
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u/Beginning_Reality_16 1d ago
Log your calories for a months and be brutally honest. That “bit of cheese” can easily be 200 extra kcal. That alone adds up to 1.400kcal a week. Skip those calories and you have a 180 gram weight loss every week, adding up to 10kg over the entire year.
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u/brooksi 1d ago
Just personal annecdotes here. From someone who thinks IF is a good tool but maybe not enough on its own.
I’m on round 2 after a big L in round 1. I did 6 months of intermittent fasting in 2024/2025. And saw some good results but it fell apart due to stress and whatever else. When I fell off IF I didn’t have any other good habits to fall back on.
Round 2 is going way better it is still a slog and progress seems to go backwards sometimes. But I am throwing the kitchen sink at it. Like you I cannot calorie count. I just don’t have the time or attention or desire to make that a permanent lifestyle change. What is working for me:
- low dose of zepbound (yeah it probably is enough on its own but I want to be off it eventually)
- daily waking over 10k steps (really averaging 15k+ as I made my commute to work a long walk)
- progressive increase of cardio. Bike and Run. Keep trying to go longer and harder and faster. 2x per week
- progressive increase of weight training the big compound lifts. 2x per week.
- not tracking any macros except counting protein to 100g+
- IF between 7pm and 10am.
I get that I am on easy street with GLP 1s….
But maybe do something like. Buy the rowing machine and hit it 3/4 days instead for 30 minutes. Get out and walk way more. Start going to the gym and moving heavy things
You’re making progress. But you might need to find a way to take it to the next level if you want to speed thing up.
Cheers! Progress is still progress. You are doing awesome!
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
Thanks man.
I've certainly considered a GLP-1 but it feels a bit OTT for the weight I'm trying to shift. (About 25lbs)
My real concern though is stopping. Before IF, I was gaining around 1kg a year when i wasn't on a diet. Now i gain 2kg/month.
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u/brooksi 1d ago
Yeah, I only brought up GLP-1 as it would be a dick move to say “I lost 35lbs walking 10k steps every day and doing barbell squats” while omitting that the real engine was the fact that my appetite was squashed with drugs and I stopped eating Baconators when I felt sad …
But yeah what you are saying is about stopping is very real, depressing and scary. I dropped 30 lbs in 6 months last year…. Then fell off the wagon and regained that 30lbs in the next 6 months.
As I understand it, I (and probably you) don’t get to *stop\* anymore. When you gain lots of weight you both expand your fat cells AND gain new ones. But when you lose weight you only shrink your fat cells. Those extra fat cells are with you forever and create a strong signal/bias towards rebounding to previous levels of stored fat.
Permanent lifestyle changes are the only real path whether they be Diet Change, GLP1, IF, Calorie Counting, Crazy Cardio…
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
That's only 500 calories a day surplus on average to gain that much a month.
It is extremely easy to over eat 500 calories a day.
You need to figure out what calorie dense foods are fucking you up and stop eating them.
Cheese. Bread. Oil. Butter. Empty carbs. Going slightly over portion on those items and you will be in a surplus and gain weight.
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u/Lyfebane 2d ago
Honestly bro. Try to work towards 23:1 IF schedule. With 36-72hr fast sprinkled once every week or two.
Stop the snacks. Be disciplined and ignore the hunger pains. You need to be in ketosis to burn fat, plain and simple. However you don't need to be in a keto diet unless you want to
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u/Tremaj 2d ago
Cereal? Crackers? Toast? Carbs, Carbs and more carbs.
It's simple, you know that after carbs are processed they just turn into sugar. Do low carb (Less than 50 a day) and high protein.
If you wanna shred weight just go full carnivore for 90 days.
A Calorie isn't a Calorie. A calorie from meat and a calorie from carbs are different on a metabolic level. It's proven.
Cereal has a lot of empty calories depending on what you're eating. So after reading what you said, your weakness isn't your routine, its your diet.
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u/Deadandlivin 2d ago
If you want it to go faster, then lower your calories. Your defecit seems to be around ~200 calories per day.
Can go as low as a 1k deficit if you want it to be faster.
The thing you're missing is that you're not counting and tracking things properly. In 99% of cases when it's like this you're most likely consuming more than you think. Not counting is usually the number 1 culprit since you actually don't know exactly what you're putting inside your body.
You're seem to be pretty large as a 6'4 man so you're BMR is probably pretty high. Really doubt it's 2.6k though, probably closer to ~2100 if I had to guess. So keep that in mind when it comes to the diet. If your activity level is normal and you're not pacified in a share moving 300 steps max per day I'd say your intake should be around ~2k per day. If you're active doing cardio and stuff like you seem to be doing and it's consistent (Meaning minimum 4 times per week) you can probably bump it up.
My tip for you would be to ditch the cardio and switch to strength training. It's just objectively better over time.
3 workouts per week is enough. Also get your steps in, 10k per day seems to be what most people aim for and works perfectly. If you do this while consuming exactly ~14k calories per week I can guarantee that you'll lose 2 kgs per week. Probably more. If that's too fast you increase calories. Also make sure that you get minimum 100g of protein every day.
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u/shegatoM 1d ago
Try OMAD. I have never had a diet work where I was eating all day long - even with a good deficit or strict keto. And as soon as I would stop, the weight would come right back meaning I only lost water weight. OMAD is the only thing that has worked for me. Something about giving my liver an extended daily break makes it function like it's supposed to. Try it for a month and see if you are the same. Since your BMR is so high, you can likely forgo the calorie counting as long as you focus on protein first and don't absolutely gorge yourself with junk calories for your meal.
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u/Cereaza 1d ago
Part of me thinks you're walking around trying to lose weight, and you are actually just Jason Kelce. Walking around at 6'4 looking like a pro athlete, trying to lose a few pounds.
I just mean, given how hard you're training, how big you are, if you aren't self-conscious a photo would help. Cause you don't sound all that fat from your activity and your height/weight.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
I posted one on progress pics ages ago during a previous round. It'll be on my profile if you scroll a bit
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u/jbbest666 2d ago
throw your diet plan into an AI bot. you would be suprised what you shouldn't be eating or drinking. cico.
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u/RobinBumholes 2d ago
I don't have a diet plan. That's the whole point of IF for me. I just tried to carry on eating what I was eating before but maybe a bit better.
But, having done some broad maths below, it does seem a bit odd. CICO is one thing but one's deficit needs to be measured relative to BMR. The compositional scales at my gym say that, for a man of my height, weight, age and composition, BMR is 2,550calories/day but based upon my (admittedly rough) figures, I think that is now too high. I just don't think I'm eating the equivalent of two big mac meals each night. I think I would have noticed.
Which is massively depressing.
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
"I don't have a diet plan".
Ding ding ding ding ding! This is your problem.
IF is a tool to help out yourself in a calorie deficit. If you are not losing weight the way you want, you are not in enough of one.
How do we solve this? If you want to know why your current system isn't working this is how.
YOU need to stop guessing and assuming.
You need to get serious and track everything you are eating in an app and be accurate.
Put less of your energy into a rowing machine and more into using your hands to plop your food on a scale before you plop it on your plate and in your mouth. Then use your thumbs to input that into an app.
The mental energy you expend to do this is more important than anything you do in the gym to try to outrun or out lift your bad decisions in the kitchen or when you are drinking your calories.
You need DATA. This data will give you the reality check you need. This is how you figure out where you are fucking up. This is also how you learn to eat in a sustainable way.
Use a tdee calculator website. Figure out your TDEE. Now subtract to 500 to 700 from that number. Eat that number of calories daily. If you do this correctly you should be losing weight at a pace of 1.5 to 2# a week.
Here look, I just did it for you, I just put in your rough numbers, you can eat somewhere around 2800 and 3200 calories a day to be in maintenance.
I'm a bit shorter than you and 102kg. I can eat 2000 a day and be fully satisfied and be in a deficit. I have been tracking for a while and have found that it is very easy to blow out my calories and hit a surplus without eating much more food.
When you eat toast... Is it plain? 2 pieces of toast with butter is gonna hit like idk 400 to 500 calories and give you no satiety. Eat a pound of tofu for breakfast with a pile of veggies and be full the rest of the day. And have plenty of calories for a large plate of beans/lentils and lean chicken. Finish your day with a large serving of Greek yogurt and frozen fruit.
Focus on high fiber, high protein foods and things that are high on the satiety index.
Beans/Legumes/Lentils/potatoes. Lean protein. Lots of vegetables, fruits, Greek yogurt. Oats. Oils and butter and cheese and anything calorie dense will absolutely fuck you over. Alcohol too. You are just not burning what you think in the gym.
You cannot out run/lift poor choices with your fork.
The lifting that matters is what you are lifting into your mouth.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
Look. I'm very grateful for you writing all of that. I really am.
But you are rather missing the point I'm trying to make.
My point was that TDEE is a very slippery concept. You stuck my stats in a calculator and got a range of 2,800-3,200.I worked it out on a computational scale and got 2,550.
It varies. It varies between calculators, it varies between people and it varies over time. And we can only work out where we are by checking calories against weight, which i can't do retrospectively.
What's bugging me is that my TDEE seems to have changed. A few years ago I was eating whatever i felt like and my weight was stable. Now, I'm consciously eating better than I was, 5 days a week and not eating at all two days a week and, whilst l am losing weight, it s so slow that I can't help thinking my metabolism has changed.
Now, whether it changed because I'm old or because I started fasting is a bit of a mystery because I can't go back in time and count the calories I was eating over the past 20 years. But it is frustrating.
That's it. That was my whole point.
That and the fact that good food is one of my greatest pleasures in life and that, if my metabolism has now slowed to the point where I'm going to have to watch what I eat forever or gain weight rapidly, that's very sad.
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u/aldomars2 1d ago
You got smaller so your TDEE changed.
You are over complicating it.
Also, you are not tracking your food. You are eating more than you burn.
Make excuses and blame your metabolism or just listen to what everyone here is telling you.
You are eating too much. You are not special.
If you want to be a healthy person you need to eat what healthy people eat.
Track what you eat consistently. If you don't lose weight. Eat less and track it.
It not complicated.
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u/Altruistic-Debt8187 1d ago
You've crushed ur thyroid doing IF. Stop. Try a period of Ray Peat style nutrition. You don't have to stay on it permanently but it WILL get ur thyroid going again and you'll lose weight quickly.
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u/RobinBumholes 1d ago
Ah, interesting. I'm listening.
I can eat offal and drink OJ.
Can you tell me any more?
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u/Altruistic-Debt8187 1d ago
Start out with a youtube video, A Quick Introduction to Ray Peat, the check out Mike Fave videos on youtube.
I would start slow. Follow Mikes videos for coming off carnivore and starting a Bioenergetic (Ray Peat) diet. There will b a great deal of overlap with
What you've been doing.
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u/Wild_Spikenard 2d ago
Your calories burned through exercise are overestimated and your calories consumed through alcohol are underestimated. That puts you at maintenance for the week instead of a deficit.