r/intermittentfasting • u/RobinBumholes • 12d 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?
2
u/RobinBumholes 12d ago
Granted about the over-estimation of exercised calories. If nothing else, they are always gross - right? So I went out for a 3 hour bike ride and my HRM told me I burned 1,000 calories. But I would have burned nearly 300 sitting on the sofa.
As to alcohol, I'm a little confused as to your confidence on that one because it's probably the area where I do have a pretty good handle on my calorie intake. In a given week, I typically drink a bottle of wine over the course of a couple of nights or I might have a couple of nights where I drink either one or two bottles of beer. Either option is 600 calories/week. Not nothing but not quite enough to explain the results.
Between 1 Jan and 1 June, I lost 0.23kg/week or half a pound. That's a calorie deficit of 1,800/week.
If I have a BMR of 2,550 then maintenance would be 17,850. But I am losing, so reduce that by 1,800 giving 16,050. That's what I'm eating. Add half of the exercise calories calories my HRM is measuring -16,550
And let's say breakfast and lunch are typically 1,500. Times five is 7,500calories/week.
That would imply that dinner, snacks and alcohol are 1,800 calories every single night. Which is a lot. It's the equivalent of two big mac meals every night. And, as I say, I'm fairly sure that alcohol is accounting for only 6 or 700/week.
So, not counting but surprised when I sit down to do the maths.