My Monthly Fatloss Report.....

Today's post:  Monday, 12-19-2016

(Tips on fasting from my personal experience with it.)

A.  Here's the key news:

After my 5 day fast that I reported last month caused about a 5 pound weight loss but little in the way of inches removed from my waist, by the following week of eating I gained it all back.

I expected to gain at least a pound and a half of fat back and perhaps two and a half pounds from putting food back into my belly. So I hoped for a net loss of a pound of fat.

That didn’t happen.

But with fasting, unlike other methods, you can solve that with a longer fast!

Dr Fung has found exactly that in his patients that are working to lose fat. 

In addition, he says that it may take as long as four days to burn off the glycogen from your previous carbohydrate intake.  And, after that, the average pound loss of half a pound a day is from burning your excess fat as fuel only.

With my 5 day fast, I may have only lost a half a pound of fat which I then gained back.

But I survived and did relatively OK on the 5 day fast.  So I decided, with that information to go on to do a 12 day fast, from the morning of Monday, 12-5 to breaking it on the morning of Saturday, 12-17.

I found it reasonable to believe that the additional three and a half pounds of fat I’d lose would stay off.

If it did, doing a fast of 12 days every other month would give me a 14 pound fat loss in a year’s time.

In addition, in my recent post on new discoveries in what causes fat regain besides doing it by eating a lot less all the time triggering your failsafe famine response, I found that there are two ways to prevent your gut bacteria from causing fat regain.  I’m using both of those this week!

I also have been taking 500 mg a day of cayenne pepper to help ensure my metabolism does not drop.

So, this time I expected to have a three and a half pound net loss to report – or will have next month.  (I don’t yet know how much I’ll gain back because I just broke the fast Saturday, 12-17, two days ago.)

After trying many things to lose fat that failed to last a month, it will be delightful if that finally happens.

AND, I might do better than that!  After the first 5 days of my 12 day fast, THIS time instead of losing a bit less than 5 pounds I lost a bit over 8 pounds!

So, it’s even more likely I’ll keep off three and half pounds of fat.  And, I might do better!

Also, there is even more promising news for this time.

Last time I lost almost nothing in inches off my waist or hips where most of my excess fat is stored.

THIS time I knew I would. Both the dress pants I wear at work and the sweatpants I wear at home are noticeably quite a bit easier to take off!

I lost 8.3 pounds the after the first 5 days this time; but a week later instead of losing another 3.5 pounds I gained 1.9.

BUT overall for the two weeks, I lost 6.4 pounds and look to be on track to lose a net of 1.5 pounds if I gain back another 4.9 as I did last time.

In fact for the two months from two months ago to two days ago I lost nearly 10 pounds AND I DID lose a quarter inch more off my chest and three fourths of an inch off my waist; and a half inch off my hips.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I never had the experience of getting more than my usual energy.

Unlike my first 5 day fast, I did have more times I had to override being hungry – though this was most true on the weekend when I normally eat more.

I may have had a drop in my metabolism as I seemed to get cold easier than usual.  But that was quite possibly because those days WERE some of the coldest of this winter instead.

But the big negative that was for sure is that without my normal protein and calories, my strength training performance dropped quite a bit.

So much so that instead of doing it more often, I’ll do a fast every other month instead of once a month.  I want to keep increasing my strength and adding muscle.

B.  Tips based on my experience and the strategies I used to prevent problems with the fasting:

I wanted to ensure my mental performance remained high; and that my electrolytes were high enough and to provide eating like activities when I normally eat.

Avoiding problems with my electrolytes for me is a BIG priority because I seem to have some mild kidney impairment from taking proton pump inhibitors for sure and maybe stress driven high blood pressure also.

*My strategy was to ensure I had enough MCT oil and other health OK fats to ensure enough of those to power my brain during my fast.

I had Bulletproof French kick coffee with their Brain Octane MCT oil best fractions each morning.  That gave me the brain powering and a breakfast replacement.

I had one tiny serving of their Bulletproof Glutathione Force as a lunch replacement.  This also has a bit of their Brain Octane MCT oil best fractions plus the glutathione boost also boosts mood a bit.

I had a bit more of their Brain Octane MCT oil best fractions with my mid-day mix of the office French roast coffee and green tea.  That powered my brain for my afternoon’s work.

Then when I got home, I had the bone broth from cows fed only grass plus sea salt plus Kerrygold grass fed butter and paprika in it.

After dinner, I had a Tablespoon of Organicville yellow mustard.  It’s one of the few kinds of mustards that won’t fatten you with its MSG. It has none. It has zero calories or carbs.  It has 60 mg of sodium.  And, I love mustard.  So to me, it was a small amount of a food I really like.

*Dr Fung says that the bowl of bone broth each evening covers your need for phosphorous as an electrolyte.  And I had that.

My normal supplements have 833 mg a day of magnesium; 266 mg a day of calcium; and 80 mg a day of potassium.  And I kept taking those each day.

But as eating leaves me a bit short of sodium and chloride, I made sure to have the sea salt with my bone broth and a few spoonfuls of the mustard to eat each day to keep from being too low on those.

And though while eating I almost have too much potassium though I only eat about half the recommended amount in foods, that’s 2350 mg a day plus the 80 for 2430 a day.

But fasting without that 2350 mg a day of potassium I did take one 99 mg a day more potassium for a total of 179 mg a day.  That seemed to be enough to avoid problems.

(Without that 99 mg a day addition though, on the 3^rd day of my first 5 day fast, my blood pressure went up an extra 10 points.  After I added the extra 99 mg a day, it went back down. And on my 12 day fast while taking the extra 99 mg a day of potassium my blood pressure was about the same as when I was eating.

(Eating organic fresh fruit at least once a day prevents BOTH kinds of strokes.  And it’s very effective and protective.

So, I’ve continued eating wild organic blueberries three times a week and a banana twice a week and organic kiwi fruit or other organic fruit twice a week.  I also take bilberry, elderberry, cranberry, and cherry extract supplements each day.

While fasting, I did keep up those supplements.  But to be sure to keep up that protection without the fruit, I got another bigger dose bilberry supplement and took 3 a day to partly replace the blueberries I missed 3 days during the fast.)

C.  Dr Fung said to eat a very low carb, high protein diet the last day before I fasted; and I did do so on Sunday 12-4.

Conclusion:

It looks like doing a 12 day fast every other month for a year will remove up to 18 pounds of my original excess fat.

And doing one every three months may be enough to ensure it stays off.

I find the fasts a bit unpleasant to do.  But it’s mild and doable and temporary.  So I plan to do this.

Also, once I can get back to the gym and the heavier weights, I expect to gain more strength and muscle in between fasts also.