Disappointed with fasting regiment results - would admire feed back

Hello everyone, Real quick: 6’0, 221, 26yo, male I was wondering if someone can be kind enough to give me some input here. I believe I hit a wall. Dec 26th 2021, I weighed 228. Mind you, I lift 6 days a week real heavy. Hit 315 bench, squat 405, military 185, blah blah. But I look like a BLOB of s**t. I started to do OMAD Jan 7 2022 w/ extremely low calories, managed to drop down to 216 the 27th of last week. So a solid 10lbs lost. So on the 28th I decided F it, I’m going to eat 3 meals a day (home cooked) mind you - so rice, chicken, sauce, you name it. So Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this week I ate 3 meals a day. I did a 48 hour fast Monday until this morning, ran 2 miles (feel great) and I’m back to 221 again. What the f***…so 1 month of miserable eating (less than 500 calories a day OMAD), cardio and lifting up the wazoo, and I only lose 6lbs. Someone please help me out here, what am I doing wrong??

Answer

OMAD shouldn’t be miserable and should be more than 500 calories. Sounds like you are going too extreme. Maybe start with a longer fasting time and work yourself to OMAD? Also with all the lifting, make sure you are getting plenty of protein.

Answer

500 calories a day is way too extremely dude. In fact, at that deficit your body is going to be consuming muscle as well as fat (Catabolysis), so bye bye gains. Use a calorie deficit calculator like fatcalc.com to determine what your daily calorie intake should be. I’d suggest a minimum of 1500 calories a day or hitting your goal weight 6 months out. You might also want to consider moving to an 18:6 or 20:4 so you can have pre-workout and post-workout meals. Finally, intermittent fasting and cico are a marathon, not a sprint, and you should keep that in mind when planning out your meals.

Answer

Everyone saying 500 is too little is right.

It’s very easy to hear that and think “but if I ate 500 calories and didn’t lose much weight then how can I possible lose weight is I eat more than that?!”.

Well if you reread your post you’ll see the answer to that. 500 cals a day is not sustainable and you will fall off the wagon.

Make fasting part of your life. Make it sustainable. Make it the only diet you’ll ever need to go on because it brings you joy and leaves you satisfied.

Answer

When I do OMAD or a short eating window I (as a woman) aim for about 1350 in calories and it works like a charm and I don’t feel deprived. I found when I limited to 1000-1200 my weight loss slowed. I aim to tag on extra healthy fats and protein to meet those calories. For instance a half an avocado drizzled with a tablespoon EVOO and lemon on a bed of arugula is an easy and delicious way to tag on an extra ~300 or so calories to a meal if you’re coming up short.

Answer

If you’re lifting you won’t lose weight as fast. You’ll lose fat, but you’ll gain muscle so it won’t show up on the scale as much.

I fasted and lifted for lile 3mos and had only lost 5lbs. I almost gave up til I visited family over Christmas and multiple people commented on how good I looked.