Intermittent fasting for the purpose of weight loss is about prolonging the time with which your body is at low insulin levels. Every time you eat, your body has an insulin spike, which is a trigger to convert the foods you eat into fat.
The idea is to move from the fat storage process by lowering your insulin level, to the fat burning process. This process takes time, which means longer fasts yield better results.
However, you can improve your condition, by choosing to minimise the foods that give higher spikes of insulin, especially carbs and sugar. Sugar gives you the highest insulin spike, but offers little energy so you burn out super quickly and feel hungry. Likewise, carbs give a high spike of insulin but don’t take long until you feel hungry again. Protein gives a medium spike in insulin, but gives you a slow burning satiety, you feel satisfied for longer if you eat high protein (a steak, or chicken breast). Fat gives you almost no insulin spike and provides long satiety.
Low carb, high fat/fibre diets, like keto, work exceptionally well with intermittent fasting because fasting lowers your insulin over time, but if you pair it with the right foods, you feel fuller for longer, and your insulin doesn’t spike as high when you do eat so that the insulin levels drop quicker, and your body goes back to fat burning mode.
Sugar is exceptionally bad for insulin spikes so you need to address that immediately.
Carbs are OK in small amounts, but you want to avoid them, especially if you were on a high carb diet. Your body would be used to using carbs as a fuel source, and you have to take time to train it to use your stored fat. Thus it may take some time to adjust and to see results.
Intermittent fasting is not calorie counting. It is eating the right foods, at the right time. You obviously need to be in a deficit if you want to lose weight, but you do not need to severely restrict calories.
It is a mistake to think calories are the enemy, think of them as energy. Obviously 200 calories of carrot is way better for you than 200 calories of ice cream. One will make your hunger go away and provide essential nutrients, and the other is a cheap trick.
Another suggested dr Fung, his YouTube videos are amazing, as he talks about the obesity crisis and how it came to exist through diets. If you want to understand the fundamentals, I highly recommend the obesity code book of his
If you pick the right foods, fasting does not feel like starvation, and you gradually lead to longer fasts naturally because you feel less hungry through your fat burning and less temptation
I notice you dont say anything in this post as to what your current diet and caloric intakes look like which leads me to wonder if that’s not something you’re focusing on. If this is true it’s likely you’re not in a caloric deficit, which would explain the lack of results.
I’ve been doing 17:7 every day since May. I was steadily losing until the weather got cold and I wasn’t doing almost daily yard maintenance and gardening chores. Instead of exercising indoors more I just started working more (at a computer). The good news is that I’ve maintained my warm weather loss of 35 pounds instead of gaining weight if I wasn’t doing IF. I’m going to try to increase my exercise and have better work/life balance, but otherwise I expect my loss will pick up again in spring.
Use an app to track your food and cut out all dairy including coffee creamer. Sign up for a 5K and train for it. I’m a walker (I hate running) and I competed a marathon and several half marathons. It’s always nice to have a goal.
Everyone is different so I dont want you to take my experience as gospel but my physician recommended going as low carb as possible. Especially for individuals who are prediabetic or high risk of diabetes. I had gestational diabetes during my second pregnancy and my metabolism and ability to maintain a healthy weight was never the same. The problem I had with diets like atkins was I wasnt hungry all the time and since my life is pretty sedentary my calories were way too high trying to meet the protein and fat levels. It all adds up at the end! So I literally hand pick the best parts that work for me!
Hope that helps!