Maintaining or gaining weight while fasting?

[healthiskey]

I want to start doing intermittent fasting from now on. What ii will be doing is the 16/8. For example if i go to bed every night at 12 and wake up at 8 am, i don't eat breakfast until around 12pm and then my next meal at like 4pm and then at 8pm and then dont eat until i go to bed again at 12am. I have read that there is health benefits to this and particularly for the issues that i am having so i want to do it. My concern is that i will end up losing weight. I'm skinny enough as it is, i wouldn't mind losing the extra fat on my body but i don't want to lose muscle mass and what not. Is it possible to maintain your current weight or even gain weight/muscle while intermittent fasting?

[Zest]

Hi healthiskey ,

My eating pattern is such that I have a restricted eating window - in that I finish eating my evening meal before 6pm (whenever possible) and then eat again at 7.30am.

I think that doing some Strength exercises would help you to preserve your muscle mass and making sure you eat sufficient protein would be another consideration.

However, providing you eat sufficient nutrients for your daily activity needs, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to maintain your body weight, and reap the health benefits of intermittent fasting.

There are some good articles about Intermittent fasting - if you google it those should come up, but I think you've already done some reading about it, as you sound like you have already thought through why you want to do it.

Hope it goes well.

Zest

[BadHare]

Try doing this gradually rather than all at once. That way you'll be able to gauge the effects it's having on your body, & it won't be a shock. Make sure you're sticking to eating clean foods, & that you have apropriate protein & nutrient intake for your body size. If you don't feel good, maybe wait six months & try again in the spring when your body needs less food to keep warm.

You might want to try eating half your daily calories at lunchtime, then less later. I eat late morning, closely followed by lunch, fruit in the afternoon with my iron tablet, then two smaller snacks early evening. I'm flexible, so if I'm hungry at 10am, I'll eat then & stop at 6. Sometimes I'm not hungry until the afternoon, but still stop eating early evening.

There are a lot of things written about the benefits of intermittent fasting (two non-consecutive days a week of 500-600 calories) or restrictive eating times (shorter eating window), & I don't recall reading anything regarding losing muscle.

Quite a few articles on CK's website: chriskresser.com/is-intermi...

This mentions restrictive eating: theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...

Michael Mosley has lots of information on 5:2: thefastdiet.co.uk/michael-a...

Lots of other information available on the why's & how's of both restrictive eating & intermittent fasting benefits if you do a websearch.

[healthiskey in reply to BadHare]

The way i'm doing it is that i can eat as much as i usually would but just in an 8 hour window and the rest is fasting.

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to healthiskey]

Had you talked to a doctor about changing your diet before starting the intermittent fasting/eating?

[healthiskey]

Intermittent fasting has been shown to have quite a few health benefits.