1. As the author suggests, a lot of that weight loss is just water. It'll come straight back again.
2. Getting into ketosis can take more than a day. Hell your body might even still be processing the carbs for quite a while as your food makes its way slowly around your digestive system.
3. 7 liters of water is tonnes. You risk flushing out your minerals. It's really not recommended. Adding some salt isn't enough.
4. Zero calories vs low calories when doing a low-carb diet doesn't really make a difference, your limitation is just around how much body fat your body can convert to useful energy when you need it.
5. When your body runs out of body fat it can easily source, it starts eating muscle. That's not just your arms and legs, that's things like your heart.
6. If you're not eating your body tries to convert whatever it can get into food. That would include the multi-vitamins he takes.
7. When you come out of ketosis, you should do it slowly. Transition from a high fat, low carb, small protein to increasingly more carbs and proteins. Grabbing a take-out or ribs and ice cream defeats the point.
8. Fasting only really works over short periods. When your body realizes something is wrong your survival mechanisms kick in, you go into starvation mode. Your metabolism drops and you start conserving energy rather than burning it.
To lose 1kg, all this guy has to do is make one small adjustment to his daily routine. One less sugar in his coffee, one less take-out a month, a little more cardio, etc.
I mostly agree with your points, but not entirely. Here are some comments:
> 4. Zero calories vs low calories when doing a low-carb diet doesn't really make a difference
That's not so clear cut. At the very least, anecdotal evidence indicates that zero calories reduces appetite much more than low calories does (to the point of elimination usually). This may have to do with smells or flavors of food, or may have to do with the activity level of some digestive processes. There is some evidence (from Cabanac's experiments, for example), that the calories are secondary, and smells+flavors are much more important than the amount of calories.
> 5. When your body runs out of body fat it can easily source, it starts eating muscle. That's not just your arms and legs, that's things like your heart.
Yes, but it starts with unused muscles first, and does that before or in parallel with fat. Luckily, your heart is in constant use, so it gets eaten last. This is the reason that you must exercise while fasted if you don't want to lose muscles.
> 7. When you come out of ketosis, you should do it slowly. Transition from a high fat, low carb, small protein to increasingly more carbs and proteins. Grabbing a take-out or ribs and ice cream defeats the point.
> 8. Fasting only really works over short periods. When your body realizes something is wrong your survival mechanisms kick in, you go into starvation mode. Your metabolism drops and you start conserving energy rather than burning it.
Define "short". Seems to be 14-30 days before any significant drop in metabolism not attributable to "no need to digest", if you are active. In my experience, one DOES conserve more energy - e.g., a friend remarked that I lifted my legs less when running while fasted, and that my motions were otherwise "more energetically economical". But e.g. my body temperature was higher than usual.
1. Agree for the first 24 to 48, disagree thereafter.
2. True, depends heavily on diet. The liver and muscles can store a ton of glycogen. Also this is where a lot of the water weight comes from. Dunno about OP, but I’m in a pretty quick 12 to 18 hours back into ketosis pattern with fasting now.
3. Strongly agree, it’s too much.
4. Disagree completely, huge difference metabolically in calorie restriction vs calorie abstinence.
5. Somewhat agree, but the caveat I take issue with is ‘easily’, also most people who will be reading this post are likely quite far away from ‘running out of fat’.
6. Rounding error.
7. Agree.
8. Strongly disagree. I was burning the same 3500kcal or so per day on day 1 as I was on day 60 of my fast, experienced little to no metabolic slowdown.
> To lose 1kg, all this guy has to do is make one small adjustment to his daily routine. One less sugar in his coffee, one less take-out a month, a little more cardio, etc
For some people, It’s easier and more sustainable to just not eat sometimes.
> 1. Agree for the first 24 to 48, disagree thereafter.
It'll still come back.
> 4. Disagree completely, huge difference metabolically in
> calorie restriction vs calorie abstinence.
Yeah, with one you risk your metabolism slowing down. In terms of fat burning, there shouldn't be that much difference. There is only so much fat your body can convert into energy at any one time, if you go over this you're in trouble.
> 5. Somewhat agree, but the caveat I take issue with is
> ‘easily’, also most people who will be reading this post
> are likely quite far away from ‘running out of fat’.
You don't need to run out of fat, you just need to run out of accessible fat. You have an upper limit to how much you can instantly access, the process takes time. That's why people carb feed just before exercise to increase their workout performance, otherwise you'll literally run out of energy and crash.
> 6. Rounding error.
I'm not talking about an increase in weight, I'm talking about the vitamins not having the desired affect.
> 8. Strongly disagree. I was burning the same 3500kcal or
> so per day on day 1 as I was on day 60 of my fast,
> experienced little to no metabolic slowdown.
It of course depends per person, but metabolic slowdown is a real concern.
To me it sounds like this person switches from fasting to OMAD (intermittent fasting) + VLCD, which is still unsustainable over long periods but is much more sustainable than a water-based diet.
> 1. Agree for the first 24 to 48, disagree thereafter.
a neat-pick. That is BS. If you dont eat for 24 to 48. You will loose roughly 2500 x2 calories worth of weight.
And
On top of that you will loose weight due to water being dumped from you muscles. After refeeding that amount of water will be reabsorbed 'gaining back the weight'.
So its not like you have to fast for +3 days to loose some weight.
Good thing I plan to take 2-3 days to get into Ketosis, and good thing I have about 5% extra body fat so my heart is safe. Point of fasting for me isn't weight loss - pretty happy with my rig as it is. Why should you transition out of ketosis slowly?
1. As the author suggests, a lot of that weight loss is just water. It'll come straight back again.
2. Getting into ketosis can take more than a day. Hell your body might even still be processing the carbs for quite a while as your food makes its way slowly around your digestive system.
3. 7 liters of water is tonnes. You risk flushing out your minerals. It's really not recommended. Adding some salt isn't enough.
4. Zero calories vs low calories when doing a low-carb diet doesn't really make a difference, your limitation is just around how much body fat your body can convert to useful energy when you need it.
5. When your body runs out of body fat it can easily source, it starts eating muscle. That's not just your arms and legs, that's things like your heart.
6. If you're not eating your body tries to convert whatever it can get into food. That would include the multi-vitamins he takes.
7. When you come out of ketosis, you should do it slowly. Transition from a high fat, low carb, small protein to increasingly more carbs and proteins. Grabbing a take-out or ribs and ice cream defeats the point.
8. Fasting only really works over short periods. When your body realizes something is wrong your survival mechanisms kick in, you go into starvation mode. Your metabolism drops and you start conserving energy rather than burning it.
To lose 1kg, all this guy has to do is make one small adjustment to his daily routine. One less sugar in his coffee, one less take-out a month, a little more cardio, etc.