And good for getting rid of lean body mass...
Time-restricted eating and concurrent exercise training reduces fat mass and increases lean mass in overweight and obese adults
At least no more than I would just sitting on the couch doing nothing.
Maybe body builders lose lean body mass when they fast, but it does not seem to hold true for the average human.
You need an expensive Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan in order to precisely tell the body mass composition.
My anecdotal experience: I lost weight via alternate day fasting and did indeed shell out the 120 euro that two scans cost me. I lost mainly fat, my lean body mass after 6 months was down 4 pct, within error range I'd assume. I worked out normally through the entire period and even did things like a 200km bike trip during a 72hr fast. (I did a few of those to compensate for not fasting on holidays). Great experience, never felt better tbh.
One thing I think I learned was the exact threshold of power that allowed me to keep burning fat. Its hard to describe the feeling but after doing this for months (over a year by now) I think I know exactly when I can still push and continue on fat, and when I need to slow down to prevent lbm loss. Doing sprints, short intervals etc. would likely cause me to break proteins in the body and indeed be counterproductive - but here more research is probably needed, and individuals will likely have different thresholds.
The new equation [%BFNew = 6.083 + (0.143 × SSnew) - (12.058 × sex) - (0.150 × age) - (0.233 × body mass index) + (0.256 × waist) + (0.162 × sex × age)] explained a significant proportion of variance in %BF5C (R2 = 0.775, SEE = 4.0%). Predictors included sum of skinfolds (SSnew, midaxillary, triceps, and thigh) and waist circumference. The new equation cross-validated well against %BF5C when compared with other existing equations, producing a large intraclass correlation coefficient (0.90), small mean bias and limits of agreement (0.4% ± 8.6%), and small measures of error (SEE = 2.5%).
Generalized Equations for Predicting Percent Body Fat from Anthropometric Measures Using a Criterion Five-Compartment Model Zackary S Cicone, Brett S Nickerson 1, Youn-Jeng Choi 2, Clifton J Holmes 3, Bjoern Hornikel 4, Michael V Fedewa 4, Michael R Esco 4 Affiliations expand PMID: 34310492 PMCID: PMC8785250 (available on 2022-12-01) DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000002754
This is delusional.
And bodybuilders DON'T lose fat when they fast because they take supraphysiological doses of hormones (steroids) that prevent the body losing muscle - and usually eat protein throughout their fast too. So not a good example.
Aren't these contradictory? If you eat (protein or otherwise) you're not fasting.
One starts to loose lean mass during prolonged calorie deficit which takes months.
At low intensity exercise you can just burn just fat.
The body can only get so much energy from fat in a given time, so at higher intensity levels it will try to get energy from both fat and stored carbohydrates.
Once you run out of easily available carbs it will try to supplement energy from the next available store, which is protein. i.e. muscle.
So this will happen well before you run out of body fat.
You can apparently increase the amount of base energy you can get from fat by training cell mitochondria with lots of low internet exercise.
Eg lots and lots of zone 1 or 2 on the Coggan zone system.
People think about fat as if they have access to it all, but it's a surface area per unit time problem. Like all the chemistry in life, on some level, it's diffusion limited.
What you should be thinking about while fasting is not letting your basal rate/time + exercise expenditure/time exceed your total energy available/time. I got pretty good at estimating this, but I wish there were an easy way to measure it.
Everything is stream processing, not discrete units.
It can also explain why ketogenic diets work for many people - if you exercise every few days, your body will maintain sufficient blood ketone level for your exercise days, but unlike glucose, ketones that are not used get peed out eventually (and not stored/converted back to fat).
Couldn’t find anyone knowledgeable enough to confirm I am right, but also no one to tell me I’m obviously wrong - still looking for one of those answers.
Apologies for not including that, I guess I just assumed it was common knowledge? Mea culpa.
> https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2020/10/09/intermittent-fasting-...
Considering Body Builders don’t fast, I tend to believe the study.
Yes, if you fast without exercise, you will almost certainly lose muscle.
And if you fast without nutritional changes, you likely won't lose much, because IF on its own does not equal a deficit over more than hours at a time.
I gained muscle on IF with ease, and I also lost far more than in their study, with ease.
I'm surprised, given the constraints of the study, that there was an average loss at all.
There's entire bodybuilding schools (such as LeanGains) that build on intermittent fasting, and its increasingly more common when it comes to cutting fat. Where did you hear this?
> 116 overweight and obese participants
Yeah I mean IF isn't magic. If you sit in front of netflix and eat three 800cal bags of chips it doesn't matter much if you're doing IF or not.
I'm doing IF for years and go to the gym every other day, most of the time fasted. I made good progress, lost fat, gained muscles, and most importantly I feel amazing.
Eating schedule is only a part of the equation. You still need to eat proper food and exercise.
In general intermittent fast is not a good way to loose fat precisely for this point. In Russia there are fasting resorts where people do not eat for 2-3 weeks under medical supervision. Most people do it not to loose weight but try to improve various medical conditions. Those who go there for weight loss typically gain the weight back since they do not change their eating habits.
As for bodybuilders they do intermittent fasting but not to loose fat but to gain muscles. For some people this works as long as they eat sufficient calories.