Re: Does fasting for weight loss work? Is it a good solution?

Hi Mouseclick

Interesting post and impressive comparison.

Something I don’t quite understand is the following quote “In other words the overall weight loss during a fast is no more than I would have had if I was eating the healthy Diet that I had been on since the end of my first fast.” Not knowing exactly the fasting days I am not sure if I could have drawn that conclusion with the shown data.

If I try to interpret what you said, the pronounced V-like shapes represent the fasting periods, and the periods in between were periods where you followed “eating the healthy Diet that you had been on since the end of your first fast”. First, was the amount of food on the days just after the fast (the right leg of a V shape) the same as those normal days in the in between? If yes, it would suggest that starvation reduced the metabolic rates such that for the same amount and quality of food the body transformed more into body fat, in preparation for another fast perhaps? So, here it is a matter of how the metabolic rates are set.

Also, would you have obtained the same health benefits if you had just followed the healthy diet? Could it be that the fast did some cleanses that the diet would not have done? If so, a conclusion one could have drawn is the fasts should be done not as much for weight loss but rather for possible other health benefits not obtainable as quickly with a healthy Diet (or not at all). But this bring the question, if a fast brings some additional benefits to the body, could it be then, that the fasts enhanced the healthy diet, and had you not fasted, the weight loss from the healthy diet would not have been as great? Than if so, if you had just followed the healthy diet, the slope would have been even less steep. You would have obtained even a greater difference in the steepness between the two lines.

What I am trying to say is I think the healthy diet results are not as independent from the fasts as you might have suggested implicitly. Now, what would have happened if between the fasts you had followed the nutritarian diet?

My comments about the graphical analysis.

The fasting portion of the graph: If the drawn lines reflect the data points used than for the fasting portion Had you taken the slope for the period starting a month earlier and ending also earlier you might have hade a steeper slope.

For the nutritarian portion, perhaps with a longer period of time closer to the length of the first portion, you would have obtained something less steep? My feeling is a log or exponential type of curve could possibly more appropriate i.e. constant % of decrease in weight, or something like the first 5Kilo takes less time to loose than the next 5Kilo and so on.

Very interesting topic.

Without being too exhaustive, How would you describe you nutritarian diet?


Thanks
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