Fasting for abs! 9% down, 9.9% to go

[Stephen]

Hi everyone, my name is Stephen.
I’m a guy, 28 years of age, and my height is 175.5cm / 5’9".

I started on November 8, 2019.
My weight was 87KG, and body fat was 29%.

By the 23rd of December, I reached 73.7KG and 20.9% body fat.

Since then, progress has slowed down a lot, and I’m just getting over the flu now.
My lowest weight was reached on the 13th of January, just 4 days ago!
I was (/am starting now at): 71.5KG and 18.4% body fat, supposedly.

So far I have achieved all of this through 30-72hr fasts, with long max-incline treadmill sessions (2-3hours a few times a week deep in the fast).

As you can tell though, between nov8 and dec23 (45 days) I lost 13.3KG, or roughly 2.06KG per week!
But between dec24 and jan13 (20 days) I lost only 2.2KG, or roughly 0.77KG per week…

The reason is, well… I have been breaking my fasts earlier… I have been weaker willed… and the treadmill is just getting so monotonous. And of course, the more often I break my fast, the more food I seem to be able to fit in my stomach when I do!

The amount of damn willpower it has taken to get here can’t be understated though. And I can’t believe that I am only just NOW getting into a the upper-normal BMI and upper-normal body fat range… Crazy how far I let myself go…

I have always been the skinny-fat guy that you don’t assume is fat underneath the clothes. The fat just fills in every part that might give me just a little bit of definition. Love handles, chest, stomach, lower back, face. Every since probably the age of 10 I’ve carried this extra fat which makes me feel like my real appearance is trapped behind a layer.

I so badly want to be strong and muscled, but alas, insulin resistance will keep my progress minimal until I can get between 10-15% body fat. So I MUST lose the fat, it must be the priority.

I have done some calculations, and it appears that if I can get to a stable 64KG, I will be 9.5% body fat. I should look very lean, healthy and with visible abdominal muscles when I get there. I may even quit at 12%, who knows. But either way, I’ve got a long way to go still.

My record for water fasting is 74 hours, so that’s proof you can lose a hell of a lot without extended fasts, and quickly too. But I’m going to see if I can do better than this . I am currently 14 hours into a water fast, and if I could make it 96 hours I would be quite happy, and who knows, maybe I can go even longer. I do get a bit concerned about feeding my muscles but sometimes I wonder if I’m just making an excuse for myself.

If I achieve the lean strong physique that I have in mind, it will feel like my life is finally starting for the first time. I will be overjoyed. I’ve come this far, I can’t stop now.

[Anna]

Hi, welcome to the forum Stephen!
First off, congratulations on your progress so far, that’s a massive change!
I’ve really found this forum helpful in my journey so I hope you’ll experience the same!

I’m excited to follow your updates!

[Compdude]

Welcome to our fasting community.

I’m the resident “greybeard” both figuratively and literally as I hold the current record of longest water fast at 40 days and I’m older than dirt!

After accomplishing my first goal of being “medication free” I’m now tackling my next goal of “6-pack at 60”. I have a longer journey to go than you but I’m already 27 days into my protocol with 4 months and 25 days to go to my deadline.

From my research you only need to drop your body fat % somewhere between 15% to 10% to show abs. Below 10% is getting to the range of competitive bodybuilding and is very hard to maintain. For myself, I’m aiming for 13% and even then its just to prove a point. I’m older though and a different body type.

How did you decide on aiming below 10%?

[Eladsgarr]

Definition is a tricky thing. What do you mean by it. Are you talking about having bulk musculature that you can show off or are you enamored with the ripped physique of personas on the internet or in magazines. Those are either airbrushed or are extremely dehydrated as most competitive body builders are consuming no liquids 24-48 hours prior to a competition. Cardio alone isn’t going to give you what it appears you’re after. It’s been a long time for me but I’ve been there. You’ve got to start hitting the weights which will also help burn fat as much as cardio. Just be careful of how your fasting ties in with it if you decide to choose that route. Nutritional requirements may differ somewhat.

[Compdude]

@Eladsgarr @Stephen

From my research, it seems to me increasing testosterone production is of more importance. However, that’s probably because I’m a “senior citizen”! LOL

Here’s an excellent YouTube vid on the subject if you’re interested:

[Stephen]

I have a home gym, and I have dumbbells, but I struggle to use them without carbohydrate re-feeds. For the past couple months it has just been occasional dumbbells and max-inline treadmill hiking cardio.

I know fasting won’t give me the big muscles, but I already have some muscle underneath the fat. If I kind of ‘lift’ my chest up and hold it against myself, I can see a pec, but as soon as I let go it drops and the remaining fat fill every place that would otherwise give me some definition.

I want definition in the form of what people get at 10-12% body fat, leanness. I don’t care too much the level of muscle I will be then, as long as I can properly observe it, because right now every bit of progress I could make-muscle wise is hidden. Once I get down to 10-12% I will switch into a bulking diet + fasting twice a week and observe how my body copes.

[Stephen]

Thanks for the link Compdude,

I will be doing my best to keep my testosterone as high as I can get it during this. Zinc is a popular supplement all men should be taking which should help, and squatting as an exercise too iirc. I really hope I don’t start losing muscle now that I want to start looking lean and fit!

I don’t aim to get to under 10% body fat necessarily, but I’m also counting on gaining muscle rapidly when I am finished (to make up for the loss), and through muscle memory I expect to gain a good 4KG yet reduce my body fat% even greater.

28.5 hours into my fast so far and feeling good!

[Compdude]

Don’t worry about muscle mass during a prolonged water fast. Latest research shows that keytones preserves LBM which you don’t get doing the outdated “Eat less and Exercise more” regimens.

Monitor your energy levels, especially when you get beyond Day 3. Fasting is stressful to the body and adding strenuous workouts can overload it. In fact, not cutting back on intensity and/or frequency of workouts was the #5 reason members failed at reaching their fasting goals from a research project I did examining all the reasons forum members failed during the last 2 fasting challenges. As for me, the most strenuous workout I did during my 40-day was a 1 to 2 mile walk. But I was in much worse physical condition when I began than you are now.

[Stephen]

Compdude I think we need to be cautious on how we talk about LBM preservation because there can be a few gotchas.

A more recent 2016 study compares a strategy of intermittent fasting with daily calorie restriction – the conventional method of weight loss suggested by most health professionals. While both groups lost a comparable amount of weight, the intermittent fasting group lost only 1.2 kg of lean mass compared to 1.6 kg in the calorie restriction group. Comparing the percentage increase in lean mass, the fasting group increased by 2.2% compared to 0.5% in the calorie restriction group, implying that fasting may be up to 4 times better at preserving lean mass according to this measure. Importantly, the fasting group lost more than double the amount of the more dangerous visceral fat
source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/does-fasting-burn-muscle

The full paper of that study is here btw https://sci-hub.se/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27569118
But it’s so big I can’t really start to read it haha, so I’m just going to go off that quote. But looking at it, the all-day-fasting group lost a total and average of 8.2KG of weight during 8 weeks.

As it says, even the all-day-fasting people still lost 1.2KG of lean mass after 8 weeks. They definitely did better than the calorie-restrict group that lost 35% more lean body mass though.

So fasting is very muscle-sparing, in the sense that it is probably the best method to preserve it. But even if it is the best, it is not immunity. Muscle loss is always possible with periods of calorie deficit, and quite probable when losing lots of fat.

If a man has a testosterone deficiency and they were to do a low carb or fasting diet (or any diet at all), they are in a lot of danger of losing a lot of muscle. Testosterone as a hormone is extremely good at preventing muscle wastage, but calorie restriction and more cortisol could also work to lower testosterone even further, possibly beyond a threshold which could then tip a man’s body composition on the road to something more female-like than man-like. So if any man here does start noticing the scale going down regularly but the body fat% not really going with it, go get your testosterone levels checked asap.

But a man with a well-functioning testosterone system should suffer no problems there. And the more fat that is removed from the body, the less estrogenic a man’s body becomes, as fat can convert testosterone into estrogen. So there’s never really a reason to not go through the process of losing a low amount of muscle to achieve a high amount of fat loss. In the end it is worth it and that muscle can be built back on quickly afterwards.

Based on my own body fat% calculations, it seems that for every KG of weight I lose, roughly 0.169KG is muscle. That’s not so different to the all-day-fast group where every KG, they lost 0.146KG of muscle. It’s just all part of the game, and my muscle memory will help me spring back whatever I lose, but I definitely want to keep my muscles active to prevent this number increasing.

Theoretically, if my trends continue, and I get to a stable 64KG at 9.5% body fat…
I will have lost a total of 23KG, 19.11KG being fat, and 3.89KG being muscle.

Hey… that sucks… but it’s part of the game. Despite losing 3.89KG of muscle, doing this is what will reset my insulin resistance and allow me to gain 10+KG of muscle, eventually! I have been on this journey a few times before, and I’ve always noticed I gain whatever muscle I lost back very quickly due to muscle memory. That part is going to be a lot of fun.

I am still in the process of deciding what my muscle-building plan will be once I am done with the fat-loss part.

One idea I floated was maybe:
3600 calories per day for 5 days, and then a 48 hour fast with cardio.
That’s roughly equal to 2571 calories per day, if I burn 1000 calories from cardio on my two fasted days then that makes it on average 2428 calories per day.
And I will then just simply observe how things are going. I will be highly anabolic for 5 days of that and probably another half a day if you consider how long it takes for food to fully digest. And then the fasting will take care of any amounts of fat accumulated during the week.
It’d be great if it worked because 3600 calories is basically just eating like a pig haha.

[Compdude]

I’ll get back to you soon. Need to research a couple of things. Didn’t want to leave you hanging.

Btw, I wasn’t focused on LBM in my first go around as my primary goal was becoming “medication free” last year. So its only recently I’ve gotten into this subject.