Does THIS Fasting Approach Make Sense for You?

Philip Pape 0:00

Wits & Weights family, happy Halloween. This is a short bonus episode for Saturday. I want to answer a question related to Thursday's episode with Lyle McDonald. If you haven't checked that out, go back and listen to that episode. It was a banger, as someone called it on YouTube. With Lyle McDonald, it's about intermittent modified fasting. But I wanted to connect it to another episode way back in April, episode 458, where I gave you five ways intermittent fasting backfires. And it was targeted at women over 40 specifically, but in general, these are big claims that people make. And then this week, you know, with Lyle McDonald on, he he wrote the whole book on a type of fasting. And a lot of you are thinking or asking, okay, so is fasting bad or not? Like, are you suggesting fasting or not? Are you just a shill for, you know, Lyle's book or what? So that is a fair question. So I wanted to give you my own take today on whether his approach makes sense for you. And, you know, some specific specific demographics like women versus men, if you're a little bit older, like I am, you're over 40, over 50, perimenopause, menopause, all these different little corner cases that we didn't really get into on his show. Now, first of all, again, shout out to Lon McDonald. He's awesome.

What Intermittent Modified Fasting Is

Philip Pape 1:14

He talked about his new or his approach called intermittent modified fasting, which is a culmination of rapid fat loss combined with the idea of cycling your calories and not carb cycling per se. We talked about that on the show, but it's a more structured approach that uses protein sparing modified fast. So he calls the fasting day the RFL day, right? The rapid fat loss day, where you have all of your protein and you get it from very, very lean, protein-dense sources so that it's almost exclusively protein, right? Skinless chicken, white fish, things like that. A lot of vegetables, some fish oil, very little else. So it really is kind of a fast, but with a lot of protein to hold on to your muscle. You don't have a calorie target, just the protein target, and then the calories fall where they do, which ends up being pretty low. But the deficit's gonna be different for everybody. That's that's why this approach tends to be a simplified way to do this that works for a lot of folks. Then on the other days that you're not fasting, it's a maintenance day where you just come right up to a normal, you know, day of food, increase your carbs mostly. Some fats are gonna come up as well. And the key is where you put them. So the maintenance days generally go on the days you train, and then the rapid fat loss days go on the days that you don't, or as Lyle put it, quote, you do not want a rapid fat loss day on leg day. Okay. But there are other variations and other patterns we talked about, and his book has. If you want to check that out, um, I'll throw a link again in the show notes. Now, how am I not contradicting that myself when we talk about fasting or intermittent fasting

Why Time-Restricted Eating Gets Overhyped

Philip Pape 2:47

or whatever? Well, first of all, if you go listen to the episode, we talked about all the definitions: time restricted eating, fasting, digestion, like there is a lot of misuse of language. But most of what I criticized back on episode 458 was time-restricted eating and associated claims that are just not supported by it. So that's where you might, you know, skip breakfast, eat in an eight-hour window version of what most people mean when they say intermittent fasting. And two of my biggest problems with it were it doesn't burn any extra fat when calories are matched. We know that. And that cramming more food into a short window might make it harder to get your protein, to fuel your training. It might not be practical. For others, it might be exactly what you need from a scheduling perspective. And the point was it's a tool for logistics, for scheduling, maybe for psychology and physiology, maybe for hunger, but it doesn't change how the physiology works underneath. And it doesn't do all these other crazy things related to, you know, autophagy or what have you. Now, you know, Lyle's totally on board with that. I mean, you should be because that's what the evidence supports. He said on the show that when the weekly deficit is the same, fasting does not give you any benefit, you know, in terms of fat loss. And, you know, he wrote a book on fasting, which I think is where we have to reconcile the two concepts. It's just how you define these things. And the other key thing is that the low days are built around protein. It's not just not eating. That is the big difference, right? It's also not based on like, you know, eight, twelve or some sort of protocol in that sense. It's just, hey, be fully fed on your lifting days and use a fast, but with a lot of protein on the other days. So you're not training hungry and you're not trying to hit all your protein in just a few meals either, with like what we call traditional intermittent fasting. So it's really just a way of arranging your calories across the week so that the deficit supports you best for your training.

Trap One Start Conservative

Philip Pape 4:46

But there are four specific traps people tend to fall into. I wanted to talk about today that enhances what we spoke about in the last episode. So that's what I want to talk about today. All right, number one is I want you to start with the more conservative or the gentler pattern. And by pattern, you, you know, again, if you listen to the episode Thursday, Lyle talks about patterns where you have four, five, even six RFL days a week. And the more deficit days you have in a week, the faster it's gonna go. But he's clear that they mean you're gonna cut back on your training volume as a result because you're gonna have fewer and fewer of these maintenance days if you're trying to keep them aligned. So if you're in your 40s, if you're in your 50s, if you're already working hard to hold on to that muscle, if you've already got a crazy life, I wouldn't start there. I'd start with something like four maintenance days and three RFL days, for example, or even five and two, you know, even five and two. Uh in his book, Lau calls the four and three a good balance for someone who lifts four days a week. You're gonna lose fat just slightly more slowly, maybe a pound a week or a bit more for some people, which is still incredible, right? It depends on your size, depends on your metabolism, and that's fine. That's fine. You get to keep training like you want to train. You're protecting your muscle, you feel much better doing it that way. So that's number one is start with a more conservative

Trap Two Round Protein Up

Philip Pape 6:03

approach. Number two is I would round your protein up. So there were questions about the protein guidelines. And if you read his book, he has like a grid essentially, comparing based on how much fat mass you have and size and things like that. I asked Lau whether protein needs to go up as you get older, this idea of anabolic resistance. And he said he hasn't seen a reason to do that, partly because lifting weights seems to offset a lot of that resistance to protein. And I think that's reasonable, right? I think we conflate some of these concepts, and a lot of the studies aren't looking at training people either. So he goes by per, you know, protein per pound of lean body mass. And by the way, we're gonna have an episode all about protein coming up, uh, I believe this week, actually. But he goes off of lean body mass, not total body weight. So if you carry more body fat, his targets can come out lower than you might expect. And he said, you know, I'd always rather see a little too much protein than too little, which is I totally buy into that concept as well. So if your number looks low and you want to nudge it up, especially when we talk about those rapid fat loss days, I think it's worth doing at the trade-off of, yeah, it's more calories. I think it's it's better to protect your muscle and start there. So more conservative on the pattern,

Trap Three Last Pounds Move Slower

Philip Pape 7:20

a little more aggressive on how much protein. Number three, if you're already fairly lean, just expect, have realistic expectations that the fat loss is going to be slower. You know, Carol, who's who's one of our coaches and eat more lift heavy, not one of our, she's my assistant coach, co-coach, she's awesome. And, you know, I know her personally. So she asked one of the questions on the podcast about women trying to lose those last five to 10 pounds. And Lyle said, you know, it isn't harder, it's just slower. And I think that's important to remember, ladies, when it comes to anyone smaller or with a slower metabolism because of, you know, the muscle loss over age, and now you're starting this later in life, that a smaller woman just can't create a big deficit in absolute terms compared to a bigger person, especially a bigger guy who might burn 3,000 calories. So even a very, very, very good week on the upper limit, you might lose a pound of pure body fat, which is still nothing to sneeze at. I still think that's great. And that's where the realistic expectation comes in. So it's just the math of being smaller. It doesn't have any judgment on you or your metabolism or anything else. Don't compare yourself to other people is also part of the message here. And and don't add in more RFL days just to speed it up. All right,

Trap Four Know When To Avoid It

Philip Pape 8:34

and the fourth and final trap in this bonus episode, please, please, please know when this is not for you. Okay. If having very low calorie days, even just a few of them during the week, turn into all-out binges of the six, seven, eight, nine thousand calorie type binges. Maybe it's not even that high, but it's a binge. Or even a normal day of food tends to snowball into a week or two of overeating. This might not be the right tool. Some people do really well with this kind of cycling. Some people need more consistency. And again, Lyle talked about that. He has a, I'll say, a softer version of this where you can allow, I guess is the word, a little bit of fruit or dairy on the low days. And if you have a medical condition or you take medication that affects blood sugar, you know, that could be a factor as well. So know when this is not for you. Now, if you've never tried it before, you're not sure, and you just aren't don't know, it's fine to experiment, but just take measure the data, see how it works, compare to other approaches. I, when people ask me a question like, is this gonna work for me? I don't know until you do it. I mean, you can give me some data to kind of rule it out or not, maybe, but you know yourself best. And honestly, the best coaches, when they work with clients, it's about having the client try things out and share and measure the right data so the coach can help them together figure out if it works for them.

Four-Week Trial And What To Track

Philip Pape 9:56

So, what would I have you do if you want to try intermittent modified fasting? Keep it simple. Look at your training week, right? Because that's the foundation of what pattern you might find works best for you, your lifting days or your maintenance days. And then pick two or three of your other days as low days. Notice what I said that. You can still have a maintenance day on a non-lifting day, that's fine. Just don't sacrifice your lifting days with RFL days. Does that make sense? So that goes back to our first tip about being conservative. And then try it for four weeks. Track your trend weight, your waist, your lifts, you know, all the basic stuff. In the book, Lyle suggests tracking your lifts in the six to 15 rep range on machines and dumbbells, as opposed to your heavy barbell lifts, because strength can drop a bit when you lean out, even if you haven't lost muscle. I think it's a very smart, you know, data-centric approach he's got for that. Um, if those lifts are holding and say your waist is coming down, okay, you're losing fat. It's great, and you're holding on to muscle. So that's my take. I think it's one of the more practical ways to diet that I've seen, as long as you pick a pattern that respects your training as well as your schedule, your preferences, that you don't skip on, skimp on

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

Philip Pape 11:10

protein. And we go into all this in way more detail in the last episode. So please, if you didn't check that out or you're new to the show with this one, go listen to that, follow the show, give us a rating review, whatever, share it. I don't care. Just have fun, learn from it. Listen to the terminology, listen to how like the maintenance days are not called feast days or refeeds for a reason. And then we even talk about hey, what if you lived really early in the morning? Can you stagger it, for example? We we get into some interesting cases like that. So go back one episode in your feed, check out the conversation on intermittent modified fasting. That's episode 516, and enjoy your weekend. I'll see you for our next regular episode on Monday, which is about testosterone. Talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast.