Dear Kayla,

Have you done the egg fast? I want to do it, but I’m not trying to do keto per se. I just thought it would shake things up a bit. Like you, I don’t aspire going all low carb or whatever for the rest of my life. I enjoy a variety of food. I’m trying to get back down to my normal weight and eat what I want, but not excessively.

Thank you so much for all your encouragement. Because of you, I’m walking every day and loving it. And I did as you suggested. I started weighing myself every day, something I completely avoided. Now I’m able to see what’s working and not working. In 3 weeks, I’ve lost 5 pounds. I’ve lost a total of 5 inches. I love it! I’m also doing intermittent fasting, which I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do. Did I say THANK YOU?!?!

Signed,

Miss Katie

Dear Miss Katie,

First of all, congratulations on your success thus far with intermittent fasting! You’re doing the work, and it shows. Keep up those 3 simple habits: weighing, walking, and intermittent fasting, and you’ll continue to see results.

I confess, I had never heard of the egg fast, so I had to do some Googling. It seems like there are variations, but the gist is, you eat 6 or more eggs a day, plus butter and cheese for 3-5 days. The idea is that you’ll drop weight. Here are my thoughts.

1. I have no interest in doing one, personally. I feel the best when I get plenty of fat, protein, and carbs at my meal.
2. I can see major downsides to doing this. In your case, I think it could shake things up, but in a bad way.

Let’s talk about what will happen:*

1. The egg fast will deplete your glycogen stores. This will cause your water weight to drop. This isn’t true weight loss.
2. After the egg fast is over and you go back to eating carbs, your glycogen stores will return to normal. Your weight will increase. This isn’t true weight gain.
3. The net result is negative in two ways:
   1. You may get it in your head that when you were on that egg fast you lost 5 or 10 true pounds. Thereafter, slow weight loss will seem unacceptable.
   2. You may start to fear carbs because they seemed to make you gain weight. This can make you miserable.

Why am I tossing around terms like true weight loss and true weight gain? Because in my view, losing water weight is not the name of the game. Losing fat is. The way to lose fat is to get your body to tap into your fat stores. And the way to get it to do that is by being in a caloric deficit. The key is to find the plan that you can stick to that does this. You already have, so there’s no need to deviate from your plan.

I completely understand the urge to shake things up. My tendency to do that led to a lot stalling out on the weight loss journey. I talk about it in my most recent video, How I would lose 65 pounds if I had to start all over (3 Shortcuts), right around the 6:13 mark. My best advice: resist the urge to change your plan. To put it a different way, fall in love with the boredom of a simple plan that works for you.

Do shake things up in other areas of your life. Learn a new skill. Rearrange your furniture. Paint your room. These are good things that will make weight loss easier. Win win!

Sincerely,

Kayla

*Here’s the science behind it all: Your body can store 15 g of glycogen per kg of body weight. In other words, a 222 lb (100kg) woman can store 1500 g of glycogen. Each gram of glycogen stores 3 grams of water. Thus, that woman could store 4500 g of water because of glycogen stores. 4500 g of water = 10 pounds of water. This is why a lot of people lose a quick 10 pounds on keto, but then stall out.