Intermittent Fasting: Gaining Weight

[spoiler title=’Click for video transcript’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’] what should you do if you start to gain weight when you’re intermittent fasting this is an important topic because nothing is more frustrating when you’re trying to lose weight than if you start to feel like you are gaining weight instead so in today’s video I’m gonna talk about how I look at weight gain how I define it and what I do about it the first thing to do is to not panic okay in 2015 that was my problem I panicked all the time about my weight I was in a huge rush to make the weight go away and I ended up panicking all the time and changing my plan and just in short not being consistent but in 2016 I got very clear on my plan I said you know I’m gonna do intermittent fasting six days a week I’m gonna do a cheat day on Sunday and I’m gonna walk six miles everyday once I got very very clear on my plan I also said I’m gonna take the very very long view I’m not gonna start you know panicking every time there’s a gain or perceived gain and I said I’m gonna just take it six weeks at a time and really even two months at a time that’s how long I started to look at and really even years out into the future that’s what I was more concerned about like am i doing the things that ten years from now I’m gonna be at a healthy weight and if the answer was yes I was gonna be okay with that but I know that’s a lot easier said than done you know when I look back over my weight loss journey I can show you you know that the weight doesn’t go this way you know it goes like this and notice there is that that little up part and that’s the part where you can start to panic and think oh my gosh I’m not doing the right things and then you just change everything and you end up doing nothing at all like I did in 2015 but what I found is more helpful is to start taking the long view realize you know they’re gonna be those up fluctuations just like there’s the downward trend and you just have to learn how to deal with that and I think it’s an excellent idea to analyze you know if you start to notice again do something about it here’s how I analyze whether I’m actually gaining or not and there are times I’ll tell you even now where I’ll have some you know weeks there where it’s like come on is the number it’s going up why is it going up it should be going down because I’m doing the right things but I always go through the same process and it keeps me on track the first thing I do is I ask myself am I being consistent and am i following my plan actually every day as part of my checklist that I go through and one of the tasks is to just simply ask myself did you stick to your plan yesterday this is crucial okay I have noticed for myself the only times that my numbers have really ever gotten really kind of out of line it’s when I haven’t been consistent I’ve had too many off days I have too many off plan days so I simply ask myself did you stick to the plan and I’m brutally honest with myself about whether I stuck to the plan or not now I’m brutally honest but I’m not brutal with myself so you know I’m very strict it’s like did I have a single bite of food during my fasting window and the answer is no I did not stick to my plan the day before but I don’t beat myself up about it okay that has been so huge I don’t beat myself up it’s just about you know understanding okay well I didn’t stick to the plan okay no big deal I just know that if the numbers are gonna cooperate that’s one reason why so if I’m being very very consistent and and and I can realize that yeah you know I’ve been super super consistent then I look at the numbers and I take again the long view and I’ve looked at the numbers you know for the past few years and during those times where I’ve tried where I was trying to actually lose and I was being very consistent when I look at you know two months out so I take that 7-day average and then I look two months out generally speaking I can always see that after two months of time that number has gone down but there have been times where even when you compare two months there have been you know just slight fluctuations up but overall if you look at the long term look at that column and see how the number it goes down and down down eventually but it’s all about just being stubborn letting the scale catch up to the effort and staying consistent with the plan now during all my time of doing this I’ve never had to actually change my plan didn’t want to change my plan I didn’t want to have to change no the things I was eating because my plan is to eat whatever I want at my one meal and I like that and if I find it very very easy to stick to so I have never changed the plan and I’ve just kind of waited it out and that’s what’s worked for me now let’s say though that maybe you’re kind of new at this and you don’t really have any results to go on and for six weeks you’ve been really consistent with this plan and the numbers are just going up here’s what I would say first of all assess your plan and make sure you really do have a clear plan so that you really do know that you are doing a plan and then the second thing to do is to maybe look at pushing your fasting window to be a little bit longer anything shorter than like a 16-hour fast sometimes people either don’t have any results or maybe have even some slight gains and you know it’s not something I’ve ever had to do but if you don’t want to make your fasting window any longer than what it currently is you might have to look at tweaking your your eating like what are you eating how much are you eating and then go from there so that’s what’s worked for me basically takes a very long view don’t panic stay relaxed don’t beat yourself up and get right back on track if the problem is you’re not being consistent maybe even look at making your plan a little easier so that you can be consistent I’m curious to know like how do you look at games do you have a trick to kind of get yourself back encouraged okay thank you for watching be sure to LIKE comment subscribe down below [/spoiler]

Video Recap

Perceived weight gain is frustrating, but it’s important to analyze the situation and figure out what’s really going on. When my weight seems to be going higher instead of lower, here’s what I do:

1. I do not panic.
2. I ask myself if I’m being consistent with my plan. One of my daily checklist tasks is to ask myself if I followed my plan the day before.
3. If my problem is being inconsistent, I simply remind myself to get back on plan. And I do. I do not beat myself up for being inconsistent.
4. If I’m being consistent, I take a look at what my numbers are really doing.  I look at my 7 day average over the past few weeks. And then I tell myself I’ll be really consistent for the next 6 weeks and see where I end up.
5. I’ve not ever had to change my plan, because my problems have always either been consistency, or that the scale it just taking some time to catch up to my efforts. After 6 weeks or 2 months, the scale starts to move again, in my experience.

*Note: I’ve found that it’s almost impossible to tell whether I’m gaining or losing if I only weigh once a week. Weighing every day and keeping track of my 7 day average has shown me what my weight is actually doing, and it helps me to stay focused on the big picture. Here’s the tracking spreadsheet I made to keep track of my 7 day average.

Have you ever experienced consistent weight gain with intermittent fasting? What did you do?