[Preview] Will fasting cause muscle loss?

How do you help patients get started with fasting? How do you tailor it to suit the individual? What things do you have to take into consideration – and in what circumstances is it useful?

Megan Ramos works closely with Dr. Jason Fung and answers these questions in this talk from Low Carb Breckenridge 2018.

Watch a part of the presentation above, where Megan talks about a patient who started fasting and gained lean mass while losing fat.

[ClarkPotter]

Did anyone else catch that this woman is 250lbs!!!???

[timothyschumann]

Listening to Megan on on various podcasts for the last year, soaking up all the knowledge, nuance and wisdom she communicates... it's interesting trying to reconcile my mental image of Megan with this much more actual image of Megan. I'm still hearing all the confidence and authority, but I'm having trouble accepting what a concentrated form it comes in. Where does she keep it all!?!

[UJJWAL]

But generally, there is bone loss due to serious calorie restriction over prolonged time .

[denisholohan]

if you do a 4 / 5-day water fast and don't resistance train in those 5 days would you lose muscle?
27 year old male
13% body fat
very fit

[cataylor]

Is there a way to post documents in youtube comments? I would LOVE to show my Dexa Scan results after a 5-day water fast. I lost 13.5 lbs; 2 lbs of fat and 11.5 lbs of lean tissue.
I started at 218.5 down to 205. I'm back up to 210 after starting to eat. I don't feel weaker, but it ate my muscle like crazy!

[GodfreyMann]

This simply confirms what we already knew: that muscle mass can be increased through exercise - it tells us nothing about the effects of fasting on muscle loss.

For all we know, the patient might gain even more muscle on a well-formulated ketogenic diet designed for weight loss without fasting.

When a company (and she's a co-founder of IMD.health) resorts to cherry-picking data then that’s when the alarm bells ring.

Why doesn’t she just show us the peer-reviewed papers that support her argument? If they exist...

[DukeofFoxboro]

The chart also shows a visceral fat gain of .14 lbs.

[Mariuspaul]

"...75 year old man come in and flex their big pipes for me."

...i found this quiet funny :D

[GodfreyMann]

The brain still needs to derive at least 20% of its energy from glucose even when ketogenic when fasting, but if glycogen stores are depleted then where’s this glucose coming from?

It of course comes from gluconeogenesis, which is the production of glucose from protein, but if we’re fasting then where’s the protein coming from?

From the catabolism of muscle, ergo muscle wasting happens during fasting, BUT ketones protect muscle to a degree as they allow the brain to drop from 100% glucose utilisation to 20% i.e. less reliance on glucose => reduced need for gluconeogenesis => reduced muscle loss (but still some).

[maxvanhorn]

1) A woman in her 50's doesn't gain 1 pound of muscle each month, especially not on restricted calories. 2) Lean tissue is everything that is not fat tissue; this includes muscle, but also water, bone, organ and all other tissues. Since she was water fasting so much and probably hydrated as hell, there is a good chance other things have increased her lean tissue. But I'll guarantee you, she did not gain a cool 4 lbs of muscle in 4 months.

[reecea.]

I did an 8 day watermelon fast, and the round butt i used to have is GONE. its as flat as my back and now i have loose skin under my butt, it definitely ate my muscle away, and my tail bone is now exposed and it hurts to sit in a chair, so not happy about this, I'm doing butt exercises and so far NOTHING. Why did my body eat my muscle first? I want to do a long water fast but now am scared too because i dont want to loose more muscle. help?

[pr-jjnc]

Twice a week for weight training is not enough and not "intense".

Also she is 250 body IF and monthly fasts clearly are not working for her.