Re: Is there such a thing is hitting a platu with weight loss in fasting?
Hi Skinnyminny,
I believe you have hit a plateau in "water loss". Most or all of the water weight you were going to drop, whether temporarily or permanantly, you have dropped. Any additional water loss at this point has become quite a bit less substantial.
A pound a day of fat loss would be very unlikely... Depending on how much you weigh, and other factors that would influence your basal metabolic rate, i would estimate with no exercise that a person of 200 lbs would be losing about .5 or .6 lbs of fat each day at this stage of a water fast. If a person was say 300 lbs, i would put that estimate at .75-.9 lbs.
I don't believe drinking that much water is causing you to retain the water... Quite to the contrary and indeed paradoxically, more water intake generally means more water flushed out (beyond the amount taken in) and i believe this is due to "water retaining sodium" being flushed out. You are therefore probably eliminating all your water intake every day... and likely a little bit more. Not to say you still need that much water intake at this stage. You would probably do well to cut back on it some.
If you wanted to burn even more fat each day, exercising would definately be the way. A brisk walk of an hour for a 200 pounder would burn about 500 calories in my estimation, which equates to another .14
lbs. (But that would really have to be pretty brisk. a slower walk might yield only 300 calories of burning by comparison). 2 of these 500 calorie walks in a day would bring another .28 lbs of weight loss, primarily fat. The exercise itself while you are in the midst of it, and the fact that it would increase your metabolism a little bit for the remaining hours in the day, perhaps bringing these numbers overall to .15 and .3
pounds on top of the .5 to .6 the 200 pounder is seeing with no exercise at all.
It sounds like you are doing great Minny. Congratulations on your success.