Egg fast starting Monday 21 July

[StuntNun]

This is the support thread for the egg fast. I have based the rules on Jimmy Moore's Eggfest. Please note that this is an experimental fast and may not be suitable for people with underlying health conditions. It is intended for people that are already following a low carb - high fat diet and are trying to break a stall or lose the last few pounds to reach their goal weight.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or nutritionist. If you follow this fast and have any issues at all such as feeling unwell then seriously consider stopping the fast immediately. Alternatively wait until a few of us have tried it first!

THE RULES

1. Eat at least six eggs per day
This is not a calorie-restricted diet so eat to fullness.

2. Buy the best quality eggs you can
Free range eggs may contain more omega 3 fats and vitamin D.

3. Eat one tablespoon of butter per egg
Coconut oil, olive oil and mayo may also be used.

4. You may add up to one ounce of cheese per egg if desired
Make sure your cheese is low carb.

5. Drink as much water as you can: at least 2-4 litres MINIMUM
Black or bulletproof coffee, black tea, green tea and herbal tea can be added if required.

6. Add salt and keep taking your usual vitamins (if taken)
Consider extra magnesium and potassium to prevent cramps.
If you suffer from constipation then flaxseed may help.

7. Exercise daily
Even a short walk will help maintain lean muscle mass.

8. Eat three meals a day; if not hungry eat one egg
Your appetite will be reduced but keep eating to preserve lean muscle mass.

9. Follow the egg fast for three days; five days may give better results
You will be sick of eggs by the third day.

10. Transition back to your normal diet
E.g. the day after eat two egg meals and one normal meal (whatever you usually eat), the day after that eat one egg meal and two normal meals. Consider keeping on eating at least two eggs a day to maintain the effects of the fast.

Egg fast has been officially broken with steak and salad for lunch. I feel stuffed! I may have more eggs for dinner though as the kids are having sausages but they aren't low carb ones.

Had a protein shake for lunch worked out at less carbs than a few eggs) and cream cheese pancakes done like crepes and folded over with cheese for dinner. I did DP's as pizza in a pancake!

Non-egg food feels like a luxury now, doesn't it?

Well I have managed to stick with the eggs so far, even dumped my devilled eggs on my plate at lunchtime and had about 10 green beans from the buffet! Scoffed them then ran out as some delicious looking brownies were making eyes at me.

I have also resisted the bags of popcorn, crisps and flapjacks available all day right under my nose. I will break my egg fast this eve at dinner. But just found out we are doing cocktail making, how do I get out of drinking those?!? Uh oh...

Sugarless cocktails? I have no idea! Find out if they have sugar free syrups, or just do your own as vodka and diet coke/sf lemonade etc. Citric acids knock some people out of ketosis though...

It does feel like luxury but I have avoided actual food as much as possible for some reason, feel a bit scared! :/ Kept my non eggyness for the morning with time to use up the energy!

I know what you mean Schro....

Today:

2 eggs with butter and salt
Piece of ham, a prawn
2 hard boiled eggs
A low carb sausage, a pkt of awfully posh pork scratchings and a GIN AND TONIC!!!

My macros were still pretty good today: carbs 4%, protein 17% fat 79% so it will be interesting to see that the scales say tomorrow. I really hope I don't put anything back on but we'll see. I am definitely an advocate of the egg fast now though. It's been a real struggle to lose weight since I reached a normal BMI but the egg fast seems to have done the trick.

Maybe we should try for a monthly 3 day egg fest, just to keep things on track!

Look forward to seeing the scales tomorrow a well and seeing if non eggynfood causes a gain or not...

Will weigh tomorrow with interest. I haven't eaten very much today and low carbing I find I gain weight if I don't eat enough....

Schro I think that is a good idea I would do that.

I think that's a good idea Schro. I don't think I need to do it weekly but it might be good for forestalling stalls iykwim. Next time I would know to be stricter about being properly low carb before starting and I would probably buy in some big bottles of water to be sure I'm getting enough. Proper salted butter would probably be handy too as I have been eating a few crystals of salt here and there. I recall seeing a recipe where you melt butter, mix in sea or rock salt then let it harden again.

Yes id do a monthly one too, good idea.

so evening over, I had pulled pork, chicken drumstick and 5 wings for dinner and a few leaves of lettuce - more meat than id usually have but my strategy was to eat enough to not be tempted by all the other stuff. It worked. I did have 5 sips of cocktails in total, so im sure the sugar has kicked me out of ketosis. But back to my regular routine tomorrow, will keep it zero carb to get back into ketosis asap! Will aim for 2 egg meals too. All in all, I reckon I did ok considering the temptations today.

I'm not going to weigh until monday so I dont get disheartened if I have put some on after the tge cocktails and give me the weekend to lose it.

Also my treadmill is being fixed soon so can work on the exercise soon, yay!

I feel a bit nauseous now. Is that the sugar?

Hi everyone.
Well on day 3 I realised I couldn't face another egg so I had prawn cocktail for dinner

Yesterday I sort of low carbed apart from a sausage bap for my dinner.

I have lost about 4lbs I think. I didn't weigh myself before starting so it's a bit of a guess.
I will keep on lc in the sense that I will cut of white carbs.
Still not having sugar in tea and I haven't eaten chocolate for 4 days.
That is a minor miracle!

Questions yes sugar can mess you up if you're eating low carb. After you've been LC for a while your muscles become insulin resistant so that any glucose in your bloodstream is spared for the parts of the body that are glucose-dependent such as the retinas. But then when you do eat sugary stuff your muscles don't take up the sugar and store it as glycogen so you can get a bit overloaded like a child on Hallowe'en. IMO it's a good thing as you end up self-regulating your carb intake i.e. a bite of cake is nice but two slices is going to make you feel queasy. I like this new trend for little desserts and cakes, for example in Pizza Express and Costa Coffee. They're just the right size for a low carber on maintenance.

Speaking of maintenance, I'm another pound down this morning so only two pounds to go until I'm back on my maintenance WOE. DH and I are both LC so we have one carby meal a week when we're on maintenance. Usually curry with rice (he hates cauliflower so we can't have cauli rice) or something with the kids such as pizza. Can't wait!

I did buy another dozen eggs yesterday in case we were getting low.

Questions It might be, most pulled pork is really sugary as well. Good idea not to weigh until Monday.

Ihate I don't blame you, the eggyness was a bit "ugh" on the third day. Just make sure you cut out a lot of the fat if you only cut certain carbs out as high fat and keeping some carbs in, don't mix.

I'm up 1lb today 151lb. I am wearing a lightish dress though so perhaps clothes on the scales could have skewed it slightly, but I am not sure.

Still 9 3 here. I cannot believe how difficult it is proving to get to target. In the not so distant past I had a fail safe method of losing 2-3 pounds in 5 days, low carb, but still drank every night, and could get away with a few nuts here and there.

I now cannot eat ANY fruit not even berries, and hardly any veg. I might get scurvy at this rate.

Thanks stuntnun, I love the science behind it.

iam I can imagine when you've got so. Little to lose it gets incredibly hard to do so.

Had 2 fried eggs, 2 rashers of bacon, one mushroom and black coffee for breakfast. Im going to keep it as clean as possible til Monday.

Also, didn't realise about pulled pork, but yes had a slightly sweet taste to it. Grr.

Nevermind, onwards and downwards....

Hi all hope you don't mind me crashing in to ask a question... I was just wondering people who are struggling could it be to do with the eggs themselves? Eggs are a potential food intolerance trigger, chicken also has some hormone in it that can make people sleepy these things might explain why it was harder for some people? Would this type of fast work with just eating meat such as lamb for three days?

Yumyum I suspect the fatigue was from going into ketosis because for me it passed after day 2. There is a meat and egg fast as well that can be used in the same way. There is also a fat fast but apparently it's awful.

I like the idea of a meat fast....

I also like the idea of a meat fast! Need to give that a go.

Is a meat fast just zero carbs? Ie no veg? Just meat/protein?

It includes eggs, eggs are about .7 of a carb, so depends on how many eggs you have butby3s, could be pretty much zero carb.

I'm going to try this starting tomorrow!

fat fast does sound grim stuntnun. I guess for people who tolerate eggs they are cheap versatile and vegetarian. If it's meat with eggs though it wont help with any undiagnosed egg intolerance and basically becomes atkins? Sorry I am confusing a really good thread

I don't think I'll do the egg fast again, unless it's specifically to break a stall. Looking back at MFP for the three days, my protein intake was always short of the 77g minimum I should have (0.6g for each pound of bodyweight). I think that's likely to have a detrimental effect on lean body mass as you aren't eating enough protein and with little to no carbs in your diet you will be using protein for gluconeogenesis (in addition to the glycerol backbone of triglycerides releasing their fatty acids to be burned as fuel). My biggest issue at the moment is my proportion of lean body mass to fat so anything that loses lean body mass is going the wrong direction for me. I do think the egg fast has been successful for me, in as much as losing the weight I had gained on holiday and doing it quickly, I just don't think it's something I would want to do on a weekly or monthly basis. It would be much more useful to people who are overweight and will be expecting to lose a proportion of lean body mass along with the fat. After all if I've lost 15 kg then it wasn't 15kg of fat alone, I must have lost other body tissue as well.

So now I am looking into the meat and egg fast and Vince Girona's steak and egg diet. Adding protein to the egg fast overcomes the issue to some extent and doesn't add undue carbs. It is slightly more complicated to get the macros right but I've done a sample meal plan that gives me 1850 calories at 2% carbs, 17% protein, 81% fat. I usually do intermittent fasting 14:10 so I would have a cup of tea first thing (you can consume less than 50 calories during your fast period). Brunch would be three scrambled eggs, a 100% beef burger and a BPC. Snack would be a Babybel and a BPC. Dinner would be a small steak and salad leaves with vinaigrette. I think this type of eating would be sustainable for longer than five days although I would probably want to add in more vegetables every other day or so. This type of food is pretty similar to ubercamp so it would probably be easiest just to ubercamp for a while longer and see how that goes.

Sorry for the somewhat random ramblings, I wanted to get my thoughts in order. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Stunt I've been following everyone's escapades on here as I had the egg fast in reserve to break my stall. As it is I seem to have moved a bit doing a mix of Harcombe Ph 1 and Uber. I have noticed that several of you over on the other thread are now struggling with carb cravings and I'm thinking that could be counter productive. When it comes to protein intake do you work it out from your current weight or from your lean mass? I seem to read differing views. Currently my protein runs at around 60-66gr which would be a bit low on total weight. If you work it on lean mass it should be nearer to 50gr. I don't want to be stalling but I can't afford to lose any more muscle mass.