So does your metabolism slow down when fasting?
I posted about this on the Eat Like a Bear group in September when I had rather a lot of thoughts about it brought on by a bad case of what my friends and I refer to as “sewing machine leg.”
In short, I just could not sit still.
Some thoughts: a very long time ago, I read a study about how your metabolism drops when dieting. Basically, even if you exercise exactly the same amount, you still burn less calories when dieting.
I don’t recall how exactly the study was conducted, but I remember the punchline – that people fidgeted less when dieting. It wasn’t anything conscious that they did, however many steps on their Fitbit or what they did at the gym, it was that they were literally burning fewer calories when they were sitting in a chair than non-dieting folks.
Fung insists fasting is different, that metabolism doesn’t slow like with restricted calorie dieting. He had a lot of good arguments to back this up and I believed him as it made sense to me.
I remembered this study when the wasband pointed out that I was very fidgety lately. I repeatedly get a case of what we call “sewing machine leg.” I just can’t seem to sit still.
I’ve actually wondered if I was hyperthyroid, but I haven’t had palpitations and my last TSH was OK.
I think… I just have been so fatigued for so long that feeling normal feels strange to me. It seems like there’s infinite energy now. I just sit and wiggle in my chair. Moving feels good.
As far as I can tell, my metabolism not only hasn’t slowed, but has actually revved up.
Which means as I sit in a chair and write this with my leg bouncing around, I am burning more calories than a month ago.
In follow-up questions, I admitted I find TSH a rather useless test by itself, though my endo likes it. I prefer full thyroid panels, which must include rT3 and FT3 to satisfy me.
But I hadn’t asked for that recently; the endo had just checked TSH.
Still, I felt if I were suddenly hypothyroid on my meds, I’d have had symptoms or a very different TSH, and there was none of that.
Just crazy levels of energy that I didn’t understand.
Next, I developed my 3/4 fasting plan.
