(If you haven’t read my first experience with the Fasting Mimicking Diet, you can find the link here.)
I tried the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) for a second time starting on Monday, December 17th, 2018. This time my starting numbers were:
Body weight: 82.4kgs
Bodyfat: 18.1%
Fat mass: 14.9kgs
Muscle mass: 38.2kgs
As of the final day of the diet, I’d lost 3.4kgs. The first time around I lost 2.3kgs, so this may have been an effect of doing some extra weight training on this second try. (See below.)
On Wednesday, the third day of the diet, I went into the gym for a little exercise. The previous time on the FMD I did some low-intensity weight training and felt much hungrier afterwards than I did on the days when I didn’t exercise. This time, after some light warm up sets, I did one heavy set of leg press, calf raises, incline bench press and pull-ups. I also did two sets of lateral raises for my shoulders. After that, it was just some stretching and foam rolling. This didn’t seem to trigger hunger like the lower intensity stuff, so I went back on Thursday and Friday as well.
The exact workouts I did are as follows:
Wednesday: Leg press, calf raise, incline bench press, pull-ups, one set each. Lateral raises, two sets.
Thursday: Leg extensions, leg curls, close-grip pulldowns, wrist curls, one set each. Hammer OH press, seated calf raises, two sets.
Friday: 1-leg leg press, calf raises on leg press machine, bench press, wide-grip pulldowns, cable work for shoulders, one set each.
Part of the purported benefit of the FMD is an increase in satellite cells. This is important because these cells are the ones that create new tissue, which is essentially the way the body regenerates itself. Even without fasting, one of the best ways to create satellite cells is by doing eccentric or negative exercise. So while my workouts were short, I made sure to emphasize the negative portion of each rep. Unfortunately I don’t have a way to measure satellite cell production, but the theory seems good, so I went with it. Figured it couldn’t hurt.
On Sunday, one full day plus a breakfast of refeeding after the FMD was finished, I went in and did the InBody tester machine, which is what I’ve been using all along. The results were better than last time:
Two days (one day plus one meal) after FMD (23 Dec):
Weight: 79.9kgs
Bodyfat: 16.6%
Fat: 13.3kgs
Muscle: 37.6kgs
Last time I made a note to eat more protein coming off the FMD, and I did that this time around. That, combined with the additional weight training, made quite a difference. Fat loss was increased by 60% (1kg last time to 1.6 this time), and muscle was better preserved by about the same ratio (0.9kgs lost to 0.6kgs this time). These results were also significantly better than at four days after the diet last time (when my weight was almost the same: 79.9kgs). This shows that the weight training was effective.
So if you’re going to try the FMD and want to incorporate a little exercise to try to improve your results, I recommend a few heavy sets: one set for large compound movements, and maybe two for smaller bodyparts. This, plus some added protein after the diet was finished, worked well for me. Stay tuned for a third round of FMD, coming sometime in February.