READER’S QUESTION: I want autophagy but I don’t want to lose weight.

This post discusses how to get the benefits of autophagy without losing weight, and how people with low muscle mass can even gain weight because of the release of human growth hormone.

Consuming ultra processed foods (UPFs) and eating around the clock can cause damage to some people without causing them to gain weight. These people need to detox without losing weight. Here are some tips:

Stick with 16:8 and no more. If you’re not carrying around excess fat, you likely have a healthy insulin level (but not always, more on that below). If your insulin level is healthy, autophagy could start at 12 hours after eating, giving you 4 hours a day of autophagy benefits.

Eat protein to full satiety: Your appetite tells you how much to eat when you take out UPFs. When you eat enough protein and healthy animal fat (no seed oils) to full satiety, you won’t lose weight unless you need to drop some inflammation. Processed foods and sugars are extremely inflammatory and many people drop a good deal of water weight when they reduce them (which causes you to need extra salt).

The first week I did alternate day fasting (ADF), I lost 7 lbs and there’s no way I could burn through that much fat in a week. It was probably 2 lbs fat and 5 lbs water. If you lose a large amount of weight at first that you didn’t want to lose, stick with it because it’s likely the weight loss will stop after your fluids adjust. You might even find yourself slowly gaining weight as you build muscle.

Some people who are skinny-fat actually gain weight fasting: There is a class of people who are skinny but extremely unhealthy and have low muscle tone. These people often have fat around their internal organs. Fasting for 16:8 and eating high protein has been proven to be transformative for this group because of the human growth hormone release. They will often gain weight because of increased muscle and bone density but their size will either stay the same or their waist may shrink. There’s quite a bit of anecdotal evidence showing people increasing muscle from fasting without increasing exercise.

One such skinny-fat person was Megan Ramos whose story is featured in full in the post on FASTING FOR WOMEN AT DIFFERENT STAGES. When Megan was in her teens, and before she became obese in her 20s, she weighed 98 lbs (she’s 5’ 1”). She looked very small but had a very high body fat percentage along with fatty liver disease. She describes herself as a teen in this interview as “a tiny sack of fat.” The reason why her weight was so low is that she had almost no muscle. Fasting can help such a person gain much-needed muscle and also weight.