I’m starting to notice that The FASTer Way to Fat Loss is gaining some ground in popularity in the fitness world these days.  Have you heard of this program?  It combines workouts with intermittent fasting and carb cycling to help people gain muscle and lose fat.  I went to college with the woman who created this program, but it wasn’t until I started to see facebook friends who didn’t know Amanda trying the program that I realized it was really catching on.  This was back in May.  And Isla Jane was coming up on three months old, and I still had a few extra baby weight pounds hanging on that I was wanting to shed.  So, I decided to try the six-week program for myself.  Read my honest review below for the things that I loved and why I chose not to continue for a second round after completing it.

So what is The FASTer Way to Fat Loss anyway?

In short, the six-week program combines intermittent fasting and carb cycling with five workouts per week to help clients build muscle and lose fat.  The program involves online private facebook groups where clients can build accountability with other members and get feedback from certified coaches.  Sounds pretty good, right?

What I loved…

1.  Intermittent Fasting!

I couldn’t believe it.  I thought I would just hate this part about the program, but it was really my biggest takeaway.  There are several different methods for IF, but this program encourages a daily 8-hour eating window with 16 hours of resting/digesting (typically eating between noon and 8 p.m.).  Mine wasn’t always a full 16 hours.  Sometimes it was more like 14 because of scheduling (when I have a chance in my day to eat) or because I was so darn hungry by then, that I just wanted to eat!  I have always been a breakfast eater and have always really enjoyed breakfast, but I decided that most days I really enjoyed eating breakfast mid-afternoon (after lunch!).  Weird, but since it’s so enjoyable to me, I liked being able to eat my favorite meal during nap time while I could eat without answering anyone’s octopus questions.  Plus, normally I would reach for a snack in the mid-afternoon, and it would probably be something nutritionally weak (i.e. tortilla chips).  Instead, I found myself choosing something nutritionally dense because I was truly hungry and skipping the tortilla chips altogether without even thinking about it.  Win.

2.  Taming my “Sugar Dragon”

I tend to have what you may call a “sweet tooth” (or, maybe more appropriately, a “sugar dragon” as coined by Melissa Hartwig, the creator of the Whole 30!).  I love carbs.  I love sugar.  This program required two low carb days where clients ate 50 grams of net carbs per day (total carbs minus fiber).  That was hard.  That was not always fun.  Here’s what was cool–after restricting carbs for two days in a row (Mondays and Tuesdays), the carbs I was craving on Wednesday were really nutrient dense foods.  I just wanted to eat beets, and fruit, and sweet potatoes, and a little honey.  I thought I might go crazy on the tortilla chips again, but I didn’t even want them.  The low carb days really helped reset my cravings, and I found myself wanting real, whole foods.  Winning again.

3.  Big Strength Gains

I certainly didn’t come into this program as a complete newbie.  More of an I-am-my-own-guinea-pig type, so the workouts weren’t all new to me.  However, even though I have been prioritizing strength training for several years now (Hello, happy thyroid!), I would often strength train twice per week.  This program had three days of strength training, and I found out how much that really helped me.  Just three or four weeks into the program I could do a pull-up again (an ability I had lost during pregnancy and was consciously trying to regain)!  This was really exciting!  I was definitely building lots of lean muscle but continuing to get leaner.  I will say this again since I’ve already said it about a thousand times: Ladies, do not worry about bulking up!  Gaining muscle will lean you out!

4.  Fat Burning Cardio Workouts

I am in 100% agreement with Amanda (the program’s creator) when she encourages clients to quit slogging it out on the treadmill or elliptical and just do some sprints and be done with it!  Interval training gets the job done without taking all day or taxing your muscles and joints unnecessarily.  I knew this was true from my own experience (running just a few days a week and less than half the weekly miles that I ran in college but focusing on speedwork to find myself crushing my college PRs).  I hadn’t done much in the way of sprinting while pregnant (as much as I did, occasionally, try), so it was nice to get back into some sprinting again.  My legs felt it, and it felt so good.  Additionally, I know even one day of sprinting per week really helps me burn fat and get lean, and I could tell that was working!  Another win.

So, all in all, those are some pretty big pros for this fitness program!  Now here’s what I was really not into…

What I did NOT love…

1. Counting “macros”

The program requires each user to enter their food into an app (My Fitness Pal) daily, take a screenshot of their macro percentages (how much of your diet went to fats, proteins, and carbs), and post this screenshot to the facebook group.  I hated this.  I have two kids!  I do not have time to enter every morsel of food that I eat into an app.  Not to mention, I really enjoy cooking, so not all of our meals are simple to add in.  There were many times that I had to enter a recipe into the app to have it calculate all of my macros for me.  This is not sustainable for my real life.  In fact, I didn’t even continue counting the macros past the first week or two.  Now, on low carb days, this was really helpful to see how many carbs are in a particular food I was enjoying, and I do understand that this is really a tool to help users understand more about the food going into their bodies, but I do also think that eating needs to be more intuitive than this.  “Now, how many almonds did I grab out of the jar?  I guess I need to count these before I eat them so I know what to log.”  I would much rather listen to my body’s cues for food.  “How hungry am I?” to determine how much to eat.  Not, “I have to hit 90 grams of protein today, so I’ll have 6 ounces of chicken breast and only egg whites today so I don’t eat too much fat from the yolks.”  If you learn to tune into your body, it will even tell you which macros to eat.  “For some reason I really want an extra serving of meat with this meal.”  I would encourage users to be careful with logging their food.  While this can be very educational and helpful in the short run, it can become an unhealthy obsession that steers people away from listening to their bodies.

2. Too many carbs! (And a one-size-fits-all nutrition plan)

As much as I thought the low carb days would be the hardest ones, in some ways they were the easy days.  The program also required “regular macro” days on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  Clients are to consume 50% carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fat on those days.  At first, this sounds so exciting because carbs are so yummy!  However, I found myself feeling horrible and just not meshing with my normal diet.  If I got close to 50% carbs, I had so much brain fog, I could hardly think straight. My blood sugar felt totally out of whack (despite recognizing that this was no license to go crazy eating cookies), and I felt so tired!  After questioning this percentage to the online coaches, they kept telling me to eat more carbs and “watch those fats.”  I felt a bit fed up.  I knew this did not work for me.  I really felt that I would feel best at around 30% carbs and filling in the rest of my macros with fats.  Despite explaining that I have a semi-broken thyroid, and I just can’t handle that many carbs, nobody seemed to listen.  So, I stopped posting my macro screenshot (because by now I was also really tired of entering every bite of food into an app), focused on keeping my low carb days low and eating within my normal macro percentages the rest of the days.  This worked for me.

During week 6 we had a wrap-up call with Amanda where she encouraged us to sign up for another six-week round and talked about some frustrations some people experience during the first round.  She mentioned that some ladies may have a carb sensitivity and may find better success with 30-40% carbs on regular macro days.  I thought about how frustrated I would have been had I not already noticed this, trusted my body and my own intuition, and made the changes for myself.  I realize not everyone is coming into the program with the same level of body awareness, but, I for one, was glad I ignored the coaches’ advice and ate less carbs!

3. A very rigid schedule for syncing workouts and carb cycling

The program has a very strict stance on low carb days coinciding with sprint and HIIT days along with higher carb days on strength training days.  On Saturday, the entire community of FASTer Way participants do “Leg Day” followed by a treat of their choice.  While I don’t necessarily disagree with this approach, I just find it too stringent for real life.

What if sprint day also happens to be your son’s birthday and you really want a cupcake (or, heck, maybe just a piece of fruit!)?  What if a really special treat finds its way to you on a Wednesday, and it would be stale by Leg Day Saturday?  What if a 24-hour fast (normally scheduled for Thursdays) happens when you’ve got a work lunch with your boss?  What if you don’t want to sit out of a bacon and egg breakfast with your family on Saturday morning (which is also probably too much fat for a regular macro day)? Or what if a very busy Thursday finds that you can only squeeze in a HIIT day at home rather than a full strength training day at the gym…which therefore means you have to go low carb but everybody’s eating fruit salad?

Having hard and fast rules for which days you can eat what just doesn’t feel sustainable in the long run and may make participants feel like they’ve failed and end up giving up altogether (or their one special treat turns into four because they’ve already blown “low carb day”)?  I would rather feel the freedom to pick my food based on how I’m feeling and real life situations.  If I’ve got to follow all sorts of rules and have to say no to really, really special foods because it doesn’t fall on the right day, it just feels like a punishment and a diet to me.  This might not be the case for everyone, but it certainly doesn’t jive well with me.

4.  Too many habit changes for a complete beginner

If you’re new to fitness and eating real food, you are going to have to change A LOT of habits:

1.  Stop eating after 8 p.m.
2. Stop eating before noon.
3. Do a water fast or juice cleanse for 24 hours once per week.
4. Workout five days per week for about one hour at a time (although, there is an option for beginners to just do the nutrition plan).
5. Stop eating all gluten, dairy, sugar, and alcohol.
6. Eat from a list of “approved foods” for every single meal and snack all week except for one treat.
7. Log every morsel of food into an app.
8. Sync your food choices with your new found workout plan.

The science behind willpower does not suggest that this will be sustainable.  Willpower functions in your brain much like a muscle (even requiring glucose!).  If you have to make all of these changes at once, and they feel very drastic to you, the chances of you sticking with this program long term are very, very slim.

My Biggest Takeaways

So, my six weeks have come and gone, and, first of all, did it work?  To an extent, I think it did.  I didn’t see any hugely dramatic results, but I did see my abs come back after about a month on the program.  Overall, I could tell I was leaner despite not losing much weight.  (I also agree with Amanda–just throw out your scale!  It is not the best indicator of health and fitness!) Granted, I altered the nutritional components of the program a bit to fit my thyroid and my needs, but I did follow all the workouts to a T.

What I will keep doing

It’s been several months since I’ve completed the program.  What has stuck with me?  Intermittent Fasting is now one of my favorite little health hacks!  I do it most days of the week.  Sometimes it’s just a 12/12 protocol, and lots of times it’s something like a 14/10 thing, but I’m definitely benefiting from using an eating window and resting/digesting the rest of the time.  I find I don’t even like late-night snacking anymore.  It makes my stomach hurt in the morning.

I’m continuing to strength train three days per week and sprint or do some sort of speed work once per week.  I find these things make a huge difference in my body and staying lean.  At eight months postpartum, I am feeling leaner and stronger than ever before, and I think these types of workouts are key.

I also continue to do the occasional low carb day as a reset of sorts.  When I’m feeling carb and sugar cravings start to creep in, I’ll pick a day (that works well in my schedule) to go low carb.  Then I resume my normal diet the next day.  I find that works fairly well for me, doesn’t make me crazy or hangry , and leaves me feeling calm and in control.

What I probably won’t ever do again

The program had a few components that I’ve thrown out altogether.  I won’t be counting my macros again any time soon or entering them in an app (maybe I would do that for a day or two, but definitely not for any length of time beyond that).  I also won’t be following advice given to me by coaches who don’t know me or my health and history, and I won’t force myself to stick to a nutrition plan that doesn’t allow for real life scenarios or a deviation from workout plans.

All in all, I think the program has some good benefits, but I’m not sure that it sets every participant up for long term success and habit making.  It requires quite a bit of will power that is, frankly, kind of exhausting!  However, I did learn and implement some things that work great.

Have you tried The FASTer Way to Fat Loss?  How did it go for you?  Comment below!