HELP - Question about intermittent fasting!?

Rannoch3908

What can drink/eat during my 20:4 intermittent fasting each day?

I know tap water, plain unsweetened ice tea, and coffee with no sugar or cream.

What are other options?

What about flavored water with zero sugar or calories like LaCroix?

Water with lemon?

Sugar free Mio water additive?

Any foods?

cmriverside

Technically fasting means Zero calories.

Is there some medical reason why you have to fast for 20 hours?

Is it the way you just normally like to eat?

There is no magic that will happen or not if you actually eat some calories. . .

Here's the OMAD group, they will be your best people for questions:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/20634-omad-revolution

Rannoch3908

I just done like to eat breakfast (slows me down - more focused without).

At lunch im not hungry but I eat because it's lunch time. I don't get hungry till about 4pm. We eat dinner at 7.

Plus I have better luck trying not to eat for 20 hours than eating three meals and trying to eat healthy. If I don't eat at work I don't get tempted by fast food. Then I go home and have lots of health snacks and meals.

It also saves me money. Not having to buy lunch and breakfast. That's a nice chunk of change.

lgfrie

20:4 sounds pretty restrictive if you're new to IF. I do 18:6 but I worked my way up to it from 16:8 over the course of a year. No harm in giving it a shot, but you could easily back off that regimen a bit if you decided to. As @cmriverside noted, what you are talking about is pretty close to OMAD so I would read up on that if I were you. I think it's worth noting that far fewer people stick with an OMAD program than the much easier and much more common 16:8 approach. On Reddit \intermittentfasting you will see boatloads of people who've been happily doing 16:8 for years; most people last on OMAD for a few weeks, though there are exceptions and long-termers.

Also as @cmriverside noted, there is no magic that won't happen if you eat some calories outside the window. That said, having been down this road for a long-ish time, I do think it's better to be strict with oneself about the eating window. It helps with appetite control and cravings that when it's outside the eating window, no means NO CALORIES. Once you really drill it into your skull that no matter what, there will be zero calories outside the eating window, your mind and body adapt and good things happen as far as just forgetting about food and getting it out of your life and out of your mind for big chunks of the day, which makes it a lot easier to lose weight. There is a huge difference between zero calories and 1 calorie. Because if you have 1 calorie, then why not 2? And then why not 50? Or 200? Zero has an elegant simplicity which is what gives IF its power for some people.

So there it is, simple: zero calories outside the window. That answers all of your questions. You can have whatever you want outside the window as long as it doesn't have calories. Flavored water, carbonated water, tea, black coffee, etc. You cannot have any foods and still claim you are doing IF. You can have all the air you want.

Hard at first, it gets very easy after about a month.

sarahkatzenelson452

Do not use any zero cal sugar substites at all, especially during the fast period. It will throw your body for a loop getting a sweet signal but no calories.

Rannoch3908

Okay so perfect - I can have flavored water, diet soda, etc as long as it's zero calorie. I didn't know if the artificial flavoring and sweetener was an issue.

I already eat for eight hours a day (noon to 8pm) so not sure how switching to 16:8 would help me. I eat my first meal at noon (fast food or delivery every single day) then snack all afternoon then eat a dinner and desert after.

Switching to 20:4 allows me to continue to not eat breakfast, skip the fast food lunch, not eat mindlessly all afternoon snacking. At 4pm I can start eating but only till 8pm. So come home and have a snack to hold me over till dinner at 7pm which is keto (loving, loving, loving keto - been doing it two years). Then no snacks after 8pm (we like to snack late night so this will stop that).

It allows me to control my calories easier than just pure will power (order something healthy at lunch god damn it and then fail to do so and eat two pizzas instead) -- it's easier to just not eat lunch and then I can't mess that up. Plus I don't eat for hunger at lunch - I eat because I'm supposed to. Once I eat I feel like crap and the days over -- if I don't eat my energy is through the roof and focus is on point!

Plus like I said it cuts out tons of money. We only have $45 for our groceries per week for a family of 2. It's hard to make that work for 2-3 meals a day (7 days a week). This would help.

ccrdragon

sarahkatzenelson452 wrote: »

Do not use any zero cal sugar substites at all, especially during the fast period. It will throw your body for a loop getting a sweet signal but no calories.

Nonsense. There is a very small minority of people who have increased hunger signals after eating/drinking something that is artificially sweetened, but it doesn't throw your body for a loop.

OP - anything that has calories will break the fast so anything that doesn't is fine. But as other posters have said, there is nothing magical about doing the fast unless it allows you to adhere to your calorie deficit better.

janejellyroll

OP, if you're fasting due to insufficient funds for food, getting some tips to help your $45 a week go farther might be more helpful than devoting some of your limited food budget to LaCroix. Food banks may also be available to help out.

There are some good past threads in the "Food and Nutrition" section on making your food dollar go farther or if you want tips specific to your situation, you can start a new thread there and I'm sure people will be happy to help out. There can be differences between urban and rural resources, but so many people here have been through times of tight budgets/food insecurity and I'm sure would love to help.

cmriverside

If it's about money, that's a whole different issue.

I mean, if you're trying to lose weight anyway then looking for meal timing solutions makes sense - but you still have to eat the same amounts of food or you'll lose weight quickly.

I get it on the money thing, there have been several times in my life when I couldn't really afford food...but you still need to get those calories in if you want to hold on to your health.

Here's a thread from a couple years ago on stretching your grocery budget. Scroll down on that first page, there's a post at the bottom with a ton of helpful links.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10635985/25-weekly-food-budget/p1

JeromeBarry1

The medical point of fasting is to avoid insulin.

Rannoch3908

It's not only about money.

It helps me hit my calorie goal which is the most important reason I like the idea of intermittent fasting.

Yesterday went good. Pretty easy.
Day #2. Coming up.

HeidiCooksSupper

sarahkatzenelson452 wrote: »

Do not use any zero cal sugar substites at all, especially during the fast period. It will throw your body for a loop getting a sweet signal but no calories.

This is true for some of us but not all. Sweet without calories sends my appetite into hyper-hungry mode but others don't experience this.

lgfrie

I don't get any increased appetite from artificial sweeteners. I use them plenty outside the eating window, for instance in my iced tea, or black coffee with splenda. I doubt they're good for you, but I can only focus on one or a few challenges at a time, and I figure if I'm losing weight, I will deal with footnote-issues like artificial sweetener some other time.

IF is best done as simply as possible. "No calories outside the eating window" is plenty to work with. I wouldn't personally bother fussing with rules around artificial sweeteners, since they have no calories, unless you found it was making you hungry.

heybales

If I do a teaspoon of cream in each of my 2 mugs of coffee, drinking slowly from 10am until after noon, I see no ill effects as far as the normal insulin response going overboard causing me low blood sugar.

There is the IF crowd that feels this eating method helps them control their calories easier, perhaps stop insulin effect over-reactions and feeling tired during the day, allowing bigger meals when it is time to eat which may give more interesting options for food, perhaps helping a stomach that is problematic if eating too frequently.
I think I'm in this group for some of those desires, and so a few calories of cream spread out 2-3 hrs has no interference with any of those potential goals/desires for me - others it could obviously, only testing uncovers it.

Then there is the IF crowd that believes something truly magical is going on during the fasting part, like burning more fat than could normally occur, autophagy and a plethora of positive benefits that otherwise would not occur, any number of other ideas.
Except for some odd reason - I think it's some in this group that discuss the bulletproof coffee usage (though normally keto).
And some minuscule amount of calories especially from carbs it seems will totally prevent any of that magic from occurring for that day.

I don't get response from the flavored diet water either, though the amount of sweetener is probably really low since no other flavors to compete with.

GeneralSTpower

Zero Calorie drinks dont mess with my appetite , but i guess it differs from person to person.

kshama2001

janejellyroll wrote: »

OP, if you're fasting due to insufficient funds for food, getting some tips to help your $45 a week go farther might be more helpful than devoting some of your limited food budget to LaCroix. Food banks may also be available to help out.

There are some good past threads in the "Food and Nutrition" section on making your food dollar go farther or if you want tips specific to your situation, you can start a new thread there and I'm sure people will be happy to help out. There can be differences between urban and rural resources, but so many people here have been through times of tight budgets/food insecurity and I'm sure would love to help.

Yes, if I only had $45 a week for two people the last thing I'd be spending it on would be LaCroix/Mio.

When I was a cook at a start-up yoga center in Costa Rico, we fed people very cheaply with bulk rice and beans and local fruits and veggies.

Any keto-ers on a very tight budget with suggestions for the OP? This looks reasonable to me: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/recipes/low-carb-budget

This not so much: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/cheap

1. I wouldn't buy any cooked meat, let alone roast beef.
2. I wouldn't bother with any recipes that require almond meal/flour.
3. I'd use oil that is cheaper than avocado.
4. I'd skip frozen fish as well as fresh, and stick to canned fish.