Fasting

hawkec123

is anyone else doing the fasting on my fitness pal I choose the challenging one. Any advice tips ? Thanks in advance

Strudders67

I just eat a sensible amount, per what MFP allocated me, spread through the day (with a bit more at dinner to stop the late evening munchies), and make sure I get enough protein to keep me feeling full. That's how I (slowly) lost weight and, having reached my target in early 2020, is how I've been happily maintaining a healthy weight ever since. Loosely speaking, I probably follow a form of fasting - but so does everyone, when they sleep - as I don't usually have breakfast (I prefer to stay in bed for longer!), have lunch around midday and then eat a bigger meal around 7-8pm.

If fasting works for you, great. How 'challenging' is your fast? How long have you actually been doing it for? Perhaps more pertinently, what are you going to learn from it? Do you plan to fast for the rest of your life, once you've reached your goal weight, to stay there?

officewife

With intermittent fasting your best friend is water, coffee, and tea. I’ve personally struggled more with a fast when I drink diet soda (i’ve read the stuff in it can trigger hunger cues, plus heavily debated topic on whether or not diet soda counts as breaking a fast. To that I say it’s mostly up to personal preference.) First couple of times will be rough in general just because your body is getting used to intermittent fasting but if you start to feel unwell please break your fast. You can always try another time.

AnnPT77

Does "most challenging" mean "harder"?

If so, I don't understand. I'm a big believer in making the easiest-to-follow possible plan that leads to my goals. Sometimes it's necessary to accept a challenge if I want to progress, but beyond that essential level of difficulty, it seems like making things harder just reduces my odds of success.

Most people arrive here with weight loss as their primary goal. I don't know if that's true for you. Weight loss is directly about calorie balance. Some people do find that a fasting approach makes it easier for them to achieve the right calorie balance. If that's true for someone, fasting will improve odds of successful weight loss. In that case, it seems like fasting would be the less challenging plan?

My main goals were improving health markers and reaching a healthy weight. I found I could accomplish both without fasting; and for me, fasting would make things harder rather than easier. I didn't do it during weight loss, and haven't done in in the 9+ years of maintaining a healthy weight since that loss.

Some people feel that fasting has other health benefits apart from weight loss. From my own reading, I haven't seen convincing proof that that's true, but others will conclude differently. I have reservations about frequent very long fasts, feeling that approach may be more harmful to health than helpful. I doubt there are any major risks with limiting eating hours during a day, or the 5:2 kind of thing with 5 days at maintenance calories and 2 days at very low calorie to average a weekly calorie deficit. For me, there haven't been any reasons to do those things, though.

Whatever approach you adopt, I wish you success with your goals!

rms62003

I did intermittent fasting for a while, but didn't work well for me- mostly because my work schedule made me go way too long before my first meal. When doing fasting, you really want to ease into it - don't go for an 18 hr or 24 hr fast right away.

Try doing a 12 hr fast to begin with (stop early or delay first meal), then bump up to 16 hr fast (that is pretty much missing one meal). Women should really not do more than a 16 hr fast - it messes with our hormone system. Men can go longer, but shouldn't do 24+ hrs fasts more than 1-2 times a week.

atapar

I have done intermittent fasting for almost two yrs. But I don’t pay extra for the fasting option on here. Fasting suits me better, has helped me lose weight, improved how I feel, etc. I focus on protein, veggies and fruit. But I have issues when I eat any gluten at all so I am also gluten free. Planning ahead helps with fasting, cooking ahead of time. Just knowing what meal is coming up makes it easier to stick with in general. But you may have to work your way into fasting longer. It’s hard to jump into longer fasting windows initially. But I will say it’s important to do something you can keep up with and maintain.

atapar

I fast for 18-20 hrs each day. So my eating window is 4-6 hrs. I don’t eat before noon and stop no later than 6 pm.

neanderthin

There's a myriad of health benefits from fasting and here's a link that people might find interesting from "Health & Wellness Canada".

https://www.healthcouncilcanada.ca/real-science-behind-fasting-what-research-actually-reveals/

buenymom

wishing the countdown clock for the fast went up to 24 hours.