IF..am I doing it right?

ajamal9
ajamal9 Posts: 15
in Health and Weight Loss
So I am doing intermittent fasting. Due to my schedule I cannot do the workout in the day time so this is what I do.

Finish eating by 8pm.
Go to the gym by 11pm-12am
Go to sleep
Wake up at 6am
break my fast at 1PM.

now traditionally..once stops eating say at 8PM and then go to sleep around 10-11pm, wake up and work out THEN break their fast...but in my case I work out at night itself...

is that still considered IF..is that even right

Replies

  • magurski
    magurski Posts: 45 Member
    If it's working for you, stick with it!
  • ajamal9
    ajamal9 Posts: 15
    If it's working for you, stick with it!

    but I just started.
  • 1ZenGirl
    1ZenGirl Posts: 432 Member
    There are several different ways to do IF. I would suggest going to the forums and joining a group focused on this. You should be prepared for people who do not support this way of eating by posting in the community so if you join a forum you are most likely to find better support and get your questions answered.

    I"m not saying that naysayers don't have a voice or shouldn't offer an alternate opinion...:flowerforyou:
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    I'm not sure if I qualify as a naysayer but I'll admit I'm not sure what the point is. Seems like you are just creating work for yourself and I'm not sure for what. Is the idea that if you distribute your calories in a certain way throughout the day then your diet will be more effective?
  • magurski
    magurski Posts: 45 Member
    If it's working for you, stick with it!

    but I just started.

    When I started, I promised my wife if I was hungry, I'd still eat. Throughout the day, I tend to have maybe 170-200 calories through cheese snacks (Babybels, Cabot cheddar bars, etc) spread over several hours. Then I just eat a large dinner and snack. It's gotten to the point where I'm having my snacks later and later in the day, closer to dinner, even though I'm a lot smaller than when I started IF. Is it *strictly* IF? I dunno, I duncare. It's working for me.

    I should point out that I just sort of "naturally" fell into doing IF. It started on weekends, where I found I just wasn't hungry until around dinner time most days. After about a month of that, and barely having an appetite for lunch, I decided to give IF a shot. It's been about a year now. Most days, I do fine, I even exercise during my fasting phase (and have that much more of a buffer to down a 16 oz rib-eye steak for dinner...). But when I'm really really hungry (this is after drinking enough water to ensure I'm not just thirsty), I still eat. At this point, I assume my body will tell me what it wants, since I've spent about 15 months retraining it and myself to know the difference between hunger, thirst, and (most especially) boredom-based grazing.
  • magurski
    magurski Posts: 45 Member
    I'm not sure if I qualify as a naysayer but I'll admit I'm not sure what the point is. Seems like you are just creating work for yourself and I'm not sure for what. Is the idea that if you distribute your calories in a certain way throughout the day then your diet will be more effective?

    I don't know about others, but for me it ended up a result of the advice to "eat when I'm hungry". I've never been a morning/breakfast person, usually feeling nauseated until I've been awake 3-4 hours. Once I broke out of the cycle of "I have to eat every X hours", I realized that I usually had no interest in eating, if I was properly hydrated, for hours upon hours after waking up.

    On the one hand, it means I don't usually get to enjoy the leftovers of the food I make (my wife now claims them all for lunch @ work, usually). But it also means that I can psychologically "pig out" each night, taking larger portions and loading up my plate (or going back for seconds, sometimes thirds), and *still* fit my macros and come in at or below my calorie goals.

    Personally, I'm not convinced that spreading out your food intake through N smaller meals or concentrating them into M larger meals in a day makes a difference at all. I'm pretty sure (but have no proof) that as long as you can maintain a consistent energy level throughout the day and manage your intake vs hunger levels, while still getting at least a minimum protein level to avoid muscle loss, any way you eat will work out.

    For me, my brand of IF seems to be working. If it stops or becomes too difficult, I'll eat when I need/want to do so. I'm in this for the long haul, and won't go back to the way I used to eat, since it *obviously* didn't help me to eat that way before...

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