16/8 fasting

I do 16/8 fasting on week days. I pretty much just skip breakfast and eat lunch and dinner (600 cal each). My goal being 1200 daily during the week because I 'calorie cycle' (eat less during the week so I can eat more on weekends and still be at a deficit).

It works well for me because I like 2 bigger meals as oppose to 3 smaller meals, or snacks. IF isn't a magic solution or anything like that, but if you prefer larger meals it might be the way to go. Try sticking to it for a week before throwing in the towel - it takes some getting use to.

I do 16:8; it just means skipping breakfast and avoiding late night snacks. It seems to work okay for me generally, but the past few mornings I've really needed breakfast. I've read that it doesn't work as well for non-obese or premenopausal women, and it does seem to be the case that my ability to stick to it fluctuates over the course of the month: it's alright for days 1:15 of my cycle, but after that it gets tough. It's an interesting experiment; try it!

Some women do well on 16/8 or other splits but a 14/10 split to start is actually recommended for women by Martin of Leangains, one of the pioneers in making the 16/8 split popular. This is due to fluctuations in hormones causing some women to have slightly more adverse reactions to fasting in comparison to men. In the end, it really is up to you what type of fasting window works for you but if you want to ease into things, 14/10 may be a good split to start with.

16/8 works great for me when I have a desk job and can control my own hours. I went off it went I took an operations rotation. I had to eat when I had a few free min otherwise it might be hours until I had another opportunity and it was very active work.

I'm having trouble getting back on the schedule this time though. The first two weeks are tough. Once I get past those it will be easy again.

I do a 16:8, 2-meal, 1200-1400 calorie/day plan and love it. I hate snacking and prefer to have huge meals that fill me up rather than graze all day.

kokonani wrote: »

I have tried 16:8, but it just made me eat over my calories because I was grazing and snacking for those 8 hours. What I really like is 23:1. One meal a day. I fit my entire calories (1500) into one ginormous meal. This keeps me satisfied and full to where I no longer even think about food. Plus my body fasts longer (23 hours) after I eat which is supposed to be beneficial to the body the longer fasting state it's in. I eat whatever I want, no restrictions! I always eat sweets and dessert. I'm at maintenance and I have been very happy with it so far.

I use to eat that way (one meal a day) too back in 1994 & lost 94 lbs by 1995 and continued to eat that way with my one meal at 2pm and always including lots of carbs (noodles, bread, dessert but protein, some veggies and fruit too). It worked very well since I stayed full for the rest of the day/night but by 1999 I became diabetic, which runs in the family so that was expected to happen sometime, but I expected that to develop much later than it did (I was 40 years old in 1999). Now I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic and have to spread out what I eat across 4 meals with each meal separated by 3 hours and that's working out really well with only needing small insulin dosages to keep my blood sugars in check. I often wonder if my one-meal-a-day plan from back then would have worked out OK to the present day (& I not become a diabetic) if I had been a bit more careful regarding the total carbs I ate in that one meal (at least 300-400 gm) during my one-meal-a-day years.