Intermittent fasting

Iragen wrote: »

I was looking into trying this out and saw a vid by terry crews regarding how it works for him, but the main piece was he said during his 16hr fast he doesn't eat, BUT he might have some black coffee or coconut oil or something else so my question is what can we eat, drink or take during our fast if it becomes difficult to slightly curb the appetite until eat time?

Generally if you are struggling to skip a meal and eat inside some sort of window there are three options to consider:

1) Skipping a meal may not work for you. Some people have a schedule that makes it hard to go without food.

2) You are skipping the wrong meal. It seems very common to skip breakfast but there are a lot of people, myself included, that do not really need to eat dinner. You may find it easier to eat breakfast and lunch, or even breakfast and dinner.

3) You may just need more time to adjust. It may be easier for you to gradually eat less food on the meal you intend to skip or just white-knuckle your way through it for a 2 weeks until you adjust... if you adjust.

You will notice that I do not call this intermittent fasting. Someone decided to give it a fancy name to make it more attractive to the internet. However, everyone that sleeps at night is technically intermittently fasting so what it really is, is just skipping a meal, or two.

Also, a good rule of thumb is that anything that seems to be too good to be true usually is. You will see all kinds of claims about the benefits of increased fasting. The only benefit proven to be true in humans without insulin disorders is that it helps some people with adherence to a calorie deficit.

t;;dr Skipping a meal is a worthy experiment for weight loss if you know when to move on. It will still only work for weight loss if you are in a calorie deficit.

I think everyone has different "rules" for intermittent fasting depending on 1. your willpower and 2. how your body reacts (or in this case doesn't react) to certain things.
Personally my willpower is made of titanium, when I do a 16+ hour IF I'll just have one cup of black coffee, nothing added to it, and maybe one or two cups of green tea. Mind you 9 of those 16 hours I'm sleeping and about 2 of those 16 hours I'm post-dinner chilling and getting ready for bed... so to not eat for five waking hours is basically just skipping breakfast.

**Edit: Something I meant to add; coffee and green tea act as an appetite suppressant which is why a lot of people use these. Don't go crazy with it if your body is caffeine-sensitive. I can't handle more than 1 cup of coffee a day anymore so if I'm really feeling hunger pains going into an IF I'll also throw in some lemon water as the little bit of fructose and acidity in that will give my stomach something to gnaw on.