Intermittent fasting.

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  • Annie_01
    Annie_01 Posts: 3,096 Member
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    Taytaylynn92 wrote: »
    I’m going to begin intermittent fasting tomorrow. What are the best and worst parts about it. My eating period is probably going to be between 12-8. Any tips on this?
    I workout in the mornings before work and am hoping I’m not too hungry and fail at this!

    There is no harm in trying. If it works...then great. If it doesn't then you haven't failed...it just didn't work so try something else. It is about you and not anyone else. Don't feel as if you can't adjust some of those rules that some unknown person says that you have to follow. Our WOE including the scheduling of when we eat should fit our lives and we should receive some benefits from those rules that we have set for ourselves.

    At the end of the day however you choose to eat should move you toward those goals that you have set for yourself.
  • denjan333
    denjan333 Posts: 158 Member
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    I don’t do IF but if you like science and want some good info on this, I recommend listening to the Season 6 Episode 3 podcast of Science Vs. It’s called “Fasting Diets: What’s the Skinny”. They provide references for their findings, including links to studies and research papers.
  • Florida_Superstar
    Florida_Superstar Posts: 194 Member
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    I did 16:8 for 2 years and liked it/thought it was easy to stick with. Due to my calorie deficit I got very lean, and after 2 years IF started to not work for me. I felt very depleted in the gym and became obsessed with when I could eat again. I was thinking about food constantly but stuck to the program anyway--too rigid about the eating window as others mentioned. So basically it worked for me for awhile but eventually did not. I'd say give it a try if it fits your schedule, but listen to your body and change as needed.
  • magnusthenerd
    magnusthenerd Posts: 1,207 Member
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    I believe there is a tendency to recommend 14:10 for women, particularly if they find themselves having issues on 16:8 or even longer fasting windows.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
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    pierinifitness wrote: »
    Just realized that yesterday was the one year anniversary of resurrecting IF in my current fitness, health and wellness journey. I began on September 15, 2018 and have practiced this lifestyle EVERY DAY since then.

    I began my current fitness, health and wellness journey last August 31, 2018 and the morning BW scale readings weren’t budging despite eating a controlled about 1,800 calories a day. I even gained a couple lbs. but this was likely water weight. Frustrated, I jumped on the IF pony based on favorable experiences in the past with the first one being 9 years earlier during Lent 2009.

    I currently target 18:6 but am flexible because I can “afford” it. Recently, while on vacation, I had several 14:10 days. Some might not call 14:10 IF but I do because of a lifestyle mindset I maintained on those days.

    My current 7-day average is a fasting period of 17 hours 18 minutes. I’ve been running more lately and find this affects my real hunger.

    Have been using the Zero Fasting app for 197 consecutive days since first using it.

    What are the fruits of my EVERY DAY IF lifestyle?

    A consistent 40 lbs. lighter than when I began and a firm morning BW on the low side of my 5-lb. ideal weight range that is firmly “stuck” like Super Glue.

    Congratulations on this success in your health and wellness. I like your reference to lent fasting, it makes sense to me. For me, staying to three meals a day and no snacks was helpful when I was younger. I did that along with adding in walking rather than taking the car during the work week and kept my weight in the healthy range for years without ever having to count calories. Weight gain came to me later in life. So now I'm returning to a modified version of what I did then. fasting for between 15 to 19 hours, I haven't seen a need for diet breaks. 15 hours without food allows me to have brunch, dinner and supper within a 9 hour window occasionally. Sometimes this is for family reasons. The main thing for me has been that I don't have any trouble keeping within a calorie allowance and my constant snacking habits are gone.

  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited September 2019
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    Gamliela wrote: »
    pierinifitness wrote: »
    Just realized that yesterday was the one year anniversary of resurrecting IF in my current fitness, health and wellness journey. I began on September 15, 2018 and have practiced this lifestyle EVERY DAY since then.

    I began my current fitness, health and wellness journey last August 31, 2018 and the morning BW scale readings weren’t budging despite eating a controlled about 1,800 calories a day. I even gained a couple lbs. but this was likely water weight. Frustrated, I jumped on the IF pony based on favorable experiences in the past with the first one being 9 years earlier during Lent 2009.

    I currently target 18:6 but am flexible because I can “afford” it. Recently, while on vacation, I had several 14:10 days. Some might not call 14:10 IF but I do because of a lifestyle mindset I maintained on those days.

    My current 7-day average is a fasting period of 17 hours 18 minutes. I’ve been running more lately and find this affects my real hunger.

    Have been using the Zero Fasting app for 197 consecutive days since first using it.

    What are the fruits of my EVERY DAY IF lifestyle?

    A consistent 40 lbs. lighter than when I began and a firm morning BW on the low side of my 5-lb. ideal weight range that is firmly “stuck” like Super Glue.

    Congratulations on this success in your health and wellness. I like your reference to lent fasting, it makes sense to me. For me, staying to three meals a day and no snacks was helpful when I was younger. I did that along with adding in walking rather than taking the car during the work week and kept my weight in the healthy range for years without ever having to count calories. Weight gain came to me later in life. So now I'm returning to a modified version of what I did then. fasting for between 15 to 19 hours, I haven't seen a need for diet breaks. 15 hours without food allows me to have brunch, dinner and supper within a 9 hour window occasionally. Sometimes this is for family reasons. The main thing for me has been that I don't have any trouble keeping within a calorie allowance and my constant snacking habits are gone.

    This is similar to what I did (and like you it was returning to a pattern that had worked well for me in the past when I'd had no weight issues), except that due to my work schedule my breakfast (which I enjoy) and dinner are quite spread out. I eat breakfast, don't eat for about 5 hours, eat lunch, don't eat for around 9 hours, and then eat dinner and don't eat for around 8.5 hours. The main problem with this is that I tend not to sleep enough, but that's not due to my eating habits.

    On Fridays and Saturdays I often eat dinner earlier (before a play or some other evening event) and may skip breakfast, so eat in a 6-7 hour window, and I sometimes do that on Sunday too.

    I find the notion that there's something magical that prevents weight gain just based on the window odd (you did not say that, the poster you were quoting did), as for me uncontrolled eating is more of an issue than how many hours between dinner and my first meal of the next day. If I "fasted" (a term I dislike for less than a full day fast) for 16 hours and ate in an 8 hour window but just snacked during that period, I'd get nothing out of the limited window. But 3 meals with nothing in between works very well for me (and makes it easier to get in the veg and protein I like than eating only one meal would), and the particular window I consume those meals in doesn't seem to matter at all for me.

    I really like the term "time restricted eating" or "eating within a window" for the approach that is being discussed vs. "IFing," since as I noted in my first post "IFing" seems to suggest that it's somehow some hard discipline to skipping breakfast (or whatever) when the idea really should be that for some it makes it easier to limit cals (probably by helping with mindfulness or addressing some bad habits or a feeling that it's impossible to wait until the next planned eating time, all things that can be done with other schedules too).
  • DarkTwain
    DarkTwain Posts: 130 Member
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    I do a 16:8 fast, honestly it could be considered more. I eat during the workday, breakfast, lunch, snack go to the gym after and that's it for the day. When I'm home I just try to stay busy before bed
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
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    @lemurcat2 Yes, I think so too. I like to enjoy meals. Its like my mother and grandmother used to say, "No, you can't have that now, it'll spoil your supper." Its still true for me, snacking spoils my next meal, which I look forward to. Since I have to prepare, cook and clean up the dishes after, I do like to make the meal a sort of an event. I often think of you and your grazing sister in relation to my own decisions regarding eating bits and pieces all day or my preference for two or three meals. :)
  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
    edited September 2019
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    NovusDies wrote: »
    lgfrie wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    lgfrie wrote: »

    - "No" means no. As in "no eating after 8 pm" if that's your rule. That means zero calories. Nada. Zip. No creamer in coffee, no sugar in drinks, not one pickle or almond. Make that commitment and really try to stick to it everyday. Learn to overpower your hunger pangs and you'll have acquired a very, very useful dieting skill.
    - You still have to eat a calorie deficit. IF itself will do nothing on its own to hasten your weight loss. That's gonna come solely from eating less food.

    This is probably fine for some people. However enough people have come through here very hungry and not having met the calorie goal because they had to work late that this rule needs to be amendable when life gets in the way. I hate seeing grown adults starting threads begging for permission to eat dinner because it is outside their window.

    The most important part about any way of eating is that the person doing it needs to be in charge of the rules and have some common sense about when to set them aside.

    That is true of any WOE, not just IF, no? Learning when and how to use the Pause key is critical to any diet.

    True but that is not how you worded it... :wink:

    Not sure how I became Defender of the IF Faith on this thread especially since I'm not doing it anymore LOL But anyway, I do think there's a worthwhile distinction here.

    Two axioms:

    1. On any diet, IF included, one must know when and how to hit the Pause key. No one on their own volition will deprive themselves long enough to lose a large amount of weight without breaks, and without flexibility to accommodate the random things life throws at you, such as parties, social events, injuries, stressful days or weeks, sudden uncontrollable urge to have white chocolate covered pretzels, etc. It's unrealistic and self-defeating (in fact self sabotaging) to expect and demand of oneself perfect compliance all the time.

    2. On a TRE diet, if you don't stick to the window most of the time and at least attempt to comply with the eating window even when you're hungry, you may as well find a different approach, because TRE is not working for you.

    These two things are not the same.

    Let's take a practical example. On Thurs my wife and I watched some old movies and spontaneously decided to have bowls of popcorn with butter. We'd just had a solid month of 100 % calorie compliance and felt like having popcorn! It not only blew our eating schedule (our window is 11-7 and it was 10 pm) but also put us 400 calories over for the day each. And ... so what! It's good to do that once in a while. We savored every kernel, got up the next morning, and got back on plan. Felt great about it.

    That was hitting the Pause key. Very productive, useful, and fun thing to do now and then.

    Conversely, people start IF and start off super motivated and into it, but then get hungry or even ravenous at night the first few weeks. Some tough it out, and some don't. Thing is, if you grab a handful of almonds because you're starving at 11 pm, that's fine, but you're no longer doing TRE. You're doing something else -- maybe staying within your calories, maybe not, but you have given up the biggest contribution of a TRE structure: the acquired self-control in the face of hunger that a TRE diet imposes and teaches (and, specifically, teaches to people many of whom have had self-control issues with food their entire lives). If you do it properly the next night (i.e. no calories), then no harm done - all you've done is hit the Pause key for a night - but the problem is, "cheating" on a TRE diet tends to lead to more cheating and then more. The cheating leads to excuses - "I was soooo hungry!", "I just had 40 calories of peanuts, no biggie", "coffee tastes terrible black", etc., and then it all falls apart. Which is fine, if you're hitting your calorie number, but that can easily nosedive too, once the structure falls apart.

    And so I say, hitting the Pause key is not the same thing as saying you're doing IF while not really doing IF. IF can be very effective, especially for learning self-control and dominating your own hunger signals with the power of your own self-discipline, but to get those benefits you have to actually do it. And that means no calories outside the window, unless you're already having a success with it and are ready for a Pause. A sensible, reasonable diet Pause is not the same thing as saying "F it" and grabbing a handful of m&ms because you're hungry at night. That kind of behavior must be dispensed with for IF to have a chance to succeed.

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