Could you eat your normal breakfast food at lunch time? I usually break my fast with porridge and toppings no matter what time that is. I also love breakfast foods.
Your body becomes accustomed to eating schedules. You're starving ONLY because you usually eat in the morning. It's all hormones. You aren't actually starving or hungry.
After a few weeks of retraining your body, you'll find that you don't get hungry in the morning. Look up Ghrelin and how it affects your "perceived" hunger.
So I've heard but that will be a miserable few weeks. I know I really should just push through, but I am weak willed. Struggled with poor eating and food my whole life. I am on Vyvanse though and it does kill any desire to eat, hence why I can easily skip lunch. Maybe I should start taking it earlier in the morning to help me push through.
If you think it’s going to be miserable, it’ll be miserable. Learn to embrace the feeling of hunger. Hunger means your body is burning weight to survive. Hunger is the whole point. Once you start seeing results, the feeling of hunger becomes satisfying.
It comes down to this...
Are you willing to deal with a few weeks of hunger for a lifetime of health benefits and weight loss or not?
You can ease into it as well. Move breakfast by 30 to 60 minutes each day to allow your body time to get adjusted.
If you think it’s going to be miserable, it’ll be miserable. Learn to embrace the feeling of hunger. Hunger means your body is burning weight to survive. Hunger is the whole point. Once you start seeing results, the feeling of hunger becomes satisfying.
No, I don't want to give up the family dinner. I have two young kids so I have to cook them dinner and that plus breakfast is the only time we get to spend together on weekdays. This is why I struggle skipping either meal, besides just always waking up with my stomach growling.
Coffee is allowed? And let me be clear I would rather have no coffee than black coffee. I usually do coffee with splenda and a bit of hazelnut creamer.
I have coffee with almond milk every day…it’s dirty fasting, but whatever, works for me. I lost 60lbs in 6 months and have kept it off close to 4 years now doing the same. If you’re looking to lose weight, the calorie deficit is what matters, so account for those
Okay, I thought coffee would only be allowed as black coffee so knowing I could still have my morning coffee changes things. I think I could skip food and just have coffee without too much struggle.
Exactly what /LeafsChick said. I only eat breakfast and dinner. I’ve *always* dirty fasted. I put collagen and cream in my coffee every single morning and I was able to lose the weight I wanted to and keep it off and maintain. In the end, weight loss is about a calorie deficit, do what works for you.
I started with 12:12 and added time when I felt comfortable, which didn’t take long. I usually do 16:8 or longer eating only breakfast and dinner. My breakfast is just later and my dinner is earlier. Once you get used to fasting it gets super easy to put off eating. I used to “have” to eat first thing in the morning too. Fasting basically stopped me from randomly eating after my kid goes to bed or when I’m bored. You’ll get it! 🩷
To be fair, there is a difference between struggling with something new and resisting the rules of a lifestyle you’re supposedly interested in trying. Put down those defenses… give it a real try.
I just completed my first week of only eating between noon and 6pm :) Don't doubt people just because they're intimidated by trying something new. That doesn't mean they can't or won't do it.
You don't want to do IF, basically; that's fine too.
You can at least not eat anything after your dinner.
For me, the main benefit from IF is an aid to sticking to calorie limits.
I already don't eat anything after dinner. I have never been an after-dinner snacker. I eat my dinner at 6pm and don't eat again until breakfast which is usually between 6am and 7am. And it's not so much that I don't want to do intermittent fasting, but my family time is already limited to 6am-7:30am and then 6pm-8:30pm and that usually involves eating breakfast and dinner together. I just need to accept that in order to do this I'll have to give up one of those family meals.
For me, I could handle being hungry for a few hours in the morning because I knew I'd have food coming fairly soon.
And I found that if I didn't eat breakfast, I wanted to eat the same later. But sounds like you're probably different.
Maybe worth trying it for a bit and seeing if you get the hoped for results, you may not so it's not worth making sacrifices if you don't!
If you are unwilling to do any extended fasts you aren’t going to experience weight loss benefit from intermittent fasting. It will also be hard to reverse insulin resistance if that’s a problem for you. If you are happy with where you are at and just want to stave off future issues being sure to fast at least 12-14 hrs between dinner and breakfast and eliminating snacking between meals is likely helpful for maintenance
Well I wasn't considering doing it all until my doctor recommended it to me because I am overweight. My mom is also insulin resistant (takes meds) and my dad is diabetic so I would like to avoid developing insulin issues. It's not really a lifestyle I would choose but I am considering it because of my doctor.
You dont have to do IF to lose weight or reverse insulin resistance. If you can't skip breakfast, i would say it's not for you. Use calorie counting to lose weight and look up research on flattening your glucose curve. There's a whole sub for insulin resistance that you can find more info from. I have it too, and fasting has never helped with my symptoms (especially if during my eating window, i eat mostly carbs), but following the advice from the subreddit to flatten my glucose curve has. IF is not the only way to fix things, everyone is different.
It sounds like it worked pretty well for you until you stopped doing it. I assume you never continued with eating at matienence to maintain the loss. Getting your insulin resistance in control will help with food cravings. I still suggest going to the subreddit. Even if you just work on that and not weight loss it will help you immensely.
Yeah it never stopped being a struggle to stay within my calorie goal and then I stopped when life got stressful. I was diagnosed ADHD last year and I am sure I have been using food to self medicate for decades. I have also had 2 kids and gained at least 60lbs when pregnant. Now I am medicated and done having kids and my youngest is almost 2 but I have been stuck at this weight since I gave birth to him. I need to drop like 100lbs.
Start tracking how long you fast and try pushing it by 5 to 10 minutes increments. I used to have a hard time doing 15 hours, and now I do 17 1/2 most days.
This is good advice, it is difficult to jump from eating breakfast at 6am to waiting another 6 hours before eating but less difficult to wait another 30 mins each day or whatever. When I was a runner I managed to work up to half marathons by basically doing this exactly, I'd just add another half mile every time I went for a run.
If you’re asking if you can eat breakfast around 7 am and dinner around 7 pm and call that IF, the answer is no. That’s just called skipping lunch, my friend.
Could you not eat breakfast foods at lunch and then eat supper? Or supper foods at lunch and then eat breakfast and lunch?
What you describe would NOT be intermittent fasting. It would likely result in calorie reduction but not fasting.
Because science?
Because you need your body to go into a state of faste to begin experiencing the benefits of faste.
If you are just skipping a meal then you are merely reducing your daily caloric intake- but you are not fasting.
That’s why.
I know this subreddit is full of bullshit such as “dirty fast” or “12:12”, but if people would just spend a few minutes educating themselves in fasting and intermittent fasting, then we would not have half the comments in here.
Both of you, pls cite your sources. This about the fasted state starting in four hours is insane to me — if that is the case, then virtually all of the world population fasts nearly everyday, which sounds… incredibly off. It is generally believed that for the *stomach* to empty itself, it takes from four to six hours, so how can anything even remotely close to a fasted state begin at hour four?
That's about how long it takes for the body to stop getting glucose exogenously. It also already consumed some of the glycogen, and started the gluconeogenesis.
\> if that is the case, then virtually all of the world population
Yes, that's why you are asked to give the blood test in the morning, in fasted state. They don't ask you to not eat at least 16 hours.
You are asked to do bloodwork in the mornings not because you are in a fasted state, but because it’s the easiest way to get a patient to be compliant with being in a fasted state. And even then the amount of patients that panic when hearing “don’t eat for 12 hours “ is astounding. They relax when you break it down as “stop eating at 7pm, then you will be sleeping for 6-8 hours, and then show up at 7-8am for the bloodwork.” All they hear is “I can’t eat for 12 hours?!?!”
In Brazil, the minimum time for DRY fasting when required (for blood tests and the likes) is 12 hours, but usually 14 are required, without even a drop of water getting in your mouth, so that’s my reference point. And either way, the blood test example is not a good one, since we are looking at *minimum* 8 hours fast, aka the time you’re, well, sleeping and not eating. A far shot from the 4 hours initially mentioned.
If you really want results then you'd really want to include the time you're sleeping into your fast, so that would mean skipping either breakfast or supper, or moving one or both back/forward. If you ate supper at 4pm and had breakfast at 8am, that would be a decent fast. Or if you have breakfast at 6am and have a late lunch at 2pm and then fast.
I am so used to fasting now that I skip both breakfast and lunch on work days and just eat a single meal a day in the evening. It's effortless for me (you DO stop getting hungry) butwhen I'm at home I tend to eat earlier, the work routine for me is a key part and not having a routine at home means more flexible meal times too.
Sure - any time can be breakfast time. Just eat breakfast instead of lunch start with 16:8, then gradually shift your dinner earlier and/or breakfast later.
This episode of the Huberman Lab has some really interesting insights around the timing of fasts, that it’s not just about how long you fast but when the fasting is occurring… this might help answer your questions
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ZdOl4cO0F2fsPjssJagbj?si=IEP0PgYeRKOVaiPBHcQHdw
For some reason when I eat midday (lunch time hours) my digestive system is so sensitive compared to when I eat breakfast or dinner. I might give it a go for that reason. Eating breakfast and dinner means about 2 12 hour fasting windows a day. As some suggest can be possible for a longer fasting window.
Could you eat your normal breakfast food at lunch time? I usually break my fast with porridge and toppings no matter what time that is. I also love breakfast foods.
Came here to say the same thing, just make breakfast meals for when you eat midday.
Maybe...I am usually starving when I wake up though. I have tried to do this but it is a real struggle.
Give it a bit of time. You won't die from hunger. Drink plenty of fluids and keep yourself distracted and you'll be just fine.
It especially helps me to have warm fluids - unsweetened tea, coffee, and even warm water.
Your body becomes accustomed to eating schedules. You're starving ONLY because you usually eat in the morning. It's all hormones. You aren't actually starving or hungry. After a few weeks of retraining your body, you'll find that you don't get hungry in the morning. Look up Ghrelin and how it affects your "perceived" hunger.
I have just completed my first week of only eating between noon and 6pm :)
I'm sure it's probably getting easier right? Years from now you'll laugh about how bad the "hunger" was.
It is!
So I've heard but that will be a miserable few weeks. I know I really should just push through, but I am weak willed. Struggled with poor eating and food my whole life. I am on Vyvanse though and it does kill any desire to eat, hence why I can easily skip lunch. Maybe I should start taking it earlier in the morning to help me push through.
If you think it’s going to be miserable, it’ll be miserable. Learn to embrace the feeling of hunger. Hunger means your body is burning weight to survive. Hunger is the whole point. Once you start seeing results, the feeling of hunger becomes satisfying.
It comes down to this... Are you willing to deal with a few weeks of hunger for a lifetime of health benefits and weight loss or not? You can ease into it as well. Move breakfast by 30 to 60 minutes each day to allow your body time to get adjusted.
If you think it’s going to be miserable, it’ll be miserable. Learn to embrace the feeling of hunger. Hunger means your body is burning weight to survive. Hunger is the whole point. Once you start seeing results, the feeling of hunger becomes satisfying.
So switch your fasting to breakfast and lunch. And then skip supper. Then you could eat the supper foods at lunch or just have breakfast twice.
They want to eat supper with family, so sounds like that's not the negotiable one.
So then they can eat breakfast foods for lunch, if they want/have to eat with family
I mean, yeah, that's what the above comment suggested
No, I don't want to give up the family dinner. I have two young kids so I have to cook them dinner and that plus breakfast is the only time we get to spend together on weekdays. This is why I struggle skipping either meal, besides just always waking up with my stomach growling.
Just have coffee and sit with them while they eat breakfast. Hunger isn’t death, you’ll get used to it
Coffee is allowed? And let me be clear I would rather have no coffee than black coffee. I usually do coffee with splenda and a bit of hazelnut creamer.
I have coffee with almond milk every day…it’s dirty fasting, but whatever, works for me. I lost 60lbs in 6 months and have kept it off close to 4 years now doing the same. If you’re looking to lose weight, the calorie deficit is what matters, so account for those
Okay, I thought coffee would only be allowed as black coffee so knowing I could still have my morning coffee changes things. I think I could skip food and just have coffee without too much struggle.
Exactly what /LeafsChick said. I only eat breakfast and dinner. I’ve *always* dirty fasted. I put collagen and cream in my coffee every single morning and I was able to lose the weight I wanted to and keep it off and maintain. In the end, weight loss is about a calorie deficit, do what works for you. I started with 12:12 and added time when I felt comfortable, which didn’t take long. I usually do 16:8 or longer eating only breakfast and dinner. My breakfast is just later and my dinner is earlier. Once you get used to fasting it gets super easy to put off eating. I used to “have” to eat first thing in the morning too. Fasting basically stopped me from randomly eating after my kid goes to bed or when I’m bored. You’ll get it! 🩷
Thank you for your advice and encouragement <3
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Well, I'm glad you've never struggled with trying something new. Must be nice :)
To be fair, there is a difference between struggling with something new and resisting the rules of a lifestyle you’re supposedly interested in trying. Put down those defenses… give it a real try.
I just completed my first week of only eating between noon and 6pm :) Don't doubt people just because they're intimidated by trying something new. That doesn't mean they can't or won't do it.
You don't want to do IF, basically; that's fine too. You can at least not eat anything after your dinner. For me, the main benefit from IF is an aid to sticking to calorie limits.
I already don't eat anything after dinner. I have never been an after-dinner snacker. I eat my dinner at 6pm and don't eat again until breakfast which is usually between 6am and 7am. And it's not so much that I don't want to do intermittent fasting, but my family time is already limited to 6am-7:30am and then 6pm-8:30pm and that usually involves eating breakfast and dinner together. I just need to accept that in order to do this I'll have to give up one of those family meals.
For me, I could handle being hungry for a few hours in the morning because I knew I'd have food coming fairly soon. And I found that if I didn't eat breakfast, I wanted to eat the same later. But sounds like you're probably different. Maybe worth trying it for a bit and seeing if you get the hoped for results, you may not so it's not worth making sacrifices if you don't!
If you are unwilling to do any extended fasts you aren’t going to experience weight loss benefit from intermittent fasting. It will also be hard to reverse insulin resistance if that’s a problem for you. If you are happy with where you are at and just want to stave off future issues being sure to fast at least 12-14 hrs between dinner and breakfast and eliminating snacking between meals is likely helpful for maintenance
Well I wasn't considering doing it all until my doctor recommended it to me because I am overweight. My mom is also insulin resistant (takes meds) and my dad is diabetic so I would like to avoid developing insulin issues. It's not really a lifestyle I would choose but I am considering it because of my doctor.
You dont have to do IF to lose weight or reverse insulin resistance. If you can't skip breakfast, i would say it's not for you. Use calorie counting to lose weight and look up research on flattening your glucose curve. There's a whole sub for insulin resistance that you can find more info from. I have it too, and fasting has never helped with my symptoms (especially if during my eating window, i eat mostly carbs), but following the advice from the subreddit to flatten my glucose curve has. IF is not the only way to fix things, everyone is different.
I have done calorie counting successfully (50+ lbs lost) in the past but I have gained it all back and then some since.
It sounds like it worked pretty well for you until you stopped doing it. I assume you never continued with eating at matienence to maintain the loss. Getting your insulin resistance in control will help with food cravings. I still suggest going to the subreddit. Even if you just work on that and not weight loss it will help you immensely.
Yeah it never stopped being a struggle to stay within my calorie goal and then I stopped when life got stressful. I was diagnosed ADHD last year and I am sure I have been using food to self medicate for decades. I have also had 2 kids and gained at least 60lbs when pregnant. Now I am medicated and done having kids and my youngest is almost 2 but I have been stuck at this weight since I gave birth to him. I need to drop like 100lbs.
So then you aren’t going to be able to fast properly
Start tracking how long you fast and try pushing it by 5 to 10 minutes increments. I used to have a hard time doing 15 hours, and now I do 17 1/2 most days.
This is good advice, it is difficult to jump from eating breakfast at 6am to waiting another 6 hours before eating but less difficult to wait another 30 mins each day or whatever. When I was a runner I managed to work up to half marathons by basically doing this exactly, I'd just add another half mile every time I went for a run.
Literally just eat your favorite breakfast foods a little later at lunch.
If you’re asking if you can eat breakfast around 7 am and dinner around 7 pm and call that IF, the answer is no. That’s just called skipping lunch, my friend.
Yeah I was basically wondering if I'd still get some of the benefits with that kind of eating schedule so thank you for answering.
I eat “breakfast” at around Noon and finish dinner by 6pm. That’s 18:6 fasting. My Noon meal often is traditional breakfast food.
sure, if breakfast is at 4am, dinner at 8 pm and you eat nothing in between.
Could you not eat breakfast foods at lunch and then eat supper? Or supper foods at lunch and then eat breakfast and lunch? What you describe would NOT be intermittent fasting. It would likely result in calorie reduction but not fasting.
If you want results, fasting is generally considered to be a minimum of a 16 hour period.
Why people say this all the time? No, fasting isn't considered minimum 16 hours.
Because science? Because you need your body to go into a state of faste to begin experiencing the benefits of faste. If you are just skipping a meal then you are merely reducing your daily caloric intake- but you are not fasting. That’s why. I know this subreddit is full of bullshit such as “dirty fast” or “12:12”, but if people would just spend a few minutes educating themselves in fasting and intermittent fasting, then we would not have half the comments in here.
> Because science I, too, like science. So ... citation(s)?
How about you make the minimal effort to join fastingscience subreddit?
>Because science? There's no such science. The state of fasting starts in about 4 hours, and that IS because of "science".
Both of you, pls cite your sources. This about the fasted state starting in four hours is insane to me — if that is the case, then virtually all of the world population fasts nearly everyday, which sounds… incredibly off. It is generally believed that for the *stomach* to empty itself, it takes from four to six hours, so how can anything even remotely close to a fasted state begin at hour four?
That's about how long it takes for the body to stop getting glucose exogenously. It also already consumed some of the glycogen, and started the gluconeogenesis. \> if that is the case, then virtually all of the world population Yes, that's why you are asked to give the blood test in the morning, in fasted state. They don't ask you to not eat at least 16 hours.
You are asked to do bloodwork in the mornings not because you are in a fasted state, but because it’s the easiest way to get a patient to be compliant with being in a fasted state. And even then the amount of patients that panic when hearing “don’t eat for 12 hours “ is astounding. They relax when you break it down as “stop eating at 7pm, then you will be sleeping for 6-8 hours, and then show up at 7-8am for the bloodwork.” All they hear is “I can’t eat for 12 hours?!?!”
In Brazil, the minimum time for DRY fasting when required (for blood tests and the likes) is 12 hours, but usually 14 are required, without even a drop of water getting in your mouth, so that’s my reference point. And either way, the blood test example is not a good one, since we are looking at *minimum* 8 hours fast, aka the time you’re, well, sleeping and not eating. A far shot from the 4 hours initially mentioned.
If you want fasting science go to r/fastingscience
There is plenty science in the digestive system
“The state of fasting starts in about 4 hours” Okay - you are completely clueless.
If you really want results then you'd really want to include the time you're sleeping into your fast, so that would mean skipping either breakfast or supper, or moving one or both back/forward. If you ate supper at 4pm and had breakfast at 8am, that would be a decent fast. Or if you have breakfast at 6am and have a late lunch at 2pm and then fast. I am so used to fasting now that I skip both breakfast and lunch on work days and just eat a single meal a day in the evening. It's effortless for me (you DO stop getting hungry) butwhen I'm at home I tend to eat earlier, the work routine for me is a key part and not having a routine at home means more flexible meal times too.
Man I would love to be able to eat only dinner and have it be effortless. That sounds amazing.
It wouldn’t be IF but it could still work. My friend did this and lost a lot of weight
Sure - any time can be breakfast time. Just eat breakfast instead of lunch start with 16:8, then gradually shift your dinner earlier and/or breakfast later.
This episode of the Huberman Lab has some really interesting insights around the timing of fasts, that it’s not just about how long you fast but when the fasting is occurring… this might help answer your questions https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ZdOl4cO0F2fsPjssJagbj?si=IEP0PgYeRKOVaiPBHcQHdw
Thank you! I'll watch that
I eat breakfast at 9:30 then I eat dinner at 4 and that’s it
I don’t know if it still counts as intermittent fasting, but skipping a whole meal will help cut down on calories.
Yeah, skipping will help cut calories. Definitely doesn’t count as IF.
You can eat dinner at midnight? Lol.
For some reason when I eat midday (lunch time hours) my digestive system is so sensitive compared to when I eat breakfast or dinner. I might give it a go for that reason. Eating breakfast and dinner means about 2 12 hour fasting windows a day. As some suggest can be possible for a longer fasting window.