<div class="bbWrapper">Well, good luck reading this post..<br />
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Dr. Jason Fung has an awesome book on the thread, but it is not exactly anything that isn't shared on the internet. He has an hour long interview with some guy on YT and there he explains the majority of his book. I have done IF for weight loss, but gained the weight back a few times after poor ethic. Few months ago I used it again and I lost about 15kg's , which I haven't gained back, I still have about 5-6 more to lose, but because I don't look as fat as I used to look, I'm not exactly feeling motivated to finish the journey.<br />
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I still d**k around with food, but I do it in amounts to sustain my current weight and not gain anything back.<br />
IF is the easiest method to start with ( 16:8 for example ), but if you are into weight loss specifically, One meal a day I found to be working best for me. I did it for a few days and after my body adjusted I started skipping days and working out more intensively. I would not do the same schedule all the time, to keep my body shocked, so I would eat once today, skip a day, then the next time I would skip 3 days, then 2 days and on and on.<br />
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I did this for about 35 days, combined with working out almost every day ( light weight training with dumbbells at home, skipping rope and walks ) to lose the 15 kg's. Longer fasts are done easier than short ones ( A week long fast is easier than three 2 day long fasts ), because you don't feel hunger at all after the first day or two, and the first days are always the hardest.<br />
16:8 is the best one to fit around your lifestyle, but if it allows you should create a closer gap, like 20:4, benefits would be better.<br />
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<a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/members/10479/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="10479" data-username="@JasonR">@JasonR</a> IF is for everybody, because thats how the species are made to live. You are not made to eat multiple times per day, every day. There were periods of famine before, and long ones. This is why your body stores fat, so that you can survive off of it in periods of no food.But because those periods never come now, our bodies have a hard time adjusting to eating like this when you first try it. Jason Fung has a great interview ( about 1 hour long on YT that will answer the majority of your questions on the subject ) that you can watch to inform yourself.<br />
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How to adjust? All it takes is some willpower. People often say that willpower doesn't work for weight loss and such and it is true, because it is hard to stay motivated and inspired on long term goals, but it is not that way with IF. Your body will be very quick to adjust, it only takes a few days ( when I first started it took me 2-3 days ). Push back through those first couple of days and you are set. It is a hell of a lot easier to do it than people think, but you've conditioned your body to an entire different eating regime for your entire life, you can't expect that to change overnight.<br />
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You have shrunken your stomach from eating smaller meals multiple times per day, hence why you are experiencing these difficulties, but your body will adjust.<br />
In my experience, it almost didn't matter what kinds of food I ate, I always experienced hunger in the beginning. Start drinking water and green tea. Coffee makes it worse, it doesn't help. But green tea does help tremendously, if you have a big cup of tea it reduces the hunger by a huge amount.<br />
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What are you trying to do is wrong, you can't just go from 6 meals a day to two, because of your stomach size, its hard to digest so much calories at once if your body isn't trained. To be able to eat your calories within one or two meals will be very hard in the beginning, but you can still eat multiple meals and do intermittent fasting. You can split your calories within 4 meals and eat them throughout 8 hours during the day, for example, then when you don't find it hard to do, you can start with 3 meals and on and on, but for me, two meals is the best one for me to fit around my lifestyle. If you work a regular job, you can eat lunch with your colleagues and have dinner with your family after that. <br />
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I don't know if you run/train regularly, but you shouldn't do it like this in the beginning. IF stresses out your body, although it is a good type of stress, you shouldn't overstress it in the beginning. Being able to train on empty stomach needs adjustments too, what you read on the internet is true - you have explosive amounts of energy when you train on empty stomach, less recovery time and you don't get burned out as much, but you can't just start doing it today and get the full experience, it takes some time. <br />
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It might be better for you to place your workouts within your eating window at first. Focus on adjusting your body to fasting primarily at first, then on the training fasted. If weight loss is a concern, wait a few hours after your workout, before you eat. After your body adjusts, working out will reduce hunger instead of promoting it.You can enter the gym hungry and leave it satisfied without eating anything.<br />
On the caloric side, a study was conducted years ago, where they compared groups of people that fasted on , lets say 1000 calories a day, and the other group ate 1000 calories, but didn't practice IF. <br />
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The both groups lost almost equal amounts of weight, so its literally how much you at and how much you burn, but on another study when they didn't restrict their calories, the group that practiced IF consumed fewer calories than the group that ate throughout the day. It is a very convenient way to control your calorie intake.After your body adjusts, you can consume 2k today and 1k tomorrow and not feel like its a big deal, but for somebody that doesn't fast, reducing their calories by 1000 is a huge deal. You also don't snack throughout the day, because you don't feel hunger outside of your eating window. Your body is quick to adjust to anything you throw at it. If you start eating at 12PM, it will very soon start to expect a meal at that time, and you will start getting hungry around that time everyday.<br />
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And the same logic follows, when you stop eating at certain hours, it doesn't expect food so you don't feel hunger during that time. Now, when I eat breakfast, soon after that I feel hunger again, because your body needs about 2-3 hours to fully digest the food, then it expects more ( because you didn't overeat ), so I will feel hungry before time for lunch comes.But when I skip breakfast, I don't feel hungry until 12 or 1 o'clock ( it depends on how your body is adjusted, but that is how it is for me.This is why people that eat 6 meals a day feel the hunger most of the time. People that have overeating habits think there is something wrong with them, but that is how our bodies are supposed to function. We weren't meant to eat few times per day ( not everyday anyway ) and snack every hour. <br />
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The cavemen hunted, killed and ate an animal at once, almost, because they couldn't store it like we can now ( no refrigerators ), but that didn't happen everyday. The few tribes that are left now understand this and force themselves to fast even when food is present. That is how we were supposed to function, so I don't believe anybody that says "This isn't for me", yes it is, just give it some time and see for yourself. It is incredible how our bodies function in periods of lack of food. The strength, the mental clarity, the focus, the 'excess' energy, the increased HGH, the effort to protect the muscles from disappearing .. all of this comes with a purpose. That you are able to hunt or gather ( climb trees ) your food.Hunger makes you stronger, not weaker. <br />
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If you fatigued when you didn't eat, you would just lie in the cave powerless until you died. It runs off of fat first, dead skin, and muscle last. This is why you can heal scars with prolonged fasts, because the body consumes what is not needed. I'm pretty sure you can remove excess skin ( from losing lots of weight ) doing the same thing. Hunger also doesn't affect your brain and your reproducing organs, that's nature's way of making sure your species survive, no matter what. It is just incredible.<br />
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Summary; give it some time, start with smaller steps.Eat smaller meals throughout your eating window and don't force yourself to eat two big meals in the beginning. Drink lots of water and when you're feeling hungry - green tea helps. If you are new to IF do not train on empty stomach. If weight loss is a concern, do not eat right after your workout, but wait an hour or two.<br />
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Hope the spacing makes it easier to read.</div>
