Ok, super proud of myself the last 3 days I’ve done one 20 hour and two 23 hour fasts and had one meal a day plus a fatty coffee mid day to hold me over (not a perfect fast but I’m doing Butter Bob’s version where the point is just not to spike insulin.
Where I need advice. Today I did not feel hungry at all. UNTIL I had to prep meals for family. Like at 10 am my husband got home from work and was miserably sick with the flu and hungry so I made him a cheesy bacon egg concoction quickly but… it made me hungry so I made my fatty coffee to get through the hump. And the rest of the day no issues with hunger until I had to make my husband and kids dinner. So I was thinking I would be ready to do an extended, maybe 48 hour fast if it weren’t for the issue of wanting to eat when I have to cook. Would it defeat the purpose of an extended fast to just have another fatty coffee while the rest of my family eats dinner? Not cooking isn’t an option. My kids are small and my husband works so hard for us I just can’t not cook for him. (Plus I got him to go low carb and I know if I left him to cook his own meal he would take it as permission to have potatoes and corn and mac n cheese all in one meal)
Advice?
Dr. Longo’s Fasting Mimicking Diet can range from 500 to 1,000 calories per day, but the main thing is to keep carbs and protein near zero, so I don’t think that an extra fatty coffee would defeat your fast.
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress.”
I find it hard to believe there is a magic number that just turns everything on or off for people, more of a sliding scale makes sense. If you aren’t spiking insulin with 1 or 2 coffee’s it doesn’t make sense that 3 or 4 would do it either assuming you didn’t chug em all at once.
Thanks guys! I think I’m going to give it go soon then! Maybe starting tonight even and see if I can go til Wednesday night (I would try for longer but my husband is cooking Wednesday night and the man does some amazing things with meat and butter in a fry pan. I’m not missing that!)
Have you tried another type of drink, with a punch of flavour? One of my favourites is Earl Grey tea with fresh piece of lemon floating in the cup. I love it and really hits the spot. Very minimal carbs, and nothing else really. And it doesnt provoke my glucose…because the tea and sour taste.Another option is broth, either from bone broth or bouillon cube.
Also if you don’t have a lot of experience fasting yet, you are going to be more susceptible to cravings based on what other people are eating.
I didn’t even think about broth!
I have a few teas I like but I can chug them all day and they don’t put me out of the “I want fooood” mindset. So far the coffee does well for that. Like I stop eating at 8 pm and didn’t have a coffee until 14 hours later and today that held me over until 7 pm when I started my eating window
since food is triggering for you…are you getting enough food in your feeding windows?
could it be too much fasting back to back and your body needs a non fasting feed day in between? (for now)
I’m getting about 1000-1400 cals in a one hour eating window plus the coffees are about 200 cals (I’m not sure how much I ate yesterday really. I forgot to track)
just my experience (and i am no expert/veteran at fasting LOL)…
i’ve made food for myself and others, been around special occasion foods, and gone grocery shopping (there were samples…a lot of samples…at 3 diff stores LOL) and had zero response while fasting…
then other times i’ve just thought of food and couldn’t stop thinking about food…
the advice i was given for the latter was that maybe my body wasn’t fully repaired from the previous fast and to not force it.
my plan of attack is if i feel physical hunger i drink salt water/electroyltes but if that doesn’t work for the “food, food, food” thoughts i break…after some battling…which usually gives me another couple of hours LOL
i mean obviously we have to soldier on in some instances but there is no shame in breaking at 10 instead of 20…we still kept our insulin at bay for 10 
you got this 
i just realized this…i find extended fasting much better/easier for me…once i get past 22-24 hours.
like with IF i know i am “supposed” to eat at some point during that day so that becomes the focus instead of just doing my thing.
so far i’ve had many fasts that i thought were going to be extended become intermittent and many intermittent fasts become extended LOL
have you tried extended yet?
p.s. moving/exercising really really helps my fasts and fasting really really helps me move LOL
Oh no, @mikki’s on another “fasting buzz”, watch out SoCal! 
I have the same experience with fasting, I just feel so much better and I’m not constrained by times to eat that I wish I could fast more often, but I’m already underweight, so I find that I need some fat throughout the day. Not that it’s hard to bite off a chunk of butter or get a spoonful of coconut oil or even ghee!
hah! you aren’t wrong but…why ya gotta rat me out like that @billjay? 
40 ish unplanned hours…i wasn’t paying attn to when i last ate because i thought i was going to eat yesterday and then just didn’t get around to it LOL
Hey there. What I do is cook for the family and put it in the fridge. Then they can just beat it and sort themselves out.
Still fasting? How’s it going?