April 2023 IF/EF Chat Thread (All Welcome)

#21

Things went super well fasting wise :slight_smile: But I overate lately and had much carbs too (I had a recipe to perfect to avoid very bad things at certain holidays) so no wonder it was easier than usual :smiley: Still. I needed the mental preparation :smiley:

I passed the 24 hour mark easily. I am not fully satiated anymore and I just started to feel the usual dizzy “need for fuel” signs so I am prepared to eat a small, very fatty meal (to have a low-cal OMAD at least) but we will see. I feel pretty well apart from this borderline dizziness. Even my headache went away.

It’s so very enjoyable to fast when I feel like this :smiley: I love food but I love fasting too. I just can’t do it for very long and sometimes the temptation to eat is bigger than the temptation to fast. I usually do whatever is easiest. It’s still the fasting now. Zero effort this far.

I had a water fast for the first 20 hours, then I felt miserable with my headache since several hours and had coffee and tea. I never should try too hard, that doesn’t work with my personality. And I have priorities. Quitting coffee is a nice plan and I will go back to it but if I need to indulge, I drink coffee. Or tea but it’s coffee when I feel a tad miserable due to a headache. I started drinking it at 3pm, it’s not that bad and headache is a valid excuse to me. It doesn’t happen so often. (I drink coffee without a good reason then. I want to get rid of that.)

#22

25 hours. I had too serious mental problems, fasting was easy but I couldn’t focus on anything and I hate that.
But it was fun, I will try next Monday (or Tuesday if I lift on Monday as my usual plan and don’t feel like fasting all day) but I will try to skip lunches all the time :slight_smile:

Hopefully my little meal between 8pm and 8:30 was enough for the day. Low-cal and low-protein (maybe adequate but my body rarely think so) so I consider it a success. And after sunset first meal, brilliant :slight_smile:

(Jane) #23

My hubby and I started anouther 42-48 hour fast yesterday after lunch.

This morning I finished getting all the seedings I have been growing in my greenhouse since Feb planted in the garden - YAY. 16 cucumbers, 13 squash, 17 pepper and 30 tomato plants.

Took a break and then going back out later to sow my green beans. We have rain moving in this evening and supposed to rain some the next few days so want to get the seeds in the ground to take advantage of the rain.

(Bob M) #24

Impressive! Do you get more tomatoes than you can eat?

#25

I wrote this on the 25th of April but couldn’t comment as mine was the last 3 comments. No problem, I am patient :smiley:

New week, I go stricter again. Maybe I won’t need to skip lunch after all, for OMAD I mean, I do wish to do an EF at least once in 2023, after years…
As yesterday became a very great lunch OMAD day. I ate differently from normal, focusing on my most satiating item. It was very enjoyable too. It is so wonderful when I eat a substantial, nice meal and feel exactly zero urge to eat for about a day.
As I ate early (normal workday lunch so between 3 and 4 pm), I go for a small, 24 hour fast now :slight_smile: I am at 20 hour, my belly feels perfectly satiated but unusually, my stomach is noticeably empty. I usually can’t tell its state, it feels nothing.

But yesterday had my weekend before it, it might be different today. I try to eat similarly and see what happens. That’s one great benefit of OMAD for me, experiments get easier as there are less factors.
My body is simple enough so under very similar circumstances I can expect similar results. Of course there are exceptions but they seem to be rare. As far as I can tell, my days are way too different but on OMAD, they probably won’t be.

Yep, I did 24 hour(s) and a half.

Since then I only do 3MAD days but I get satiated way too easily now, sometimes it happens on carnivore. But my macros are wonderful, I am pleased.
I do wish to go back to OMAD when the circumstances allow it.

(Jane) #26

Yes, and I blanch and freeze them so we can have them year-round. Last year I also used my dehydrator to turn my cherry tomatoes into “sun dried” tomatoes and packed them in olive oil and stored in the fridge.

(Jane) #27

This is the most tomato plants I have ever planted - usually around 20.

This year I got a bit carried away looking at all the seed varieties and ended up with 15 packets of seeds. Some I grow every year, some are recent favorites and I always try new ones every year.

I ended up with 64 tomato plants in 6” pots, even after culling the weak ones. I managed to give away all the extras to 3 different families. One offered to pay for them but I said no. The cost of the seeds would have been the same whether I grew 15 or 64 plants. The cost to heat my greenhouse is the same, my LED grow lights don’t use much electricity so the only additional cost to me is the potting soil. I re-use the pots and they all returned them to me.

I was just happy I didn’t have to compost strong, healthy plants! And I provided my friends with oddball varieties you can’t find at the nursery.

(Bob M) #28

I LOVE the oddball varieties. The local farm grows them, and they are delicious. Can’t even eat a store bought tomato anymore.

I bought three of the heritage tomato plants, but they died. I theorize that it was too hot on our deck. On the other hand, I bought three hot peppers (which I fermented the peppers), and those things would not stop producing peppers. I was stunned.

It’s odd, because some hot sauce will give me almost an immediate reaction, which I consider to be an allergic one. The fermented hot peppers, however, did not.

This year, I might grind a batch up into hot sauce.

#29

I only bought 3 different kinds of tomato seeds (whenever I am near seeds to buy, I need to keep myself back :smiley: be it vegs or flowers) but had leftovers from previous years…
I decided never trying to grow plants inside ever, it never works well but this year was the worst. I will just sow the seeds outsides when the weather allows. We used to have tomatoes without sowing any except in the first year, they just came out every year and were plentiful. Only in October but still :smiley:
I always buy some plants to get tomatoes earlier but it’s very expensive (but they are big and mine stayed 3cm big for about 5 months… IDK why. My garden is problematic when it comes to vegs. Most fruits are happy there and they don’t need the fragment of the work and I get zillion times more produce…)

I know one should have a warmhouse when doing thing properly but I never bothered with that. I have very little place for vegs anyway.

I have 6 tiny plants now if they still alive, a few small rows of freshly sowed tomatoes (I didn’t wait until May as the weather was good enough. the valley may get some frost but the hilltop has a different climate) and I will buy some big plants when they will be available.

If everything goes right, I will have red and yellow tomatoes. Last year I had “black” ones too (IDK why it is called black, it’s more like some dirty pinkish purple, far from black).

My radishes (various colors) will start to properly grow any day now :wink: And I will have spring onions galore soon as well. I have them since some time but not many. This is the first year I got serious and planted very many. My goal is to provide my SO with a proper amount every day when he fancy them, he needs his raw vegs. I have tiny purple and big red onion bulbs, most of them in the soil but I kept some for later.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #30

We have a mixed variety of lettuces, flowers, snap peas, zukes, and tomatoes, mostly orange.yellow ones, slicers and cherry sized, ready to go into the ground after the next expected cool front passes, so early in May. My husband has a cold frame and an indoor grow room. I have found if I eat regular red tomatoes, I get a case of Rosacea when I over eat them, and it doesn’t take many. I don’t have the issue with the lower acidic yellow and orange tomatoes. So he grows those for me.

I’m still doing timed eating window and staying at or just below my goal weight. I mix it up, some days I do breakfast and lunch others, lunch and dinner but always making sure I finish at least 4 hours before I go to bed. I’m excited because my husband is experimenting with TEW also, he had never had an interest in fasting before. I have to encourage him to eat more, since he has a hard time keeping weight on, a TOFI with T2D, is a special challenge for sure.

Hope everyone is doing well with your fasts.

KCFO

(Jane) #31

34 hrs in and going to bed soon for “8 hrs of free fasting” LOL. Then a few more hours in the morning and will break my fast at lunch.

KCFO

#32

Wow, I didn’t know there can be such a big difference… Yellow tomatoes feel the same to me as red ones, just with a funnier color… But now I know.

Yesterday was my super rare not IF day :frowning: I just couldn’t get satiated - and actually, eat enough in a few meals - without my usual proper, fresh meat but I had none, I need to be more careful to keep some ready to eat in my freezer all the time. I usually do that but there are days when it’s not the case. Oh well, it’s not a big deal as long as it happens very rarely. I still aim to avoid such days, I just don’t beat up myself over it.

Today I try to go back to my tiny eating window. And one meal if possible. Not 3 or 4 as I had in the last days. But 3 was still below 5 hours and that’s still good enough for me (but I am still aiming for OMAD).

I won’t even be home until 4pm so today almost surely will be IF. I don’t eat after midnight lately :slight_smile:

The area where my success is especially tiny, is quitting coffee. I don’t worry about that, I don’t drink as much as before, it costs less too as I don’t use instant coffee now (too convenient and expensive and now I have a wonderful filter for the other kind. I own a tiny simple retro coffee maker but it is useless with my induction cookers) so I show some progress but it should be sped up. But as my focus is on a tiny eating window (staying close to carnivore is very easy and automatic now), I just can be super strict with coffee as well… So I just push it after 3pm, it helps a lot. I can drink way too many coffees in the morning and that is even time consuming, not like my morning zombie state is good for much. But I could weed the garden in the fresh air or something. (I often cook as I can do it any time. I baked this morning.) Sadly I can’t do my workouts in the (early) morning as I am a zombie and have no mood or energy for it.
It would be amazing to have proper energy one day (especially in the morning but I would be happy with it any time)… But I am not sure I believe in that possibility even with my huge optimism. I am healthy - with low energy. Sounds like an oxymoron but here I am. If I wasn’t the opposite of a hypochondriac, I would suspect my health isn’t as great as I think.

#33

Life is so weird since I have the disappearing hunger thing. If I got hungry, it just got progressively worse before (but if I managed to avoid it until bedtime, I woke up pretty satiated again. so EF was possible sometimes)… But since some years this weird thing happens here and there. And lately it’s more frequent (not like I often not eat when hungry so maybe I just couldn’t test it?).

I got home, made my food and during the about 3 hours that passed since I started to get hungry but couldn’t eat… I just got borderline satiated again :smiley:

So it’s 5pm and I haven’t eaten yet and it’s special in my life :smiley:

Yay.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #34

I started a new month’s thread, you can find it here.