Early Eating Window Instead of Fasting, Anyone?

fasting
#1

Question, has anyone made their eating window really early instead of fasting? For the last two days I have been eating from 9 -2PM and have been pretty strict although I am willing to go as late as 4PM. I normally eat from 12 - 8 but often will have a snack (I know I know!) later. I am an experienced low carber and faster of many years, having fasted as long as 5.5 days (not recently, recently maybe 3 days last month). I find that doing Keto is not enough to lose weight and I probably eat too much dairy anyway. The way I normally lose weight is I will fast for a few days and lose 3 or 4 lbs and keep 2 of those off when I return to eating. Wondering if this will work better. Anyone find that it does or does not matter?

Wanted to add I have never been an early eater, always skipped food in the morning so this has been a different experience

(Allie) #2

My normal eating window is 0600-1300 and has been for a long time. If I’m extra hungry I’ll eat in the evening, but rarely after 1800 and never after 1900 or my sleep suffers.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #3

As said recently in another thread - There’s good reason (so many have said) to eat early rather than late in the day because of the dawn phenomenon.
It makes sense to take advantage of already elevated insulin (dawn) and eat during that time instead raising your levels unnecessarily.
That being said, I don’t do it. But I would if need be. Plus I like to eat with the family, despite having to look at those steaming potatoes :nauseated_face: lol

(Shawn Patrick Malone) #4

Thomas DeLauler (sp) has been going this route the last few years on his youtube clips. He has been advocating having the largest meal early and making each meal smaller as the day goes on and ending your eating period a few hours before going to bed. I guess the IF window would be shorter, 12 hours or so.

(Pete A) #5

I eat a large breakfast around 10am and medium lunch around 2, Small dinner around 6pm. Been this way for years.

#6

I don’t know if it matters for fat-loss, I just think one should do the fast that suits them better.
I shouldn’t ever have an early eating window - but others shouldn’t have a late one. And probably many are more flexible than that and both works for them.

I can relate. Unless I can ensure OMAD, I better limit my dairy (and other non-satiating items) or I never will lose any fat. Dairy may interfere anyway but in my case, it’s all about calories (as far as I can tell). And dairy easily boost them. It’s not the carbs as I have the same problem with harder cheese (but the carbs surely doesn’t help either).

Oh, experiments! I like them. Sometimes you try something new, maybe something that you think no way it could work - and it surprises you.
I KNOW I shouldn’t eat in the morning because I experienced eating then (especially when I was a kid). It didn’t worked for me but I tried and know it now.

It is what comes to me naturally. My first meal almost always the biggest, often by far. But not always. I eat when I need and as much as seems right…
My very, very rare breakfasts are super tiny. The earlier I eat, the tinier my meal becomes. I have multiple reasons to avoid eating early… But many people can eat a big breakfast, that’s good if it works out for them. My SO eats the smallest breakfast he can to avoid overeating (but it should keep him satiated for a big part of the next 9 hours without food so it’s not very small). So it’s quite individual when and how much one should eat first.

But if others say how they eat NOT with an early eating window… I do that too.
I am a natural IFer and afternoon eater, I hate eating breakfast with a passion (rare exceptions aside) and I am right, it’s not for me at all. Late eating is easy and not ideal so there is some fight about it in my life.
I typically eat first at 3pm (sometimes earlier, sometimes at 6pm, I eat then even if I still don’t desire food but feel that skipping the day wouldn’t work. but usually around 3pm, my body likes that time) and have 1-5 meals (as many as I need to get my nutrients and satiation, the two are correlated but not so strongly) and usually finish my day at 7pm. Sometimes way later and I sleep well then but it still has disadvantages so I try to avoid that. That’s one reason to plan and track, I WILL get hungry later if I didn’t eat enough during the day. So if I had to eat earlier, I would focus on it very well. Good, satiating food and enough of it. It may be a good idea in general but I noticed many people can just wait until the next day when they undereat.

(Robin) #7

If your experiments with fasting have led to losing weight then gaining half back… your body is telling you that slow and steady is best. Don’t try to trick your body into weight loss. Just stay the course, it will happen… with some stalls or gains along the way… it will happen.
You got this!

(Doug) #8

For a lot of us, keto brings metabolic healing, while fasting is what really has us lose fat. A 5 hour eating window is certainly a type of fasting - in 19 hours the stomach will empty, and the small intestine will probably mostly or totally empty, so now it’s the ‘post-absorptive phase’ where blood sugar and insulin decline, and glucagon starts increasing (and in theory the body starts taking fat out of storage). Certainly a good thing from the standpoint of why keto diets work and why one might need that approach.

Eating earlier in the day, versus later, is usually a good thing. The same food, same quantities, eaten late in the day provokes a higher insulin response, at least in a majority of people - from the studies that have been done on it.

But I think the single biggest thing is how the individual person likes or doesn’t like what they’re doing. Dairy - makes no difference for some, makes a large, demonstrable difference for others. Is it easy to eat early, versus late? Theory is nice, but something that is unsustainable because it’s stressful or unpleasant usually won’t work out well.

(GINA ) #9

I have tried it off and on over the years and if I can manage it, an early eating window absolutely works for me for weight loss. The difficulty is my work schedule and eating with family.

Maybe that’s sign I should retire.

(Geoffrey) #10

I started off doing a 18/6 fast but I didn’t feel as though it was doing me any good so I decided to just eat when I got hungry.
It turned out that I just went back to fasting naturally. In other words, nothing changed.
I get up with the sun. I have one cup of hot tea (Irish breakfast) with no sweetener and no dairy. I only break my fast when I get hungry and ends up being around 11:00 or 12:00 in the morning. I will have a fairly large meal and then I don’t get very hungry the rest of the day. I make it a point to not eat after 6:00 pm so if I’m feeling any hunger I’ll make sure to eat before then but it’s usually not a large meal. Yesterday I did OMAD simply because I didn’t want any food by the time 6:00 came rolling around.

#11

Thank you but I have tried various methods over the years. Keto IM since March 2017. Lost weight, weight crept back, gained weight, lost less weight, stabilized weight. Fasting is the only thing that seems to work. There is a tendency to regain no matter what the diet because your body wants homeostasis

I think when you fast you automatically lose some weight. If you weigh yourself on the last day of the fast it will show weight loss, when you eat, the next day it will show some weight gain, usually about half of what you lost on the fast. That is completely normal.

Absolutely the only way I have lost weigh is through EF. Keto maintains part of the weight loss but does not increase it. I probably do have some form of IR

The problem is when my 5 hour window is from 5- 10PM, I do not lose weight. Worse, I feel the urge to snack all evening even after 10 (I am usually up late) and if the snacking is bad enough, will gain.

Me too and I have had to force myself to eat but I woke up hungry today, then it tapered off and by lunch time I wanted to do anything else other than eat. I ate well an hour later. Then by 6 I was starving again but worked through it

I am the opposite, carbs help me sleep. During fasts I am both cold and too energized to sleep well

I thought the Dawn Effect only affects some people, not everyone and it raises glucose because the liver produces too much to stimulate. One of the reasons eating fewer times or in a shorter window works so well is that glucose is lower in the morning, if it is not stimulated it stays at baseline longer. Each time you eat if it is too close together glucose does not have a chance to go back to baseline and the meal is then eaten when glucose is 110 or 130 instead of 90 and it rises higher than if you ate the same food with a glucose of 90. Therefore, eating when your sugar is already elevated, whether from a bagel or endogenous glucose from the liver is not a great idea. However there is so much controversy. Years ago Tim Ferriss advocated 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking. Recently I was listening to a different podcast, may have been Huberman, who advocated waiting 90 minutes before eating anything to counter any early morning rise. Who knows what to think theses days!

#12

Have been doing this since Sunday and it started unintentionally. I had to be up early to do a long drive to a party at lunchtime. I must have coffee so had some and cheese and eggs (would not normally eat at 9AM ever, even coffee). Got to the party at 1:30, had a reasonable size lunch of a frittata, chicken, salad, and more coffee. Did not consider the cake. Then stopped off to check out their BBB that was almost closed! Did not feel tired but at this point it was 7 and still had a 4 hour drive home and did not want to stop at the usual suspects to eat. Did not find it difficult, more like a fast so decided to continue. By the third day I had lost 4 lbs but that is still within my normal range and anytime I restrict food in a new way I lose a couple of pounds which usually come back eventually.

Monday and Tuesday I was hungry in the evening, as though I had been fasting. Last night I was a little colder than normal although not as cold as mid fast (is summer here but DH blasts the AC). Today I am a little hungry in the evening, again like a fast, but as with a fast, I was not craving anything. I have never understood why when I am fasting I can go days without food and I really do not crave anything but after dinner on a normal Tuesday I am constantly going back to the kitchen to see what else I can eat

#13

I never worried about any of this. I ate my 20 carbs and beyond that I ate when I was hungry. 3 meals at first, then I went down to 2 then to one. Not because I deprived my body to make myself lose or stay in an artificial eating window or whatever, just because I was sated. My gigantic weight loss over time says I did something right. I never worried about stalls or short-term gains, I see it as my body adjusting and mopping up. I am cool with that, let my body do its thing and stick with my 20 carbs. Now, that I have lost the great majority of my weight, I am even more permissive, I eat more carbs when I really want to. I still lose, albeit much slower. But then, the closer you are to your ideal weight, the slower the body gives up it’s reserves. I respect that, too, and I may never lose the last 20 pounds. I am good with that.

#14

That is great for you. That was not my experience. In 2017 I needed to lose about 100 lbs. I lost about 52 between February and December, perhaps a little more. Combination of Keto, EF and reducing my eating window. I would sometimes forget to eat and turn it into a mutliple day fast. I was nowhere near my goal weight and by most accounts I was still bordering on obese. I looked much better, was maybe a women’s US 14 and I am average height. Had I gone to a new doctor at that point who did not know me and practiced conventional medicine he would have suggested I lose weight!

Started in January 2018 my weight started creeping up. A little at first, I could still wear the clothes I bought for maybe another year or so, then no more. I ended up regaining everything except 15 lbs. I have lost about 15 lbs since then but still about 20 lbs more than December 2017. It is discouraging but very normal no matter the diet

#15

I found along the way (125+ pounds lost) that depriving myself of anything, meals, calories anything, instead of eating when hungry and to satiety, always set me back. So, I counted nothing but carbs, and those I guesstimated from a refrigerator sticker listing carbs in allowed foods. Eggs, fatty meats, cheese, cream, nuts, and most of the carbs came from veggies and berries.
Forcing my body into any further restrictions always had an adverse effect.
I had been on Atkins and failed many years earlier. A plain low carb diet worked for me, and is still working, just much slower now.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #16

It’s apparently triggered by cortisol. Presumably the evolutionary advantage lies in waking up prepared to take on the cave bear or sabre-toothed tiger who has invaded the cave.

#17

Agree but there are many people who have a morning fasting of 84 and their max on keto is no more than 100 and others who are at 110 in the morning even when eating keto

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #18

All my searches says it affects everyone. Diabetic or not.
As said, energy to start the day.

#19

Waking up roaring to go. :+1:

(Bob M) #20

No kidding. When my kids are in school, I often eat 7-8pm at night. Then go to bed at 9pm. But that’s the way it is.