July 2018 IF / EF chat ALL WELCOME


(I came for the weight loss and stayed for my sanity... ) #101

I knoooow… I did the same, several times, a long time ago. right now we are drowning in work, so that is about the worst time to stop :joy::see_no_evil:


(I came for the weight loss and stayed for my sanity... ) #102

39 hours… stomach stop growling, you are not getting anything…

not really hungry, but the noise is getting annoying…


(Allie) #103

Oh I get this! My office is often quiet and I’m sure the sound echoes…


(Steve) #104

@Hardrock_keto_chick, @Shortstuff - just out of curiosity, but why are you ladies looking to wean yourselves off of caffeine? (there’s always been pros and cons to it from a health standpoint).


(Allie) #105

Couple of reasons for me - first being that the only times in my life when I’ve been completely free of bladder pain is when I’ve been caffeine free, and secondly, so i can water fast properly without needing black coffee to get me through (especially as black coffee massively irritates reason number one).


(I came for the weight loss and stayed for my sanity... ) #106

I want to see if I can reduce the amount of supplements I take, especially magnesium. Stuff gets expensive but if I don’t load up on it I wake up screaming at night with my calves cramping up :scream:

So getting rid of caffeine that acts diuretic might help. It’s an N=1 basically…

Also I am trying to support my adrenals and improve and heal my metabolism.


(Steve) #107

Yeah, I really can’t get myself to enjoy black coffee…tried many times over the years. Whenever I fast, I switch to green tea - gives me just enough caffeine that I don’t go into withdrawal. I’ll likely end up drinking more tea than coffee when traveling, but we’ll see. :slight_smile:

Heh…I’d be fasting, but I have too much food I have to use up in my freezer. :frowning: Maybe I’ll give it all to my niece on Monday so I can get a 3 or 4 day in before I head out. :slight_smile:


(Allie) #108

Teas are no good for me either, whether black white or green, they cause serious pain more so than black coffee, which is how I ended up a coffee addict.


(Doug) #109

Steve, perhaps I should try unsweetened tea more often. Long and long it’s been since I gave up cream & sugar in coffee, but tea - that one always got me, I always crave some sweetener in it, artifical though it be.

As for giving up caffeine - :smile: not this boy.

(Rough week - the 4th of July holiday in the U.S. right smack in the middle of it - just passed. Started fasting 34 hours ago. Effortless. At roughly 15 hours I started getting that “good, light” feeling, no longer burdened.)


(Allie) #110

I’m not giving up caffeine as I will still have a coffee when I want to, but I want to remove the dependency so I can go without it when I want to without getting withdrawal.


(I came for the weight loss and stayed for my sanity... ) #111

Yes, exactly what I want. Enjoy one topped with wipped cream at the caffé with friends rather than chugging down cup after cup at work…


(I came for the weight loss and stayed for my sanity... ) #112

I do love black coffee if it is a good one unfortunately.
I like to make coldbrew green tea for fasting, but I get lazy since it has to be made 24h in advance -.-


(TJ Borden) #113

I have an interesting story… well not really that interesting… funny maybe? Eh, not really that funny either… anyway-

When I was 8, I spend the summer on my grandpas dairy farm. I’d have coffee with my grandparents in the morning. Mine was half coffee, half cream, and as much sugar as would desolve. When I got back home, I wanted to keep drinking coffee. My parents didn’t drink coffee at all, but we had a little 4 cup machine for when grandpa came to visit. Mom said okay thinking it was a quick phase. When it turned into a week of making it, dad intervened and said I couldn’t drink it with all the milk and sugar. If I was going to keep drinking coffee, I had to drink it black, assuming that would end the whole coffee issue. After all, what 8 year old can stand black coffee? So in pure defiance, I learned to like it black. Since then, with the recent exception of BPC a couple times, I’ve never liked anything added to my coffee.

Okay, back on topic. @Hardrock_keto_chick, I had an office job at one point and was 8-10 cups a day. This was also WAY before keto, and before I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, so I literally needed it to stay awake durning the day. As soon as I got home I’d fall asleep.

Currently I usually drink 2 cups a day, but I’ve also had stretches where I gave it up. Just like any other drug (including sugar), there’s a withdrawal period. What worked for me in the past was starting by setting a time of day where I’d have to stop drinking coffee. For me it was 11 am. After 11, all I drank was water. Then I kept adjusting the time back until I was basically limited to one mug. Once I was used to that, it was pretty easy to skip that first mug altogether.

Now, I usually have coffee in the morning, but if I don’t, I don’t feel off, so at least the dependency is gone.


(Aimee Moisa) #114

Hey everybody! I started intentionally trying to do IF yesterday. Like somebody said yesterday I’m exercising my fasting muscle. Last meal last night was at about 7:30 p.m. and right now I’m having a half cup of espresso with about 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream and a little scoop of stevia extract. This is how I take it daily but I was chided yesterday that the cream being about 200 calories means I’ve already broken my fast but, you know, I’m just starting and I like my cream and coffee. Stevia doesn’t make it sweet it just keeps it from tasting like battery acid. Yesterday I lasted until about noon which is about 4 hours away and I was so insanely hungry all morning that I couldn’t stop thinking about food and then I started getting a headache. I’m going to try to keep myself distracted today but I have a job that it’s so easy for me I get bored. Maybe I’ll watch Netflix or YouTube videos with my headphones on.

I don’t know how long I will last, do you all think it’s better to have a goal and try to hit it as a stopping point or to just go until you really feel like you need to eat when you’re first starting out?

Never in my life did I think I was somebody who could go without food or ignore hunger pangs but you all have convinced me that it’s possible and Drs Fung and Berg and Berry have all convinced me that it’s a good idea if I want to try to get rid of all the crap inside me, avoid Alzheimer’s, and, really, hope beyond hope, avoid all loose skin that comes with losing weight after being almost 350 lb for several years.


(Beth) #115

Hi Aimee,

I guess some people spontaneously fast because they just aren’t hungry :slight_smile:. It gets easier when you are fat adapted and your body isn’t asking for sugar.

When I first went keto, I set a goal for the fasting duration and I stuck to it unless I started to feel bad. Granted, there were times that I was really hungry, but the hunger waxes and wanes. Jimmy Moore says that the hunger you experience during fasting is no different than normal hunger. Normal hunger is not a feeling we are used to.

You say you are bored. That doesn’t help because the best distraction from hunger is being busy. Megan Ramos says that she uses her fasting times to get caught up on everything, which is a great idea!

Anyhow I’m in there with you right now. I haven’t eaten since dinner last night at about 8 pm. I am planning on breaking my fast at about 5 pm. My goal this week is to IF about 20-24 hours for three days.

Here’s a visual that I use when fasting: imagine you have a spigot sticking out of your navel, right now it’s turned on and fat is dripping out steadily. Think about that when you get hungry, drink a lot of water, take some salt too. IMO a couple hundred calories of HWC isn’t too bad if it keeps you on your fast.


#116

Good luck to you, Aimee! Put me in the camp of: cream/butter/whatever in your coffee to help you through your first fasting attempts. In my first EF, I was almost ridiculously indulgent with fats (BPC in the morning, then tea with butter, then even a kind of modified hot chocolate in early afternoon). It was really more of a fat fast, but somehow calling it an EF made it much more exciting for me, and the next EF, I did straight water and it was no big deal.

Distraction is everything. Here’s another thing I use: If I’m fasting and it’s - say - 11am, I reason with myself that I’d be post-breakfast at that point ANYWAY. I eat a good amount of food, but even so I’m not eating every single moment, so I just let each fasting moment feel like one of those non-eating moments during a normal day. Another good trick is to read up on the benefits of fasting while you’re fasting. Feels nice to cultivate good thoughts about what you’re doing.

As far as setting an arbitrary goal - personally I need to but I think it depends on your tendencies. How cool if you could keep noon as a hard goal and just watch it get easier over time until one day you realize that you’re ready for the next level of challenge and you want to nudge that to 12:30 or 1:00.

There are a lot of encouraging stories about fasting really helping with any loose skin, and I think you can see improvements over time after you get to your goal size. Skin brushing probably helps.

Congrats to starting an IF practice! Cheering you on :grin:


(Aimee Moisa) #117

Thanks @Madeleine and @bej10, I appreciate the encouragement!!! :slight_smile:


(KCKO, KCFO) #118

Ok, now I can’t get this out of my head. Look what you have done, GIRL!!!


(Aimee Moisa) #119

drip drip drip

It’s breaktime and I will NOT eat.


(Aimee Moisa) #120

I have a cup of bullion broth sitting on my desk next to me in case I get lonely.