OCT 2021 IF/EF Chat Thread (All Welcome)


(Jane) #81

Started a 66-hr fast last night after an early dinner at 5:00 pm, so 16 hours in already.

Wasn’t feeling well yesterday evening… sore throat, headache, etc so wasn’t sure if fasting would help or if it would make fasting harder and I might end up breaking it (no big deal if I do). But I feel better this morning - not great, but better so going to KCFO.


(Jane) #82

Broke my own fasting rule of “no cooking while fasting”, but it was A) riced cauliflower and B) I don’t normally eat before noon anyway and just started last night so I don’t really count as fasting until lunchtime is passed… but I count all the hours of course!


(KCKO, KCFO) #83

@Janie I can do some cooking early on in a fast, but after about the 20th hr. I will fail. I feel sorry for anyone who cooks for a family and tries to do any kind of extended fasting.

I did the monthly fast and had very good results. I will be doing OMAD since I did a refeed day yesterday. I would love to keep some of this progress.


#84

Broke another Fast at just under 43 hrs. today at lunch. Only working the rest of the week, and then taking off a couple weeks to do some Hunting, so will probably add some Fasting in there somewhere.


(Jane) #85

Just passed 24 hours with some mild hunger waves but no discomfort. Hubby joined me after lunch and we will both break Thu mid-morning or noon-ish, depending on how things go.

KCFO


(Bob M) #86

It’s good to see people are doing well.

For me, I’m having a harder time. Not sure why, though I think it’s related to exercise and muscle mass. If I exercise by body weight training to failure, I have a really hard time fasting the next day and sometimes two days later. I also have gained a lot of strength in the last 1+ years, though I do not know how that translates to actual muscle mass.

Anyway, I’m likely going to bail on my 36 hour fast this week. Will see what happens next week.


(Jane) #87

40 hours in and hubby coming up on 22 hours.

By starting his fast after lunch on Tue instead of dinner he gets an additional 5 hours of fasting in (41 hrs instead of 36). When I began starting my fasts on Monday after dinner he started skipping dinner on Tues since we weren’t cooking and he’d have to go out to eat by himself. He bowls every Tue so eating lunch by himself before he bowls isn’t an issue.

We are aiming for a 30-60 hour fast every other week this year, unless there is a holiday or other reason we don’t want to fast.

KCFO


(KCKO, KCFO) #88

Someone recently mentioned the app Life for tracking fasting. I decided to check it out and so far, it seems really good. Lots of nice features in addition to the tracking.

I’m doing a 36 hr. fast that started yesterday after dinner. I was going to do just a OMAD, but after checking out Life, it motivated me to do a longer fast.


#89

Yeah, it’s the one that I use, and I posted a screenshot of it 12 days ago on this thread. It’s nice that its simplistic in design and allows you to update the start/stop times if need be. And keeps track of all Fast that are done. … Doesn’t have too many ads overall, which is also nice.


(Jane) #90

I use tha one also - love the cute icons that have studies to back them up. Right now I am past the autophagy one, headed towards the Human Growth Hormone max. I won’t get past that one, but fun to watch the progress.


#91

It seems my body is very much on board with OMAD now. Today was an exception but I had 2 OMAD days (carby ones, I still have problems at relatives despite there was proper food too… but eating only once mitigated the problem. I felt quite good and I had perfect satiation and contentment all the time, I didn’t really get hungry in the last 3 days at all, maybe some tiny something that went away. but I don’t always wait for hunger, to put it lightly. especially on my super relaxed days when I eat whatever, without rules).
So I am hopeful. I couldn’t NOT doing OMAD (I had a dinner OMAD and a lunch OMAD, automatically). Wow. I have chances this way. It’s pretty bad if I need actual efforts. Though I did train myself, that’s some effort just not the huge ones fasters often need to do.

I just continue my OMAD for now and try to be ready for longer fasts if my body is cooperative. Stricter times come very soon (I mean, stricter than usual. I definitely stop whatever I did in the last days, I am home with my own food… Not like we haven’t bought a ton of apples (not literally but pretty much), the house will smell like them soon and I am in the kitchen several hours a day. It’s fine.).

Good luck and congrats, you disciplined people!


(Jane) #92

A little over 48 hours and only have to make it to bedtime then I am “home free”. No set time to break, but probably around 9-10-ish as my hubby gets mental hunger after fasting more than a day. 9:30 am will make 65 hrs for me, which I am happy with - was shooting for anything over 60.

Right now I have the :muscle: icon on my Life app for peak GH :grin:


(Butter Withaspoon) #93

I can relate to this. Now that I have more muscle, fasting longer than a TRE doesn’t feel good. Instead I do some semi fasted hiking where I eat only a little during, then catch up with good protein at the end of that day. Otherwise it seems to make me too hyped up, less able to sleep well. Probably I have a good level of exercise induced ketogenesis on those days.

It’s good to hear of a possibly similar experience


(Jane) #94

Broke just shy of 64 hours, which is almost double what I’ve been able to do since working from home Mar 2020. I did 72-hr fasts when I was travelling if no colleagues to take out to dinner, but previously I felt I could only do 36-40 hr fasts since that was the longest my husband could fast and I can’t cook while fasting and didn’t want him eating so much by himself.

But since bowling started up we found a nice compromise and he eats lunch on Tue on his way to bowl and skips dinner which gives him an additional 5 hours, which is has been ok with the last two times he tried this. He is actually getting more than 37 hours in since he used to get up at 5:30 am on Thu which was exactly 32 hours and eat some charcuterie. He finally decided it was psychological and could wait a few more hours in the morning (like today). He got 45 hours of fasting in this go-round. :muscle:


(KCKO, KCFO) #95

Hit my goal of 36 hrs. but decided I really didn’t feel like eating, just coffee with a dash of cream, so I won’t break my fast til at least afternoon sometime, maybe not til dinner time.

I like to ride a fasting wave if I can. I have had issues over the last few months doing anything over 20 hrs. So happy I am able to go even longer than I had planned.

I like the icons that tell you what phase your are in, even if they are just a generalization. Motivating to see them pop up. I haven’ t used Life long enough to see the human growth icon, maybe the next group fast will get me to that one.

@Janie, I like how you and your DH support each other with the fasts. My DH struggles to keep weight one and will only do up to 14 hrs. between meals, which just normally happens pretty much daily. But he is ok with me not eating, especially just the skip a day ones. The longer ones, he will ask if I plan to eat anytime soon after 48+ hrs.


#96

Maybe not the correct area of the forum to ask, but I am new to the intermittent fasting concept. My question is, does anyone else have difficulty breaking a fast? I just have no appetite and no desire to start eating again? I’m starting to wonder if I am truthfully fasting because I want to or if it is just because I have no appetite in general.

3 1/2 months on keto to this point by the way and loving every minute of it.

Thanks for the help.


#97

Not at all. - Intermittent Fasting or Extended Fasting, both are discussed in the monthly IF/EF threads.

As to your question, honestly for me, most of my Fast are broken when I just decided to eat something. But not from actually being hungry itself. I started this WOE back in early 2018, and hardly ever feel at all hungry anymore. I even mentioned this numerous times over the first couple years and seems that some thought I was saying I missed the SAD WOE. :confused: But that’s not what I meant. Just that I don’t get the ‘man, I’m hungry’ feel anymore. Some others apparently do this too, while others not so much? May be an individual thing? I can’t really say. But a lot of my Fast I usually wish I just continued Fasting as soon as I break though. … I think it may just be more I miss having a nice meal more than anything else. Also, I’m still pretty sure most of my meals overall are mostly based off the "hey, it’s lunchtime, or dinner time. Clock eating, opposed to eating when hungry. Not sure how well that would work for me.


#98

I had some very much not OMAD days but I go back now (today I had a tiny extra meal for some weird reason I don’t fully understand… I ate too early and something in me had plans for another meal? I should always be ready for an OMAD lunch :D).

I usually eat when I have desire or feel the need for refuel. I almost never do EF but IF or EF, it happens that I just don’t want to eat… I can’t just fast for too long, some serious urge to eat will arrive soon enough so I simply wait for that. If I have a negative appetite (desire) but I need to eat, that’s tricky, I don’t force myself, I just wait a little, hunger or weakness tends to raise my appetite to zero and I can eat easily with zero appetite and zero hunger :slight_smile: If it wouldn’t happen, I use soup or some other liquid. I always can drink something with calories when I am very well fasted and feel the need to eat. And after that it’s way easier to eat something solid. Sometimes I don’t want to eat most food in existence, I figure out what are the few available option that my choosy body and mind is willing to accept :smiley: I like to keep some tempting stuff (or ingredients for it) at home, the kind that I can eat any time even if I don’t want or enjoy it. But I can eat it in emergency.
(It’s always a bit surreal as I normally eat with or without hunger and need, I was always good at eating… Long fasts change me, though but I always felt the need to eat again and not too late to cause it problems. If someone simply can starve without feeling it’s wrong, they should be more careful and it may be harder to eat when it’s high time for it. My body is more cooperative than that but it has its little things like strong hunger with a negative appetite so eating is out of question. That’s not fun but always very temporal.)

But I don’t know you. Maybe you can eat just feel that if you don’t desire it, you shouldn’t or can’t…? What if you try various food and drinks? Some people need to eat a light meal first. But maybe it’s just not time to eat yet. I never decide to do a fast with a fixed length, my body will decide when I eat again (unless my mind messes things up with eating too early…).


#99

Thank you for the responses. The one thing that I love about this forum is that there is always someone that knows exactly what I am talking about.

Maybe I will try something small tomorrow to see if it stimulates my appetite. I’ve had so many digestive issues that I will certainly know if it was the wrong apporach. And, I guess that maybe is the key to my issue. I feel so good fasting that I maybe don’t want to deal with the after effects of eating?


#100

This is me as well. Ever since I started Fasting, which was about 7 weeks after switching to this WOE. That’s why I said when I do break, the first thing I usually think is… why didn’t I just keep going? It’s not a bad thing really, you just miss that Fasting feeling. Which may be the empty feeling, or lack of feeling full. Even a small meal can make you feel filled, since you’ve been used to the empty feeling?

That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about Fasting. … But are you saying you also have issues when you break, such as stomach issues? This is a problem for a lot of folks, but it’s usually do to the items one uses to break with, or how much? For me, I don’t usually have any issues whatsoever, until I go over 48 hrs. At which time, I just don’t break with certain foods I find can cause the bathroom visits everyone wants to avoid. (some of the well knowns are Eggs, Nuts, etc.) But it’s different for everyone since some can eat these to break, with no issues. Also eating something small and waiting 30-60 min. is also another way to help slowly bring the digestive system back into play, before eating a full mea. … And since I did a lot of research when I first started, from everything I’ve read, I always try to put at least two days of feasting between fast. (If I do them back to back) That is, two meals, for two days, if I want to get back to Fasting shortly after finishing one.

Then sometimes, I will now step away from Fasting if I find myself wanting to do them too often. Just keeps things mixed up, which I’ve tried to do since starting. I try not to make anything seem like a set schedule, etc. Like keeping your system guessing what you will do next. Because I truly believe the body can and will adjust to any sort of schedule, and can adjust to it, no matter what.