Twenty hour fast, four hour feed


(Debbie Fojtik) #1

I’m interested to know if anyone has any tips for doing a twenty hour fast with four house of eating time. I started this today and have met my macro goals and my calorie goals (I know, I know,), and I’m looking to see how other have made it through themail 20 hours without eating. Thank y’all.


(Running from stupidity) #2

Very useful thread here.


(Debbie Fojtik) #3

Thank you!


(the cheater) #4

This is a pretty common thing for me. I usually don’t eat breakfast before work or lunch at work, then I eat a pretty good-sized meal when I get home, and that’s it. So my eating window is usually about 1630-2000, then I don’t eat again until the same time next day. It’s not strict, and I’m not TRYING to fast for 20 hours, it just works out that way sometimes and seems to work (ie, no energy crashes, insulin spikes/crashes, etc.). In other words, it can be done and, for me at least, no additional effort is needed. Honestly, it just kinda happened out of laziness to not prepare food for work and not wanting to spend money at work during the day lol!


(Laurie) #5

I’ve been doing 20/4 for the past 6 or 7 weeks. My eating window is approximately 6 pm to 10 pm. I’m a night person, and I’ve never been a breakfast person, so this works for me.

It’s actually much easier/simpler this way, because I don’t have to think about eating at all different times of day (when/where will I eat lunch, etc.). It did take a while to get used to at first; I’d feel “hungry” in the afternoon or at midnight, but I think this was mostly just habit. Now I don’t feel hungry, and I almost have to force myself to eat enough (I aim for 80 grams of protein, less than 20 grams of carbs, and let the fat take care of itself).

As for making it though the 20 hours, I admit that at first it was hard sometimes. Sometimes I’d just sit there and think about food for 2 or 3 hours. But I got over it. It doesn’t happen any more. You can do it! Go do something else to distract yourself if necessary.

Disclaimer: I’ve been doing 44-hour fasts for a couple of weeks. I exercise in the afternoon, and I was feeling a bit weak during my workouts on the second day. So on those days I’m going to eat something at around noon. I’m not trying to confuse you with this info; just being honest.


(Debbie Fojtik) #6

I usually don’t eat breakfast, never have. I prefer not to eat after 7 pm so I don’t get hear burn when I go to bed. It’s been nearly 4 hours since I last ate and I still feel full. Granted I’m drinking water. I do like to cook, but sometimes I just get so busy.


(Debbie Fojtik) #7

I tend to prefer to eat from 10:30am to 2:30pm. I hit the hay around 9pm and am up by 5am. I will give it a try for at least two weeks and see what happens


(Frank) #8

IF is like a muscle. It gets stronger and easier the more you do it. I probably have a 20:4 pattern 2-3 times per week. However, it’s not a rule or set days for me. If it’s convenient and I’m not hungry I won’t eat. If I am I do.


(Katie the Quiche Scoffing Stick Ninja ) #9

I use to do 23 hour fasts with a 1 hour refeed time for about 8 weeks, but my goals are different now.
Fasting is so much easier when you are adapted.
Just listen to your body, if you get hungry, eat!

Get that out of your head, when you become adapted, you certainly don’t need to worry about meeting ‘calorie goals’ :slight_smile:


(Robert C) #10

One thing that got me into trouble doing something similar is abusing the feeding window.

I started to think of it as a keto-eat-to-satiety window and could end up eating way too much - popping open a jar of cashews a few times in that window can really add up for example (the salt kept me coming back, satiety wouldn’t kick in soon enough because I had not eaten for so long).

What I found worked is to have 4 or 5 or 6 hour feeding “windows” actually become only 2 full meals that many hours apart. Skipping the snacking in between was not necessarily to avoid raising insulin - it was more about keeping overall food intake reasonable.

Another “avoid over eating” thing I did with these is to put most/all of my vegetables along with the more bland foods in my first meal (3 fried eggs and a large sautéed spinach for example) and then my much more tasty foods in my second meal (cajun spiced ribeye covered in melted blue cheese, bacon wrapped spicy chicken thighs, etc.).