Intermittent Fasting
 

What's your fast routine?

I've done this a few ways, sometimes fasting from 4pm-8am. Right now I mostly do 6pm-9am ish.

My job is crazy though so it's hard to plan food and time to eat. But I feel better when I have a regular long fast time.

About a decade ago go I did a major health reset and intermittent fasting, while not widely used at the time, was very helpful for me.

At my current age (59) I am needing to rebalance other parts of my system and believe this, and possibly some other fasting styles, may be beneficial for me. This last week I’ve been easing into it with a 14/10 routine, it feels good so I will up my game a little bit at a time over the next few weeks. I think I would like to land at about 18/6 but I will play it by ear.

There is a whole lot more research available now particularly surrounding the topic of autophagy since the 2016 Nobel prize and I am interested in playing around with some more self experimentation.

n=1! Feeling up for another healthy adventure. :cheesy:

I just recently heard about IF on a podcast. Does anyone have resources for someone interested in learning more, particularly what kind of routine would be best? Thanks!

Intermittent Fasting
 

I fast anywhere between 12-16 hrs. and sometimes longer. It all depends on how early I start my day and the days events.

I have a family member that shed a considerable amount of weight with Keto and IF.

Is anyone doing Keto with IF? or just IF?

I'm doing keto and a form of IF. Usually, I only have solid food from noon to 5pm—lunch or dinner. In the morning I have decaf with cream followed by celery juice or a protein drink. And I drink a lot of water throughout the day. Then I don't have anything till I have a meal. The only way I can fast like this is with Keto—otherwise, I have cravings from the carbs.

I have to couple keto with counting calories or IF to lose weight. I can't lose on Keto or Low Carb on its own. For now the Keto and my kind of IF is working for me.

And I take no-diet days on holidays (today is holiday in the states so I'll make some grilled cheese sandwiches—thanks to VintageFemme and Mopsie's posts in another thread—then it's back on the diet till Halloween).

I’m trying out the free version of the app “Zero“, basically a countdown timer with history tracking. So far so good. I’m doing 16/8 now.

I’m also one of those people that likes cream in my morning coffee and I had read that for some people heavy cream is OK, and for some people it breaks the fast but the only way to tell is to take glucose measurements. I went ahead and picked up a glucose/ketone tester (Keto-Mojo) and I’ve been having fun playing with it. I have always wondered how different foods affect me since everybody is different, and now I have a toy to play with to find out. With my science background give me something to measure and a way to measure it and I just go down the spreadsheet rabbit hole.

Bonus! I’m one of those people that gets to have cream in their coffee, doesn’t budge the needle. :coffee:

For the last five days I seem to have settled in at 18/6. The fasting portion doesn’t seem to bother me at all, I just make sure I have some thing to do the last couple of hours. The six hour feeding window is just right for two good meals without getting hungry in between. I like the amount of variety that I can get across two full meals.

So far so good.

Hi Gemme-
You’ve been around these parts for long enough to probably recall a decade ago when we were both in the healthy weight loss thread. Intermittent fasting at that time didn’t have the press it enjoys now but that’s when I discovered it for myself as being helpful for losing weight. Since I get hungry about every four hours after I start eating for the day I ended up eating too much, cutting that down to 2 1/2 made it easier for me at the time. Now I’m engaging with it for other reasons (I do have some pounds to takeoff too, and it’s working).

I have bumped my fasting interval from 16 to 18 in order to drop out that other half/small meal because I found that portion to not be adding anything nutritionally, just macros. Since I’ve only been doing this interval for about six days that makes the answer to your question about seven days a week “I don’t know“. So far it feels great and meets some other goals so I will try to continue and just play with it.

As far as meeting my nutritional needs I’m finding it to be pretty simple by simply cutting out anything processed or refined. Variety in vegetables and meats is key for me. Part of my current project is to reset my pallet, I got to a point where my taste buds were really only recognizing sweet and salty so I was ignoring other things that are really good for me. It’s amazing to me how much that has changed in just a couple of weeks, I’m now incorporating more sour and bitter and really enjoying it while tapering down on sweet things with no feeling of sacrifice.

When it comes to supplementing that is something I’ve done my entire life though mostly just vitamins. This is the bigger part of my current health project. I’m really working on improving my bacterial environment and due to a recent diagnosis of osteopenia I am also really honing in on minerals. My goal is to do most of this through the foods that I eat but I acknowledge that things like depletion of soil and crop hybridizing have made it such that our food can’t really deliver all that we need so yes I am doing some supplementing.

TLDR: No, I never have a short answer.

I have now been doing this interval, 18 to 19 hours, for a month and it’s becoming routine. I’m more than willing to be flexible if there’s an issue with my schedule, but other than that it seems like a reasonable way to just keep doing things. I feel good and my energy levels are stable.