Intermittent fasting

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I finished my 64 hour fast today. It went quite easy, although this morning I felt really tired while working out. Probably pretty normal after 60 hours of fasting.

I like this idea of not eating for 2 full days every week. I'll see if I can keep doing this every week.
 
I've settled on the 20/4 hour model the last couple of months, eat between 11.30am and 3.30pm each day, I actually feel hungrier at night time, don't feel hungry at all in the mornings.
 
Kompany said:
I finished my 64 hour fast today. It went quite easy, although this morning I felt really tired while working out. Probably pretty normal after 60 hours of fasting.

I like this idea of not eating for 2 full days every week. I'll see if I can keep doing this every week.
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doesn't it feel like you're body is eating itself?
 

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estibador said:
That's why I've never tried it before - I usually only drink coffee for the caffeine.

But decaf does just as good a job of suppressing appetite as regular. It's some protein in it called PYY apparently.
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I don't know why, but coffee on an empty stomach has always promoted digestion for me
 
2006_Eagles said:
doesn't it feel like you're body is eating itself?
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Well, your body is literally eating its own damaged cells, but I don't feel anything really. The only time I notice something is when I work out during the last couple of hours of a long fast. Then I can clearly feel I can't do what I can do normally. But apart from that, physically, all's been good.

I did 64 hours for the 2nd time in 2 weeks now. Going by my own experience, I can't really say if this would work for me or not in the long run (it's been fine so far, but not sure how I'd feel after 10 weeks), but I read that doing this every week may not be ideal. So instead, maybe I'll do 2 40 hour fasts and then one longer fast per month, next to daily 16:8s.
 
I've decided to (try) do a 3 day fast to kick off 2021 in style. Based on 2020 the apocalypse could be right round the corner so I better get used to being hungry.

I haven't done more than a 24 hour fast for a long time. When I was in the best shape of my life I was doing weekly 36 hour fasts, so it's something I want to focus a bit more on again this year.
 
estibador said:
I've decided to (try) do a 3 day fast to kick off 2021 in style. Based on 2020 the apocalypse could be right round the corner so I better get used to being hungry.

I haven't done more than a 24 hour fast for a long time. When I was in the best shape of my life I was doing weekly 36 hour fasts, so it's something I want to focus a bit more on again this year.
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I did a 48-hour fast a couple of days ago and found it to be reasonably easy, although I can imagine in the post-Christmas period I had plenty of stored energy to access.

Want to get in the habit of fasting one day a week and maybe progress from there, do two or even three.

I no longer do IF, but my diet is typically ultra low carb and subsist off a few small meals per day.
 
Well I made it, nothing but water, black coffee and green tea since Thursday night. About to cook up a nice chicken and salad to break the fast.

Down 4.4kg according to the scales, though I did weigh myself initially after I'd been eating and drinking all day. And no doubt about 1.5kg will come straight back on once I replenish the ol' glycogen stores.

More importantly it's a nice little feeling of accomplishment to start the year. From memory I tried this last year too but didn't quite make the distance. No doubt set a bad tone for a horror year!

And I love the way a long fast resets my relationship towards food - the idea of only eating healthy nourishing food is much more appealing post-fast. When I'm in the middle of a phase of regularly eating hyper-palatable junk food (like I was during the holidays) it can be hard to break out of and get back to eating healthy.
 
I've just done the dreaded 'holidays are over, better sort work lunch' meal prep. I'm guessing it will be extra salty from all the tears I sobbed into it. Looking forward to getting back to a structured 16/8 though, much harder sticking to it on holidays whilst home with the family and having to make some kind of food for a three year old every twelve minutes.
 
I did IF last year and got some great results from it (daily 16/8 approach)
- really good mental clarity aside from the 30mins before breaking the fast.
- fat loss of about 1-2kgs by estimate across 2 months. (I'm pretty lean to begin with).
- strength plateaued a bit which was annoying
- appetite really disappeared after a month or so, had to remind myself to make sure I was eating enough

I'm back on IF and putting a lot more effort into making sure I eat enough, so hopefully I don't have the same performance drop I had last time. So far so good
 

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estibador said:
Well I made it, nothing but water, black coffee and green tea since Thursday night. About to cook up a nice chicken and salad to break the fast.

Down 4.4kg according to the scales, though I did weigh myself initially after I'd been eating and drinking all day. And no doubt about 1.5kg will come straight back on once I replenish the ol' glycogen stores.

More importantly it's a nice little feeling of accomplishment to start the year. From memory I tried this last year too but didn't quite make the distance. No doubt set a bad tone for a horror year!

And I love the way a long fast resets my relationship towards food - the idea of only eating healthy nourishing food is much more appealing post-fast. When I'm in the middle of a phase of regularly eating hyper-palatable junk food (like I was during the holidays) it can be hard to break out of and get back to eating healthy.
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I did the same thing to kick off the year, after my atrocious 2020 routine. diving into a pumpkin feta chicken salad to break the fast after 72 hours.

From there i've been trying to stick to at least 16:8.

Does anybody bother using IF'ing apps or the like?
 
Nickos66 said:
I did the same thing to kick off the year, after my atrocious 2020 routine. diving into a pumpkin feta chicken salad to break the fast after 72 hours.

From there i've been trying to stick to at least 16:8.

Does anybody bother using IF'ing apps or the like?
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Amazing how good salad tastes after a long stretch without eating.

I'm planning on fasting on Mondays this year, and seeing what kind of effect that has. I've been pretty hungry the last couple of Mondays, but I've dropped at least a kilo or so, and got to my lowest weight for at least 12 months. My diet week to week has been generally pretty good.

I want to increase that to 2 days a week eventually, but it's a decent starting point.
 
Kompany said:
I finished my 64 hour fast today. It went quite easy, although this morning I felt really tired while working out. Probably pretty normal after 60 hours of fasting.

I like this idea of not eating for 2 full days every week. I'll see if I can keep doing this every week.
Click to expand...

are you leaner?
 
I’ve gone to 20-4 fast. Eating from 5pm-9pm and I am actually finding it easier than fasting until 2pm and having my first meal then.

My hunger is actually less during the day, which I attribute to my internal clock realising it is close lunch time and feeling pangs of hunger then. Then after I have finished eating I will want to eat more.

I’ve had to also make my 5pm meal smaller because eating a big meal makes me feel lethargic. My largest feed will be right after my nightly workout - usually a HIIT session on my exercise bike - which will usually be a big chicken salad, greek yoghurt dressing and some malt vinegar.

Was initially looking to do full day fasts, and might still do this at selective times during the year, but I’ve been stripping a lot of fat using a longer fasting window.

Anecdotally I’d be at my absolute leanest.
 
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I love fasting. I binge a bit on foods that I shouldn't and find 2 days makes me feel clean. Today at lunch I had my first meal, quinoa, parsley, cucumber and capsicum salad. Feeling somewhat cleansed.
 
I've switched to not eating before my morning workout (black coffee with half a sugar only) and have been surprised that there has been no drop in performance. If anything, I'm actually able to perform better in that 45-1 hour mark that used to be where I started to hit the wall.
Started fasting on Wednesdays for most of the day too so may be able to start adding another day as I get used to it.
 
showdownhero said:
I actually feel a lot more vitality and energy off 6 hours of fasted sleep than 8+ hours of regular sleep
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^^^ this ^^^

Over the last few years I have rarely slept through the night. In the last month after diet change and skipped dinners (=longer fasts) it has improved. Wednesday night and last night, the first two 24-hour fasts, I slept like a log for 6 hours and woke up fully refreshed and ready to go. It's strange not having that 2-hour period of woolly drowsing and dreaming/hallucinating before getting up.

It's been 25 hours so far and I'm not in the least bit hungry. Will stretch it out until teatime and have that nice bit of steak and a couple of eggs on a pile of salad with an avo.
 
And I've finally caught up in the thread!

I've been spending some time over the last few days watching youtubes on IF and the processes your body goes through. My own accidental shift towards LC and 2MAD has now become a definite LCHF and OMAD decision. My goals at this stage are weight loss and IR reversal, once the weight drops exercise will be much easier and I can look at migrating to 2MAD tailored to workouts as outlined earlier in this thread.

Some people reckon Sten Ekberg is a quack, to me pretty much everything he says makes total sense. This is a good rundown on the various IF timings and the benefits they have:

 
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