How to slightly improve my imperfect fasting

[OneDayIWillLearn]

Hi - looking for advice! Basically what ways have you done IF that are kind of flexible or imperfect but have worked for you and managed to lead to slow but sustainable weight loss???

As background, I have been doing a very loose form of IF for about three years now- on and off but I’ve kept coming back to a similar pattern. I basically stop eating after 9.30pm at night (sometimes earlier) and then don’t eat breakfast and have lunch at 12/1pm ish. But I do have a tea with oat milk at breakfast and a large coffee with oat milk during the morning. I eat normally otherwise, but don’t go mad.

i find if I do this 3 or 4 days a week my weight will stay stable, and if I do it 5 or 6 days a week I will lose slightly, but I generally have the weekends off and will be more relaxed on holidays etc. But I’ve actually managed to maintain my weight for a whole year following this pattern which is a massive achievement for me as a serial yo-yo dieter of more than twenty years!!

however where my weight is sitting is around the 13 stone mark, which is on the borderline of overweight and obese for my height. I’d really like to settle at a lower weight though I don’t mind weight loss being slow.

my dilemma is how to go about it….what I know from past experience is that anything that is too strict or extreme I just won’t stick with!! So I would ideally just tweak what I’m doing a bit. Which is why I’m looking for ideas.
I’m thinking things like…..

• would trying to make my fasted hours ‘clean’ make them much more effective? I really enjoy my morning tea and coffee and am not a fan of black - I feel like they help make me feel full. But is this just a mental block and would cutting them out make a big difference?
• should I try to extend the fast window? I consistently manage 14-15 hours but would pushing for the extra to get to 16 make a difference?
• Should I try to do occasional long fasts (like 24 hours)??

but I worry with all of that I will lose the ‘liveability’ factor which has kept me with IF and that if I get too restrictive it will just be another form of ‘diet’ that I start to rebel against and reject……

Yes to clean fasting and yes to longer fasts - they go hand in hand because you’re spiking your insulin with the oat milk and therefore getting hungry earlier than you would drinking something without it. Do you find yourself “white knuckling” the last few hours of your fast, as Gin Stephens puts it?

Consider that part of fasting is moving away from using food or creamy/milky drinks as a way of soothing yourself, so by having two of those drinks you are not really giving yourself the chance to deal with this issue.

Also, why do you close at 9.30? It seems late. Do you have dinner late? I had the greatest weight loss when I had a late lunch (mid-afternoon when schedule allowed) and an early dinner. It seemed weird to have two largeish meals within a few hours of each other but I found it very easy and there was no time to snack. A longer window for me means snacking always creeps back in.

If you are trying to lose weight you could try actual 5:2 where you eat 800 calories two days a week (though technically up to 1000 as most veg are "free") and just be careful on other days- Nutracheck gives me up to 2100 calories on non-fast days (my maintenance calories). I don't tend to eat them all except on days when I have been very active.

On my 800 calorie days I eat two meals, one at 11am and one between 5-6pm. Other than that I don't really do IF, but never eat before 8am and only rarely after 7pm, so I naturally do about 14:10 most days anyway and that in itself does not help me lose weight, there has to be some kind of calorie restriction. Eating a very variable calorie intake for me along with eating less overall seems to be the key to steady weight loss.

The good thing with 5:2 is that even with a busy life I can usually find two days I can eat lower calories, and you can change the days. This week my "2" days are Monday and today. Normally I do Monday and Thursday but I have an event on Thursday and want to eat nice food there.

I am slightly lighter than you and losing 1lb a week. Also I don't find having a small amount of milk "spikes insulin" or makes me more hungry - quite the opposite. Everyone is different.

I'm an imperfect faster.
Life would be too sad without a splash of oat milk in my morning tea and coffee.

@AtomicBlondeRose I’m usually ok to be honest, I generally am busy at work all morning (and busy getting kids out of the house for school first thing!). But I could give it a try switching to no milk and see if it made a difference.

We generally eat as a family around 6.30-7.00 (can’t be earlier because of work and after school activities) and then have a yoghurt and herbal tea after they are in bed which is why it is often 9.30 though sometimes more like 8.30. Occasionally I have to eat dinner late because of work but usually not more than once or twice a week. I could make sure I just had my pudding straight away after dinner though and then just have the herbal tea later (though it might not meet Gin Steven’s strict definition - so maybe I should try hot water!)

Ditch the yoghurt snack before bed and start your fast at actual dinner time. It seems like an easy way to lengthen your fasting time and also prevents you going straight to bed with food sat in your stomach (there's plenty of evidence that moving around after you eat reduces the insulin spike, so eating just before bed is the worst option food wise if you want to maximise the benefits of fasting).

I wouldn't stress about a bit of milk in your tea. That would be the last thing I'd look to change as it wouldn't make a particularly big impact on its own. Your first and biggest step is to lengthen your food fasting window, so you consume less meals in a shorter amount of time.

Try missing your evening yoghurt. You can start fasting at 7:30 and your herbal tea at 9:30pm. Then have your coffee with milk to break your fast earlier the next day?

Cross post!

I cannot manage without having a tea with soya milk when I first get up and a mid morning coffee with oat milk.
Otherwise I find fasting super easy and generally stop eating at 6ish and don't eat again until 1 the next day.

But I'm guessing I'm still doing it wrong?

Clean fasting is really important & made a huge difference for me, so I’d ditch the oat milk. People convince themselves it won’t make much difference, but it really does.

No it's not. And using words like 'clean' are very damaging. It is full of value judgement, and infers there is a 'dirty' way, with all the associated negative assumptions. It isn't healthy to talk about food that way.

OP, I have milk in my tea and have fasted for years. It really isn't an issue

I stop at 6.30 and start eating again at 12 the following day. I have coffee with cows milk in the morning. I’m still losing weight.

I think milk drinks impacts the non weight benefits of fasting, but you can still lose weight.

Zoe did a good podcast recently on the results of their IF study

You don’t understand the science behind fasting then. OP, clean fasting made a big difference for me, so it’s worth a try. You’re not actually ‘fasting’ your body if you’re having plant milk.

I think 9:30 is too late. My eating window is 11am to 7pm. I’d rather the 7pm was more like 6pm, though, because I go to bed quite early. In the morning I drink water or sometimes green tea with no milk.

@EdgarsTale actually, I do. But the OP simply wants to lose weight, which she will do even with milk in her tea. And I suspect doing so will make it easier for her to take longer breaks between actual meals/snacks (which plenty of experts and doctors in this field will say is more important). That is me being pragmatic and helpful. It isn't helpful to tell people struggling with their weight that they have to eat 'clean'. The OP doesn't need to be a purist to get the results she wants

Whenever I e lost weight on IF I've always had a tiny splash of milk in my morning espresso, made no difference. I'm not losing any weight now as I'm not sticking to the times.. serves me right.

@ohthejoys21 what timings did you do when you were losing?

@EdgarsTale i did try doing to ‘clean’ yesterday, had a cup of hot water rather than tea to start and then a cup of black coffee mid morning. It was ok actually. So I might try that again and see if I get used to it….

OneDayWillLearn

ohthejoys21
Whenever I e lost weight on IF I've always had a tiny splash of milk in my morning espresso, made no difference. I'm not losing any weight now as I'm not sticking to the times.. serves me right."

"ohthejoys21 what timings did you do when you were losing?"

I ate from 3-7pm. I'm in my 50's though and that's what it takes for me to lose it.

I’m open to the idea of trying to fast without the milk, especially if it works out that I don’t find it hard and it makes a difference, but I am a bit concerned too about where the tipping point will be that starts making this feel like a diet. I was listening to Gin Steven’s book on audiobook this week and I could already feel myself get some of my ‘diet’ buttons pressed (and starting finding myself want to eat more in anticipation of the ‘diet’ I was about to start!). I really can’t overstate how important to me it is that I have managed to have a year on the very loose IF I’ve done where I haven’t gained weight and haven’t been on a diet and therefore haven’t been obsessed by food - it’s such a relief. That said I’ve come on here wanting to tweak it so I can lose a bit of weight so I do realise I’ll need to adjust something to make that happen. It’s interesting hearing different ways that people have made it work for them and it’s definitely given me some ideas of what to experiment with.

I might be a bit muddled but I’m nearly sure that if you had cream in your coffee, it wouldn’t affect your fast as much as oat milk because it’s fat, rather than carbs.

I upped my water intake by making it a rule that I always drink water before any other drink. At first it was just a mouthful, but overtime it’s a couple of glasses each time. Now I start the day with water, out in the garden to get sunlight on my face for circadian rhythm (sleep is very important for weight management)

Watch your light levels in the evening too - it really helps to sync your fasting. Ditch the screens if possible, use softer light in bedrooms and don’t stand under a billion watt bathroom light brushing your teeth last thing.

It’s better to avoid tea/coffee for an hour after waking to give the adenosine a chance to clear. Otherwise it gets trapped by the caffeine and you keep needing another cup of coffee after the last one wears off.

Don’t worry about being perfect in any of these things - make the easiest change and stick to it for a while before making another.

Try switching out the oat milk (high carbs) to almond milk (very low carbs). It just colours the drink without a taste. You don't get the creamy taste though.