Introducing intermittent fasting

[StuntNun]

This thread is for Bootcampers that are interested in introducing intermittent fasting. There are a myriad of health benefits from fasting and it is particularly useful for anyone who is likely to be insulin resistant (diabetes, prediabetes, PCOS). It can also be useful for reducing overall calorie intake if you are hoping to lose weight more quickly, you are in an extended stall, or are close to your goal weight and weight loss has slowed.

If you're like me and you've never skipped a meal in your life then fasting may sound daunting but it really isn't difficult. It only takes a matter of days to get used to the feeling of hunger rising and then passing again. If you already miss meals or find yourself not feeling hungry at breakfast time then it will be even easier to introduce intermittent fasting, you're just formalising something that is already happening.

You should wait until you are at least two weeks into Bootcamp to start fasting and some people may need to wait for longer. Once you are fully adapted to burning fat your hunger levels rise more slowly and you have access to your fat reserves to get you through a longer fasting period without much hunger.

The method that combines best with low carb is intermittent fasting 16:8 where you have a minimum of three 16-hour fasts per week. This is usually by missing breakfast so if you have finish dinner at 7 p.m. then you don't eat again until at least 11 a.m. the next day. You can also miss dinner and fast from lunch to breakfast instead but most people find that less convenient; it depends on your lifestyle.

The easiest way to introduce fasting is to give it a try. Make a note of what time you finish eating and see when you get hungry the next day. If you're naturally getting hungry after 12 hours then aim for 12.5 or 13 hours for your first fast and build up to 16 hours gradually. It's fine to have a cup of tea or coffee (with milk not cream) during your fast period. At your usual breakfast time you will probably feel hungry. Have a hot drink and/or a big glass of water and usually the hunger will subside and then rise again later in the day. You don't need to fast every day to get the health benefits so if you're particularly hungry one day then just have breakfast and aim to fast the next day instead.

I definitely feel like my satiety signal doesn't work. I had what seemed like an adequate dinner but was still hungry for about an hour afterwards. I'm rather like this. Almost feel more hungry after I've eaten than before. It does usually wear off about an hour though and I realise I had plenty. I suppose this is part of why it's always been so easy for me to overeat.

I got the Paul McKenna book/cd several years ago and whilst I didn't stick with it and only lost a modest amount of weight, which I put back on, it did help me in several ways. Firstly, the importance of portion control. But, most importantly, to recognise hunger and thirst signals. He gives a scale of 1-10, where 1 is stuffed to unpleasant fullness and 10 is ravenously hungry. He advises to eat when you get to a 7-8, as if you wait any longer you are likely yo eat more and the wrong things. He also advises to only eat to about a 3 and not until you are stuffed to the gills. I can use this technique quite well now, when i want to. My problem is that i am very good at ignoring the signals. IF has helped me get back on track with this and also just reduces my hunger.

I've posted on the other thread that I am struggling today because of boredom. But I did manage to do my 16 hour fast. i was clock watching, though, which i don't usually do and had a creamy coffee as soon as the 16 hours were up.. I suspect i'll be having an early lunch as well. I'll see how I feel this evening before I decide whether to fast again tonight/ tomorrow morning. Might treat myself to an evening snack of raspberries and clotted cream if I am still craving.

May I ask you IFers ... Are you just not that hungry when you wake up so with a few mugs of tea/guzzling water you genuinely don't want to eat? Or are you hungry but you ignore it/push through for the sake of fasting?

On Tuesday I wasn't feeling that hungry so I thought I would see how long I could last. Had tea, water. At around 9 my stomach started rumbling so loudly it disrupted a team meeting I was holding! I had to get food. Most mornings I wake up ravenous to the point of feeling sick, a cup of tea does help but I can't go much beyond 8. I usually have my evening meal some time between 8 and 10 so it is hardly any time fasting really

Am I being a weakling? Do you al just suck it up and power through the hunger?

Are you just not that hungry when you wake up so with a few mugs of tea/guzzling water you genuinely don't want to eat? Or are you hungry but you ignore it/push through for the sake of fasting?

I get hungry at my usual breakfast time but after a big mug of tea with almond milk and a pint of water (sometimes some bone broth) the hunger subsides after about ten minutes.

At around 9 my stomach started rumbling so loudly it disrupted a team meeting I was holding!

Your stomach rumbling indicates that it is empty but doesn't necessarily mean you are hungry.

Most mornings I wake up ravenous to the point of feeling sick, a cup of tea does help but I can't go much beyond 8.

How long have you been eating low carb for? If you're waking up that hungry it suggests that your food isn't ideal. Are you restricting portion size and do you eat plenty of fat? You should be getting more than 60% of your calories from fat. It could also be a sign that you're eating too many carbs.

Do you all just suck it up and power through the hunger?

No. There is a learning curve to introducing fasting but it involves learning that you can go without a meal (which only takes a few days) and getting more closely in touch with your hunger levels so you can distinguish a hunger pang from a genuine need to eat.

I generally recommend 16:8 to people that are already feeling that they don't want/need breakfast. If you're that hungry in the morning then it probably isn't the right time to introduce IF. I would be interested to see your food listed out because it really doesn't sound like you're getting the full appetite-suppressing effect of this way of eating.

OldBooks, I used to at A LOT in the morning. Tea and toast in bed when DH got up at 630, my proper breakfast at about 830-900 and then I'd be looking for elevenses. I still get some feelings of hunger at these times, but they pass very quickly. If they don't, or if I'm feeling a bit worn out for another reason, I may just decide to eat, but to be honest, that's rare. For me, the calorie reduction in IF is simply a useful side benefit - the real benefit is that it's made me feel ok with feeling a bit hungry, and realising nothing bad will happen. That the sensation will naturally ebb and wane, rather than building to a crescendo where I couldn't cope, which was always my fear before - and not an unjustified one, as my hunger would sometimes make me feel so weak and ill that I could barely function. I just don't get the kind of hunger any more - but I do eat two substantial meals in my eating window, with a lot of fat and veggies. Hunger has become something I notice in passing 'oh, I'm feeling a bit peckish', rather than it insistently bellowing in my ear. What I noticed in the first two weeks of bootcamp was that by the end, I was only eating breakfast because I was meant to - it was getting smaller and smaller, and I was less and less interested in it, so once we went into BC lite, it was easy for me just to let it slip away.

Interestingly, the other day I ended up accidentally not getting lunch either - just a perfect storm of unexpected meetings, catered lunches that quite literally had no acceptable food etc. I wasn't super happy or comfortable, but I was ok. Didn't faint or getting sweaty or unable to think - just got a bit more hungry that I liked. But even then, it ebbed and flowed a bit, and the thing that actually bothered me most was knowing that I had probably developed ketone breath. Mid afternoon cream teas got delivered, and I had some raspberries and clotted cream. And that was enough to keep me going till dinner - I wasn't face first in the scones and jam, wondering if I could get a second one before someone helpfully cleared the plates

So, to summarise ;). I don't think it's meant to be a struggle.

Thanks Stunt. I am interested in fasting for my PCOS management. I did manage 5:2 a few years ago, but that was pre-DC and I wasn't constantly exhausted.

Yesterday I had:
8 am FF yog with cream and flax
10 am almond milk hot choc (in meeting)
2pm 2 hb eggs, spinach and a small tomato with mayo, gem lettuce leaves spread with pate
4.30pm cream
6.30pm more lettuce+pate
9.30pm cauliflower and broccoli covered in coconut oil and roasted, sprinkled in gran padano cheese

I have been trying to reduce dairy but with little success, I felt rubbish, I suspect I am not getting the fat elsewhere so need to plan better. I am not sure if I have too little or too many veg! I am getting better at listening to my body and checking for hunger but have work to do.

Cherries thank you for sharing your story

Hi Oldbooks, I am bursting to answer your questions with my own experience but realise that i need to gather my thoughts a bit to be in away way useful and not just a rambling stream of consciousness (Usual style - The Ed.). I welcome the idea to get this straight in my own mind. My recent experience, since starting LCHF is so different compared to, well, all the rest of my life that I haven't really processed it yet. Shall draft myself an email and post an abstract.

Then I got chatting to the people at the next table, shall have a go next chance I get. KOKO..

I did manage 5:2 a few years ago, but that was pre-DC and I wasn't constantly exhausted.
Being constantly exhausted will raise your cortisol levels and therefore your insulin levels leading to higher hunger levels. I know it's pretty useless advice to tell you to get more sleep (I have four DCs myself and they're shit at sleeping) but do try to make sleep / relaxation a priority. So no staying up watching movies when you could have an early night. No screens in the bedroom. Etc.

Yesterday I had:
8 am FF yog with cream and flax
Do you need the flax? A lot of people use it short-term for constipation but you shouldn't need it in the long run.

10 am almond milk hot choc (in meeting)
Is this just cocoa powder and almond milk, or anything else? I assume it's unsweetened almond milk.

2pm 2 hb eggs, spinach and a small tomato with mayo, gem lettuce leaves spread with pate
It's difficult to tell without seeing a picture but this could be too little fat. An oily dressing would be better than mayo here. If you're eating two eggs you probably don't need the pate as well? If you do need a bigger quantity of food then a carb-free source such as meat would be better than pate.

4.30pm cream
Cream isn't a good snack. I understand that it's tempting but it isn't really a good on it's own. Plus if dairy is a problem for you then this will send your insulin levels up. If you cook a couple of extra boiled eggs then you could have one as a snack.

6.30pm more lettuce+pate
This is okay as a snack.

9.30pm cauliflower and broccoli covered in coconut oil and roasted, sprinkled in gran padano cheese
A good low carb meal.

I have been trying to reduce dairy but with little success, I felt rubbish, I suspect I am not getting the fat elsewhere so need to plan better.
There's no need to cut dairy unless you think it's a problem for you.

I am not sure if I have too little or too many veg!
I count five portions of veg which seems about right.

I am getting better at listening to my body and checking for hunger but have work to do.
It looks like you're eating too often:

Breakfast
Snack
Lunch
Snack
Snack
Dinner

To put that in perspective a lot of us in this group are only eating two meals a day with no snacks. As Cherries said earlier she had a day with only one meal and, while it wasn't great, she managed to get by. To me that suggests that your insulin levels are the problem and you're still in that cycle of your blood glucose dropping a couple of hours after you've eaten making you feel hungry again. Here are some tips:

1. Eat enough at each meal. If you want four eggs for breakfast then have them.

1. Make sure you're eating low carb high fat. If you want to pour olive oil or melted butter over your food then do.

1. Foods like mayo, pate and cream are high fat but the carbs in them will add up over the day. I'm not saying don't eat them, just don't use them as your main sources of fat.

1. When you feel the need to snack then have a zero or low calorie caffeinated drink such as tea or coffee with almond milk or green tea. Caffeine helps suppress appetite. Have a big drink of water - around 500ml. Wait ten minutes. If you're still hungry then have a low carb snack: olives, hb egg, pork scratchings, Peperami, Babybel, lettuce with pate... but not cream!

Initially we're going to aim to get you from six meals and snacks a day to three meals a day. Don't worry about whether you're eating too much; it's your insulin levels that we're trying to get under control, not your calorie intake.

The next step will be to introduce intermittent fasting so I want you to start making a note of the length of your overnight fast for the next few days. If you're routinely fasting for 10 hours overnight then the first goal will be 11 hours. You can then increase that gradually.

14 hours is the "magic" number where the health benefits start to accrue, you don't have to make it to 16 hours every time. I did a 15-hour fast last night then I felt hungry so I had breakfast (two hb eggs mashed with butter). Before I started 16:8 I would have had a bowl of ff yogurt with strawberries plus four eggs scrambled in butter with some pancetta cubes thrown in. Now I feel satisfied with less than half the amount of food and the only change I've made is to introduce fasting, I haven't changed the type of food that I eat at all.

Stunt thank you so much for going over all of that. I feel like crying and like a massive failure, which I suspect is hormones (and they might be adding to the sense of exhaustion and extra hunger this week).

Looking at it very rationally, snack 1 was because I had a meeting in a cafe and I knew I could get almond milk hot chocolate and it felt like I could still have something "naughty".

Snack 2, the afternoon cream, was just as I was leaving the office. I get the panic that I am going to have a dizzy spell while driving home so it has become habit to eat something before I leave work.

Snack 3, got home around 6.30 and did feel hungry, but had to get DC into bed and as DD1 is a mare at the moment I knew I couldn't cook and eat till later. So again it was the fear of being hungry and getting cranky, tired, irritable with the girls. The night before I didn't have a snack and was so hungry by the time I got in but had to deal with DC straight away, couldn't grab anything, and by the time I ate at 9.30 I felt awful, waves of nausea and had to go to bed early.

So I suppose the snacking is a) fear of the crash/hangry/ ill feelings of being hungry and b) still clinging to emotional eating or the feeling of needing a treat.

A I expect will stop when I have better meals with more oil or butter. B I am working on to greater and lesser degrees of success.

Ps these are excuses for eating, excuses for not being more organised, excuses for not making sure this woe works for me. I know it is up to me to fix this if I want to see any benefits. I can't keep whining that I have DC and a busy job and a commute and study etc etc. There's a point where you have to suck it up and crack on

I really hate myself right now. Need to shake it off before I start thinking fuck it where is the cake?

OldBooks no-one gets it right first time, and everyone falls off the wagon from time to time whether from family stresses, the excuse of being on holiday, wanting a treat, anything. In the run up to one January Bootcamp I had been consistently low carb with just a planned day off on Christmas Day. But then everyone on the pre-Bootcamp thread was talking about finishing the Christmas chocolates etc. and I ended up joining in. Totally stupid and unnecessary but I gave myself permission to cheat and ended up starting Bootcamp a few pounds heavier than I could have. In some ways this is an easy way of eating: the food is good and filling and you don't need to feel hungry. But our society is really poorly geared up for low carb at the moment. The number of times I've been in a shop or cafe and there was literally nothing I could eat. It's getting better now but it does make it much harder to establish this as your permanent way of eating. If we lived in a world where you could go into a cafe and order pork belly with buttered cabbage, or where all coffee shops had double cream and sold nuts and pork scratchings, or you could go through a drive-through and get a bunless burger... going low carb would be no problem. But unfortunately that's not the case. We're like alcoholics living in a world where alcohol is available for breakfast, lunch and dinner and it isn't easy to stay sober/low carb.

You're only a failure if you give up before you've tried. KOKO and you will get there. We're here to support you.

Aw, OldBooks :(. I completely empathise with the fear of getting ill with hunger. I don't know if it's a possible solution for you, but in the first couple of weeks I tried to reassure myself that I could eat if I needed to, but didn't have to eat pre-emptively. So I had a tiny cool bag that went everywhere with me with babybels, chorizo chips, olives, a hard boiled egg, some sliced cucumber and a couple of cooked bacon strips. I did have to throw out a lot of food that I didn't need, which I hate doing, but I found it very reassuring to know there was food right beside me. So every time I thought I might get hungry, I'd have a drink, wait 15 minutes, and if I was still hungry, then I'd eat something from the bag. Otherwise Id have carried on eating 'in case' I got hungry.

I completely understand that fear of hunger and the gnawing pain that would leave me doubled over with agony while DH told me off for being a drama queen because I couldn't wait five more minutes for something to eat. I actually joined Bootcamp in the first place because I was addicted to sugar. I was buying a chocolate fudge cake and eating it all myself in three days, in addition to my normal meals. I didn't want to but I was so hungry and it had to be sugar. Now I know I was massively insulin-resistant and my blood glucose levels were suddenly dropping 1-2 hours after eating, leaving me shaking with hunger.

If you feel the need to eat preventatively then fill up at meal times and try to avoid snacking unless it's essential, e.g. if you're going to have a big gap between lunch and dinner. And, as Cherries says, keep food available for emergencies. When I first went low carb I kept a pack of Peperamis in the car. I had to up it to two packs because my kids kept eating them!

Thanks Stunt and ilove, I am teary eyed at your support. Must be hormones as I am really suffering with the mood swings today! Have actually done very well today in terms of not snacking, lots of butter with both breakfast and lunch just now. So it is a question of making myself get organised for work days and come up with good, filling oil heavy meals for my lunch box. I will track my normal fast over the next few days as suggested Stunt and take it from there.

I heard the 16:8 can cause hormonal imbalances?

It can contribute to an early menopause?

Has anyone else heard this?

I did do the 16:8 successfully last year daily for 4 weeks no break last year. Maybe I should have given it a break?

True unfortunately there just isn't the research to prove or disprove that idea. Virtually all the research on fasting uses alternate day fasting and a lot of it uses animals in order to get results in a meaningful timeframe. If you're worried that it is affecting your hormone levels then you could use a 14:10 pattern rather than 16:8.

Thanks stunt it's a tough call.

Low carbs works so well as did fasting.

14:10 I think I do that anyway. I prob stop eating at 8pm and start at 10. But I'll get a bit stricter now.

Morning! So my overnight fast was 9.30-6.30 so 9 hours. Now up and sipping a pint of Marigold. Will see how long I can go till feel the need to eat.

Hi. Just caught up. Last couple of days unexpectedly hectic. Thursday I had a very long fast because I was so busy I forgot to eat and then ate very lightly because I was so busy but lost track of the times of my meals so not sure if I fasted yesterday as again I lost track of the time yesterday when I ate three meals, two very small and one late (for me).

I will need to wait till one to fast today.

"Oldbooks* my experiences has been much the same as the others. I have been low carbing for over a year now though. When i first started I needed to snack, and always a coffee with cream to get me through the morning. After a while the creamy coffee/ snacks just got forgotten. I think this must be harder when meals are time driven. During the day I can eat, drink more or less when I fancy it this helps with being hunger driven rather that clock/ anxiety about getting hungry driven. Anyway I'm rambling, sorry. What I'm trying to say is my experience fits with* Stunts advice. Eat well with lots of fat at meals (I do try to vary my fat sources, makes no sure I'm doing olive oil and butter as well as dairy) and really think about whether I'm hungry need that snack or not. Try a tea/ coffee/water, wait and if still hungry eat. Also I'm not a big coffee drink but did find when I dropped the cream from my occasional coffee it worked as well at suppressing my hunger as it did with the cream. Dropped snacks befor fasting. Sorry about bold fail.

I had a good fast - 17 hours including a short bike ride and the 30-Day Shred in the fasted state. Breakfast was two boiled eggs with mayo due to being in a rush and lunch was a bunless McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese plus an iced coffee with pouring cream from Costa while out shopping with DS2, DS3 and DS4. I have no idea what dinner will be. We have "date night" every Saturday where DH and I cook a special meal for each other and it's DH's turn tonight let's hope it won't be carby.

Thanks for sharing your experience flummoxed. It is really helpful to hear especially as so many of us seem to come from a similar starting point.

Today I held out till 8.30 before eating breakfast, so 11 hours. Not great but somewhere to start. However I have not snacked today!!! Helped by being out all morning at a kid's party and then falling into bed with a sick headache this afternoon the two may be related. I am peckish now but hardly ravenous. This is good

I'm home after a lovely holiday and subject to such strong 'situational' cravings, for coffee and chocolate. I know I don't really want them, its just coz I 'always' hame them as treats but the urge is upon me tonite. Shall ignore because giving into to these cravings will just feed them and make them grown even stronger the next time they turn up.

Ate at 10am, then 7pm so a twelve hour window today given the time change. Shall have lots of water tomorrow and, unless I wake up really hungry, plan my next meal at lunchtime tomorrow, which would be seventeen hours.

I also broke my fast at lunch time with a bunless burger. Not McDonald's though and didn't have any cheese

Can I jump on board please ladies? 😄 I need to lose some serious pounds!