Do people mainly have 2 or 3 ‘substantial’ meals on non-fast days and avoid any kind of snacking? Thanks
This topic contains 7 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by fasting_me 6 years, 11 months ago.
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Hi Martie, I’ve just completed the Ifast12 Australian program and it was fantastic to get a lot of questions answered by the doctors running it. Soooooooo the idea is to get three 12 hour fasts in.
To do this you need to finish eating the night b4 a fast day at around 7.30pm and eat nothing until breakfast , again around 7-7.30am . Then its a mind game as you stick to water, black tea or coffee until around 7.30 pm again to have an evening meal. It’s the 12 hour fast that gets the body moving visceral fat. Even a latte within the calorie range of your fast day but during the 12 hours will defeat the purpose of the fast. Having said that, if you are having one of those fast days that never seems to end, had the latte if its going to help you stay on the diet. We.ve all had those fast days, Hope this helps
The following is another suggestion from doctors on the fast site to get 2 long fasts in doing 36 hrs.
“A fasting day has to consist of a prolonged period of no eating throughout the day. I often recommend to my patients that they have a delayed breakfast/brunch at about 10.30 or 11am and then to have dinner at around 6pm. This prolonged fasting period will allow for your body to decrease the size of the stomach (thus reducing your appetite over time) and also use up your glucose in your body. Using up the glucose in your body is important, because after we have used up the free glucose we start to convert fat into energy. It is important to not have calories during the fasting period as this will slow down this process. I recommend having lots of water, going for a walk and have some tea to get through this period. It does get easier.”
Robyn
I not convinced that a 12 hour window is really going to deplete glycogen stores. Maybe but unlikely.
@martie. Depends on what the snack is. Some nuts are unlikely to hurt your progress unless you go crazy. Find a pattern that works for you. Personally I find breakfast easy to skip. Pick a meal that is easy for you to miss and youre likely to be more successful.
I tend to have breakfast (porridge, nuts and fruit), lunch (soup and open faced sandwich with really good bread), snack if I’m being very active, supper (whatever I fancy including wine and dessert if I want it).
Before a fast day I try to eat before 8PM and don’t eat again until 8PM the following day. I drink lots of water on the fast day and try to get in an hour of swimming/walking/cycling which is a good distraction.
If I have gained weight then I go back to fasting twice per week, so Mondays and Thursdays in my case.
This really worked well for me. I lost 22 kg over the course of 8 months without struggling at all. Being able to indulge and go out with friends with no restrictions made it all very easy. Pumping up the exercise was also very useful.
I typically try to eat in about 10 to 12 hour window. Normally I try to do some exercise before breakfast, but that doesn’t always happen. The advantage is a bit more fat probably gets burned. I tend to slip into aerobic respiration quicker. If I can do some HIIT that is ideal, but normally that happens after breakfast.
Since my breakfast gets late I normally don’t snack before lunch, but I’m often taking over an hour to eat my breakfast. Sometimes I snack between lunch and dinner. On Saturday I was snacking a lot and Sunday, nothing. Not sure why.
I’m getting to the point where I might have to give up breakfast or lunch. If was back in the USA I would probably downsize lunch most days to a salad. I don’t know. My appetite seems to vary a lot.
My trying to replace fat with muscle. It is a slow process. My BMI is typically around 26, so I’m still on the heavy side.
I gave up breakfast and eat vegetable soup for lunch or Greek yoghurt and some berries/seeds. This is what I have every day. Then on a non-fast day I eat whatever I like in the evening and drink wine. But on the fast days I stick to 500 calories for the day.
I don’t miss breakfast and am not starving by lunchtime. On a fast day I don’t put milk in my coffee in the morning, but on a “normal” day I will have skimmed or semi-skimmed milk.
I have started also drinking home made kombucha in the morning on non-fast days. Don’t yet know if my gut is happier because of it, but it tastes quite nice.
I went from 73 to 61 kilos Feb-Sept and am now trying to lost the last 2 or 3 pesky kilos to get to my target, but my BMI is 22 now.
This program works really well for me. I try to do some Pilates every day and to walk to work Mon-Fri. It’s very much a work in progress and has to become a WoL otherwise I would go back to the excessive cheese and wine of the past …
On a Slow Day, we breakfast at around 8 am. What we eat in the morning varies from day to day. At ‘lunch’, I have a glass of skimmed milk and some cheese. This is to keep up my Calcium intake. If my weight is low [I weight daily], I might treat myself to a cookie. Later in the day, a Turkish fig is eaten, just to ‘keep things moving’. Dinner is at 4:30 pm [did you catch that we’re retired?] due to medication schedules. Our dinners are varied: Sunday roast, leftovers, pasta, pizza, seafood, all served with vegetables/salad and the occasional dessert. Oh yes: and a glass of wine.
After Fasting for almost 4.5 years, the appetite on Fast and Slow Days has diminished, tho’ not our love of delicious food.
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9:41 pm
1 Oct 17