Hi, I follow roughly a 16:8 fasting:eating pattern every day. I’ve been doing this for nearly 2 years. For me it didn’t help weight loss but it does help maintenance. For weight loss I am using 5:2 as well.

I’m one of those people who has no appetite in the morning, but if I eat breakfast it kicks my hunger into overdrive and I struggle to control it all day. For years I did this as I believed the hype about breakfast being the most important meal. I also have an issue with snacking late at night. By cutting out breakfast when I wasn’t hungry anyway and setting an evening curfew when I stop eating it’s really helped manage my tendency to binge eat.

The eating window that I followed initially was noon-9pm, but it has changed over time. It is now based on 2 things – genuine hunger and an evening curfew. I start eating when I’m actually genuinely hungry – for me that might be as early as 11am or as late as 3pm. My curfew is dinner – once it’s finished I eat nothing else until the next day – the time that I stop eating varies depending on when I happen to eat dinner. I do drink cups of tea (with milk but no sugar) during my fasting hours – usually one cup mid morning and one cup late evening. From the reading I’ve done on this issue I believe you can keep your body in a fasting state if you keep the calories under about 50 during the fasting period – my 2 cups of tea easily fall under this level.

I’m the opposite of LJoyce. For me a good breakfast and lunch would often be enough as my appetite tapers off in the day. However I eat supper more for social reasons. I have often skipped supper or just had a large salad for supper to get more fiber. I can delay or skip breakfast, I just enjoy it more than supper.

You just have to choose a pattern that works for you. Longer fasting periods help burn a little fat vs frequent meals. However burning a lot of fat is hard and will probably require adjustments to your diet. For losing fat, refined sugar is probably the worst thing to consume. Maybe you can satisfy your sweet tooth with whole fruit. It is harder to overeat and it provides fiber and nutrition.