When doing 16:8 I like to break the fast with lunch between 12noon and 1pm, and have dinner around 6:30pm. I find it easier to stick to the fast in the morning and I find it gives me more energy and concentration. If I break at breakfast, eat lunch, but don’t eat dinner, I find I’m more hungry than if I didn’t eat and I don’t enjoy going to bed that hungry. Dinner is also the meal I’m more likley to share with others, so if I’m going to eat, I like to eat dinner. I would say experiment and do what works for you and fits in with your life and schedule.
12-8 here. Breakfast for me has always lead to morning snacking. Cutting it out was difficult at first but now it’s just a regular part of my routine to stop what I’m doing at 12:00:00 and eat lunch lol. Just by doing this, I’m probably cutting 500 calories out.
Heavily schedule/work dependent but imo, because you’re liable to feel hungrier when you’re transitioning from food energy to stored energy (fasting), it’s best for that to occur while you sleep, & therefore end your eating window a couple hours before you go to bed - even though theoretically because we burn more calories when awake and active, it would be better to eat earlier in the day and use all the food energy for activity. It feels a lot harsher and my partner and I like to eat together in the evening, so I have a later eating window. I aim to break the fast with lunch around 12:30pm and end by 8:30pm, going to bed around 10.30pm. Lunch is my first meal around 5-6hr after waking up. Black coffee tides me over until lunch without a problem. Lunch isn’t too heavy, a chicken flatbread with salad, or soup or something. A big meal when breaking your fast can spike your insulin levels and be a bit digestively disruptive. You can end up feeling hungry a couple hours after the meal due to the big spike then drop. After lunch I switch to drinking green or mint tea between meals to avoid too much caffeine. My main meal in the evening is where I get most of my calories.
On one of Jason Fung’s videos he recommends having an early day (as opposed to evening) eating window. I’m blanking right now about what the specific reason was, though.
I don’t think it really matters that much. I’m eating a single meal at dinner because it would otherwise be disruptive to my girlfriend, who’d prefer to eat with me.
I break fast at 10am. It’s about 4 hours after I wake up. As others have explained, the benefits of fasting are technically better when you eat early. My philosophy is that doing it at the “wrong time” is still better than not doing it at all. I just try to be somewhat active while I’m awake during my fasting window. I get my workout done, and lots of cleaning.
it’s more about what time you eat dinner. Do you have a ritual meal? A shared family meal? Then you count backward for that.
If you’re just one person, you can split the difference. dinner, four hours after dinner, 8 hours for sleep, four more hours after you wake up…fast break.
I break my fast around 11-12 (depending on when I stopped eating the night prior). I have black coffee, pure green tea or mineral water in the morning. Water the rest of the day. I commute to work by train which allows the occasional snack in the afternoon. Dinner is when I close my eating window. 6-7, sometimes 8 if I had a late lunch.
Formally 12-8 here but I usually am done eating by 7 and often start eating at 1 instead of noon. I can’t say if there is a better or worse time but dinner with my family is the most important part of my day.