When I first started fasting in between meals, it was pretty much impossible for me to resist getting that extra bowl of soup or getting another cone from the infinite soft-serve machine at my university. But after just a few days of tracking, it became much easier to resist the urge to eat hyper-sweet foods and snack all. Sure, I still occasionally get a sweet craving, but it’s only for a few seconds and goes away easily. I’m not sure if I’m just not tracking my calories correctly, but I’m being very unforgiving with my “serving” counts, since we tend to underestimate those. Granted, it’s probably a lot easier to stop snacking when I don’t have snacks in my dorm.
a few things that worked for me…
1 i don’t keep food around when i am fasting (easier said than done especially if you don’t live alone)
2 drink lots of water, esp when you get a craving. drink a full glass of water or two and you will almost certainly feel ‘full’.
3 brush your teeth when you get hungry. i usually only brush my teeth in the mornings after tea and at night after dinner/before bed. so if i am fasting it seems to send a signal to my brain that we are done eating.
4 on the brain note: whenever you have a craving, make sure you identify it as such. in other words, hunger comes from your tummy while cravings come from your brain. and often if you stop and ask yourself, you’ll find that you’re not actually hungry. you just have a craving (for me it’s usually from stress)
5 i also jogged a lot in the beginning or went on very long walks. and afterwards i reminded myself not to cancel my workouts with a bunch of calories. the old saying is ‘a 6-pack is made in the kitchen not the gym.’
BONUS quit sugar. it took me a long time to get here. i have always been a cookie monster. but quitting refined or ANY added sugar is a game changer.
I would like to say yes, my body adapted to it after the first day doing it and the first day was the toughest because it was new to me. Only been doing IF since last Thursday and weighed myself on Sunday and dropped 4 pounds somewhere coming down from 176lbs. I feel like im repeating myself mentioning this but heck it, I started my first day last Wednesday fasting from 8pm to 12pm the next day but it felt weird because I wanted to match it to my work lunch break so the next day I did 18/6 breaking my fast at 2pm Friday and have been doing 18/6 since then. What I eat in my eating window really is two good meals with enough protein and a snack between or after either like a banana or protein shake if its around. Yesterday started my first calendar week doing IF and will stick with 18/6 and see how I feel, so far ive noticed that in the last hour or two hours of fasting my energy level shoots up sky high and i feel euphoric and my guess is the ketosis wizardry doing its thing in my body. And Friday into Saturday im going to try 20/4 to more fully enjoy a couple “big” meals Saturday on my day off. Phew well this was a super long comment, hope you stick with IF. One thing I’ll also mention is to definitely stay hydrated during the day when you are fasting cause hunger and thirst often get confused.
When I started doing intermittent fasting back in 2020, I had prepared myself to get real hungry, but to my surprise, I actually managed to get used to 16 hours of fasting within 1 day. I think what helped make it easier for me was that prior to fasting, I was already on a relatively clean diet and so the urge to snack wasn’t so strong. I also didn’t used to eat a lot for breakfast so that helped too.