Am I doing something wrong? I’m starting to feel like this isn’t working for me and my roommate says it didn’t work for her so now I’m paranoid. Am I suppose to see some results already?
Are you counting your calories? Have you seen your doctor to make sure there are no health issues that would cause you to hold onto your weight? Are you taking measurements/progress pics since body changes aren’t just seen on a scale?
What are you eating during your window? IF isn’t magic, you still need to eat less than you spend in a day. Also, what you eat still matters, so if you’re eating junk food during your window it’s not helping either.
Your problem is expecting a quick magic transformation. There’s only benefits to adopting healthy habits, give it some real time and you will see results. Learn to be patient. I bet your roommate couldn’t handle it and was quick to say it didn’t work. It does work when you do what you got to do.
Hang in there OP! You might just need to adjust some parameters to your fasting.
What you can do is go for another week as is. On the second week, eliminate snacks. Third week, eat only 3x max a day. Fourth week, bump your fasting to 18:6 and eat only 2x max. From there on you can do additional tweaks like going low carb, full on keto, OMAD, prolonged fasting, etc… Choose the regimen that is sustainable for you and which you can stick on the long run.
While doing these, be mindful of the things you eat. Eliminate or at least minimize sugar intake for example.
The idea is to take it slow when transitioning to harder fasting protocols. This will give your body ample time to adjust, in contrast to going hardcore immediately. That will only cause your body to go into survival mode and it will try to hold on as much fat and water as it can.
And last but definitely the most important, do not compare your progress with other people. We react differently to the things we introduce to our body.
Give it a bit more time. For me, every time I start dieting (IF or not), it takes several weeks before anything happens, and I believe it’s tightly related to my cycle.
Also, really do make sure your calorie counting is on point.
For gut issues you could try the old elimination diet where you start with the vary basic of what you need. Meat, preferable a ruminant meat like beef. Eat it for a few weeks then add in one thing for a week and see if anything changes for your guts. Keep adding each week until you find a trigger. Note that the first week pay attention to electrolytes as you may get a case of the runs but it will go away as your body replaces the gut biome. Drink plenty of water.