I’ve been doing 20:4 daily since early January. It’s going very well, and I was surprised how easily I was able to adapt to this routine.
I decided to skip my meal period yesterday due to a class I had that interfered. I had been wanting to try a 40+ hour fast and this was a convenient chance.
I broke the fast this evening after 44 hours. At dinner, I found myself unable to eat much at all. And expect over the new few hours remaining in my eating period, I won’t get down more than a few hundred more calories.
Is this normal? Should I expect to eat less after a longer fast? My normal daily intake is between 1300 and 1600 calories.
I just want to make sure I’m not risking harm with such little food over this time period… By the time I break fast again tomorrow I’ll have only eaten around 800-1000 calories in 3 days!
38M, SW: 225, CW:211, GW:175
For me, totally normal.
Your stomach seems to shrink temporarily, so you can’t eat as much.
Also, since you have completely switched to burning fat, you don’t feel the need to eat much because we always have plenty of fat to burn.
A word of caution about breaking longer fasts. The longer the fast (3, 4 ,5 days) the more gently you need to break it. Avoid much fiber as it will be painful. Have small meals of bone broth, soup, yogurt and gradually work you way back to “normal food”
Fasting is like a muscle that gets stronger the more you do it.