Should you be limiting your eating in meals vs snacks. I have just gotten back on he fasting wagon after about 2 years ish. Im fasting for insulin sensitivity and weight loss, overall health benefits. I started back on 16/8, before I fell off the wagon I was at 20/4 which is almost omad for me since it was one sitting of food maybe followed by a smoothie and some nuts. My question is in terms of insulin sensitivity, and overall benefits should you limit your eating in your existing window, or is it negligible since the window itself is helping with insulin sensitivity. I don’t know why but an 8 hour window feels too long. And the first “meal” as I wake up is so filling I always stop before reaching my nutrition goals. Leaving me a bit worried about snacking until the next meal. Any advice, I’m on a whole foods plant based diet. I typically break my fast with some sort of legume based stew and whole grain (brown rice, quinoa, faro etc) but I can never get through a bowl. And I glance at the salads and nuts and fruits I need in despair 😂 because there’s no way that’s getting in my system for another 3-4 hrs. Should I wait to lump all my bits and bobs or can I eat them along the way?
I have to give up snacking between meals because for me it had a conditioning effect where when I was fasting, I would get the impulse to snack.
Not eating as much as you want is not a problem. People think that because they were fasting that somehow they need to eat X number of calories to compensate. It doesn’t work that way. When you fast your body switches to ketones, fat. It means that you are not starving your body, the calories are still flowing but from an alternate source. When you are back to eating (your eating window) you are not eating to catch up, you are eating to fuel from that point forward. If your window is 8 hours then that’s the period of time you are fueling for.
Don’t over eat but concentrate on eating to satisfaction. If snacking doesn’t lead to cravings outside of your eating window that’s fine.