Hi everyone! Last night I was looking at my body and decided it’d be nice for me to lose a little weight (I was initially just fasting for clarity and overall fitness rather than weight loss) and I decided to go from 16:8 to 18:6.
I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult considering I was regularly exceeding the 16 hours anyway (usually I was doing 17-19) but damn, actually adjusting the fasting hours on my app and seeing I still have a little over an hour to go before I can eat made it more of a challenge than I thought haha
Anyway I was just hoping to get a bit of encouragement! Has anyone here shifted from 16:8 to 18:6 before, and did you see a huge difference after doing so?
May have been/Might be easier to adjust on the starting end of the fast. If you regularly stop eating at, say, 8pm and start eating at noon, your body maybe has become more accustomed to eating at noon. If you stop eating at 6pm, you won’t feel much diff before bedtime (I guess that depends on your bedtime), and maybe it will help at the end of your fast so you still start eating at the same time.
Good luck. I’m sure you will adjust in time.
EDIT: Oh, and a little fat to end your fast may help (purely speculative on my part). I sometimes have walnuts/pecans. Gives me some calories before bed, but that fat also helps versus carb-heavy stuff.
I started 16:8 then am now a constant 18:6. For this change its all mental. Don’t look at your app as much or at all. After a week you won’t even have to look at the time any longer your body will adapt. My challenge is now to eat better within my window.
I just switched about 2 weeks ago and found the first week super hard but the second week was super easy. I feel like I adjusted and just stopped watching the clock altogether. Just have a timer letting me know I CAN eat but have found I’m often not hungry until a bit later.
Yes. I did 16:8 my first day and then switched it to 18:6 to match the times with my work lunch break. Several times during the week though my fasting becomes 20 hours if it gets busy at work then I’ll just break my fast at 2pm or later. Stop eating at 6pm either way for me. Ive since added exercise to 5 out of 7 days a week and today weighed in at 167.8 down from 170.8 last week. My calories were only in a deficit for two days out of the last 7 days and im glad to see the loss in weight.
I’ve been IF for years. Started with 16:8 then 18:6 then 20:4. Not much difference from 18:6-20:4 but there was a shock to my body going 16:8 to 18:6. Even after all these years there are some days when I can’t wait for the last couple hours to be done. I’ve learned to be kind to myself.