i find it easy to keep up with my fast on my own, but i am often invited to grab breakfasts or dinners, or go to parties at night and it’s hard to resist breaking the fast because of these social settings.
my friends understand my fasting but social eating is still a large part of my social life.
does anyone else struggle in balancing this?
My approach is to still enjoy life but eat roughly the same as if I’m fasting. So I might break my timing to have brunch on the weekend, but that’s going to be my one big meal of the day. I would then have my other smaller meal as like an early dinner starting my next fast perhaps a bit earlier. And still keep to little or no snacking.
This has felt like a good compromise to myself of being flexible but still keeping weight loss rolling.
As others have mentioned, usually time it with social eating. Else you could do OMAD on those days. I do OMAD pretty much everyday but if I know social eating is happening, I make that meal my meal for the day.
Eat with your friends. There plenty of mental heath benefits to be had there. If you get a big breakfast maybe have lunch, and then skip dinner. If your going out late just wait till later in the day to eat (but please remember to eat before drinking). If you fast till 4pm that gives you till midnight on a 16:8.
I move my window, If that makes sense. Like last night I ate/drank until later than usual (birthday party not that if matters) and so today I moved the start of my eating window until a little later but will close that window at the same time as usual. I figure it’s better than nothing and it is just a day in my life. I don’t like to do this more than once a week, twice at the very most.