I’ve been reading up on David Sinclairs work and I’m intrigued about taking longer periods for longevity. But, the food!! Oh how I love food.
I can do intermittent fasting pretty easily, but once the arvo and dinner time roll over I just can’t even imagine not having my lunch snack and dinner haha.
Any advice, tips, words of motivation that’s worked for you regarding unhinging yourself from the snackccidents? 😁
Update: Thankyou all for sharing your experiences and thoughts! I made it all day without cracking, you guys helped me cut through the lunch and snack cravings! Will go on to have dinner in an hr or so, that’s a real improvement for me.
Cheers
People overthink this, imho, but I think it’s mostly a lack of education. Companies have spent so long telling us that a calorie is a calorie that we mostly believe it. But the truth is, if you eat 200 calories, the source of these calories matter, A LOT. 200 calories of ice cream will not trigger any hormones telling you that you are satiated. In fact, it’ll do the opposite. It’ll tell your body “there’s no protein or essential fatty acids here. Eat more!” And it will trigger your hunger hormones and tell you to eat more. You can fight these, or you can listen to your body.
So the trick is to eat food that actually triggers hormones telling your body that you are full. Protein and fats do this. People confuse filling one’s stomach with triggering hormones that state “I am satisfied.” For the same reason you can binge Chinese food and then be hungry 2 hours later.
You can eat 1600 calories of a ribeye steak and butter and salt and want to eat nothing else for 18-36 hours.
You can eat 1600 calories of captain crunch and milk and be ravenous in 4 hours.
Eat foods that trigger satiety hormones, and you’ll be able to fast easily.
The way it worked for me I did it by doing a 4 day fast and then made sure to follow up with my homework.
You don’t get any hungrier on a long fast, that is a fact. You do get singed by triggers and early on those happen left and right. Every single one of those come from very specific habits. The best way is to identify said habits, and to deal with them outside of your fast.
In my case I was a serial snacker. I snacked in the evenings at work, either out of boredom or to take a mental break. When I first started fasting that made it as pleasant as being in the open with a swarm of mosquitoes, getting stung non stop by the cravings all afternoon long. After my fast was over I eliminated all my snacking between meals; my fast gave me the perspective to say no to food for a few hours, eliminating my snacking during non fasting times made my fasts a lot easier.
I don’t like fasts longer than 4 days not because of the hunger nor the cravings, but because I like eating food. Alternating weeks between 4 day fasts and intermittent fasting allows me to clock in a good amount of fasting while letting me enjoy food on a regular basis.
I’m here in the morning of day 2 of 4. I’m not hungrier today that I was yesterday morning, waking up after having dinner the night before. Today I will face cravings, which is hard to call them hunger but that are no less distracting for being such. I will then go to bed and wake up the next morning, not being any hungrier than I felt today, yesterday, or will the day after that.
Sort out why you are getting cravings and the rest is just coasting.