I want to start IF because of the encouraging pics people share, and also the scientific facts about how it improves the health.
But currently I am in a stressful condition, and I have my routine already settled with the amount of meals I take per day. But still I don’t see a weigh loss progress and at the same time I can intake a lot of sugars.
So how long will it take me to get used to it ? Also do you workout (walking/running) while you are fasting ?
It’ll take a couple weeks.
Start with 16:8 and a majority of your fast happens while you’re asleep. Stop eating after dinner and then just skip breakfast. I found that when I’m craving something in the morning, telling myself “I can eat this in an hour or so when my fast is over,” works a lot better for me, mentally, than telling myself, “no,” “you’re not allowed to,” etc.. It’s better to be kind to myself than be harsh and unforgiving, I’ve had a lot less “f*** it!” binge moments this way.
I use a fast tracking app called Zero, which helps me keep track of when my fast is over, it sends me a notification that it’s time to eat. The longer I’ve done IF, I’ve found that sometimes, even after I get the notification that my fast is over, I’m still not hungry so, I just lengthen the fast until I feel the need to eat. This isn’t typically how people go about it, but it works for me, at the moment.
At this point in my journey, I haven’t cut anything out of my diet, but I do keep track of what I eat and my calories with MyFitnessPal, along with IF. I still eat sugar, carbs, processed stuff, whatever I want, this could change as I lose more weight though. I still have slip-up’s every now and then, but IF, for me, is a lot easier to get back into the swing of things than any other diet/way of eating I’ve tried before.
For the hunger, I find 3days-1wk before it’s really feeling like I’m not suffering by skipping breakfast.
You have to find your workarounds, for me it felt unbearable not having hot coffee with sugar and milk in the morning, but cold drip coffee (I make batches of filter cold coffee now) made the transition to black coffee really quite easy.
I’m a huge sweet tooth, so as much as it’s not favoured for IF to do sugar free drinks, I really needed them to transition the routines