New to IF, was trying to start with 9 hours. I just wanted to get an idea on whats the best approach, or if i should do 12 instead.
The typical pattern is 16 hours not eating, 8 hours eating. You’ll see this written as 16:8.
You can ease into it slowly, which is what I did. I pushed breakfast back an hour for a couple of days, then another hour for a few days, and after a few weeks my first meal was lunch.
A 9 hour fast isn’t much, you are probably already doing that with the time between your dinner and breakfast. 12 hours might be a good starting point, then work your way up to 16 hours.
To start: Skip either dinner (and do breakfast Lunch) or breakfast (and do lunch and dinner). Two meals within 6 hours to start. No snacking. Water, black coffee, seltzer and black teas. It’s that easy.
for what it’s worth, you could get 2/3rds of that 9hr timeframe just by having a half decent night of sleep, and many incorporate sleeping time into their fasting windows. I suspect you could easily go longer than 9 just with the sleep aspect factored in alone.