Stats to put things into a perspective:
SW:123 - about a year ago.
CW: 94, 6 - I weighted in this morning.
GW: 86 - for now, i want to get out of obesity range, then I’ll set another goal and adjust.
As you can see, I need to lose exactly 8,6kg to achieve my goal and I really wanted to get there until Christmas. My problem is that, after completing a week long fast two months ago, I’m having a hard time going beyond 24 hrs. I was able to do three 48s, and one 36 to be exact, but every time I’m trying to fast longer than 24h I’m starting to feel really weak and kinda worried, stressed? I don’t know how to explain those feelings, really. I fast on average 18/22h per day and I’m counting my calories to a T so no problems with that, but prolonged fasting now seems impossible to me and I feel terrible about it. Any advice?
I’m afraid but 8,6kg fat loss until Christmas most likely won’t be happening anyways, even if you would stop eating right now and fast until the 24th. Maybe on the scale which considers stomach content, water weight and carbs but from my point of view that’s not „real“ weight loss, if you know what I mean. In my eyes, you should strive for a more realistic goal.
Now back to your question, prolonged fasting is a mental game and I have found two ways to help me during hard times of prolonged fasts (am currently on day 19 of a 25 day fast). The first and definitely the healthier one is positive encouragement and second one is negative.
For positive encouragement I wrote down a list of reasons why I want to loose weight. Better health, being more attractive, all those „pretty people“ privileges like higher salary and so on. I also bought a couple of nice expensive clothes which were too small for me and if I feel like quitting I get them out.
For negative encouragement I i.e. look down at my rolls, pinch them, feel how disgusting they are and try to imagine how somebody else would feel if they were forced to do so too and that keeps motivated to get rid of them. This might be quite controversial and for some people not healthy at all but it works for me so whatever.
There is also something called the five minute trick which should help with procrastination and I altered it a bit to help with fasting. If I plan to go for a 10 day fast and I struggle on i.e. day 5, I try to convince my self that I only have 1 day left (even if it’s not true) and just so many hours before I go to bed. If I‘m fine on day 6 I keep going and if not, I just repeat the trick until I get to my goal.
Edit: Also keep your self busy all the time. Go to work as usually, go out with friends, play video games, watch some netflix, start some online courses on things your interested in, read a book, write some comments on reddit, basically do whatever keeps you distracted.