I’m back on IF and doing 16:8. My eating window is from 11am tp 6pm. I usually eat my main meal/lunch at around 11am-12pm, snack some more around 2-3pm, and usually stay pretty full until 6pm. To make sure I got through the fasting, I fill myself up with a small portion of fruits near 6pm. I’ve been doing this for 5 days. Every night around 7-9pm I feel hungry but still manageable, probably craving for snack; but last night I broke my fast because I was SO hungry that I couldn’t sleep until morning. I tried to sleep, I drank tea and water, but I was still feeling hungry and finally gave in.
I did IF before for a month and have no problem with hunger, even I could go 20+ hours and feeling okay. Why is there this problem now? Am I not eating enough? I usually did OMAD tho, with breaking the fast with big portion of food and small snacking near the closing of eating window, this time I don’t eat that much portion but I do snacks a little bit more.
Also I kinda regret eating this morning because it makes me feel weird when I wake up 😫
Eat high protein before bed. Not fruit. That’s insulin spike city and will increase cravings.
But I do empathize with you. I do 16:8 and I finish eating dinner at 6. I am in very badly hungry when I go to bed and I’m starting to just get used to it. I’m hoping that my body just gets comfortable with that feeling and about five weeks and it seems to have. However, previously when I didn’t fast for 16 hours I could not sleep if I was hungry so I’d have a healthy snack before bed. TBH it seems like fasting has been the only way to break myself of this habit. Not that it was bad, but it was annoying having to eat some thing after associating dinner just because I was hungry so soon after dinner. The only way to avoid this was eating dinner at like 8 PM and that’s just not part of my lifestyle anymore. So my advice is just keep going and you’ll probably get used to it but also do the math and make sure you’re eating enough calories at dinner. I’m noticing that I have to eat like 900 to 1000 cal just at dinner in order to get close to my daily needs, that’s because my lunch is relatively light only 500 cal. I need to eat 1800 cal a day and doing that requires 1000 cal dinner. Previously I did not eat her dinner that big so I’ve had to really consider how to up my calories it dinner time so that if I am hungry, I know it’s not because I haven’t eaten enough but rather it’s just typical cues from Fasting. I hope that makes sense.