Hi all! I’m thinking about giving IF a try for a month or two. I am truly enjoying all of your success stories! Which leads me to two questions:
If I want to try this for a short time (1-2 months to start), what are your best tips for maximizing that trial period? (If it’s anything like other dietary changes I’ve made over the years, I’ll end up sticking with it longer - I just have to tell myself I’m going for a test drive first).
The thing I notice over and over again is that many of you go quite a long chunk of time fasting and I am curious how those of you who are parents do that while also making sure your kids eat?
For me, if my kids saw I wasn’t eating, it would be quite the conversation/disaster. I feel like I’d set them up for an unhealthy relationship with food at worst, an annoying tendency to try to get out of eating something they don’t love at best.
For those of you who are parents and IF, how do you do it?
Thanks for your insight and inspiration!
I’ve struggled with this as well. When the kids are in school, it’s a lot easier – I don’t eat breakfast or lunch with them, and we just all eat the same dinner together as my daily meal. It’s when they’re out of school that things get awkward.
Mine are 11 and 17 now, so I’ve decided I’ll just be honest and upfront with them.
My schpiel was this while they were growing: “Food is energy and it’s important that we give our body the right amount of energy for what we need it to do. If we’re playing football three times a week, our body needs more energy to make it happen. We call that energy ‘calories’. But it also needs the important building blocks to create muscles and brain. We have to make sure that we feed it protein and fat and vegetables with colors because that’s an indicator that they have important nutrients we need. So to eat healthy, we need to eat around the amount that we are using, and to make sure that what we eat has the right stuff in it.”
So when the 11-year-old asked, “Why aren’t you eating this tomato soup with us?” I said, “I’m not active like you two and your Dad right now*, so my body doesn’t need the same amount of energy. In fact, it needs a lot less because I’m also shorter and not growing. It’s hard for me to get half the calories if I’m eating all the same meals because they’re designed around the portion sizes that you guys need. So instead, I’ll take the meal that I cook for us that has all the important parts like the protein and the vegetables and only eat that so that I make sure I eat healthy foods, but also in the right amount. Instead of having three very small portions, I can have the same portion you guys have at dinner and it works out to be about the same.”
And then I explained that while bodies were growing, it wasn’t a good idea to do it this way because they weren’t really designed to hold all the calories that they needed at one time, which I think is pretty accurate.
Honestly, over time I’ve become a lot more fluent in these discussions in general. I talk with my oldest about how you make healthy decisions about things that you want to do by planning for it. If you know that you’re going to a sleepover and are gonna eat a ton of unhealthy snacks that night, make a special emphasis on eating healthy in the days surrounding it. I used to be afraid of what they’d take away from any discussion about eating outside of the basics, but honestly, I think that the current food landscape demands that we have these discussions sooner rather than later about how we accommodate unhealthy food choices into a healthy life. Not obsessively, but with an eye on balance.
* I had an ACL tear and then knee surgery, which led me to gain 9kg
My eating window is usually 930am-530pm. Sometimes shifted later. During the week I don’t eat breakfast with my kids but I eat dinner with them during the school week and I’m more flexible about time on the weekends so I’m eating every meal with them.
I think it is as simple as saying that as an adult, you dont need as much food as a growing kiddo. Really you only need to skip breakfast for many fasting windows. If you go 16/8 you can even have a later breakfast for the weekends or whatever. Flexibility is the key. I live with my brother and his children and all the adults in our house fast. It really isnt an issue at all.