New to intermittent fasting, and I can’t shake the fear I’m not eating enough.

I’m 40/f 190ish, and I want to lose around 30 pounds. I’m doing 18:6 with lunch at 12:30 and dinner at 6:30. I’m also doing a keto diet in combination. I’ve been reading a TON about fasting, including The Obesity Code and other books. So far, I definitely like how fasting makes me feel most of the time. I understand Dr. Fung’s point about how fasting causes you to pull from your stores so you’re not actually starving. Still, I’m worried about my overall caloric intake. I’m interested in trying OMAD or ADF, but I wanted some feedback on this first. I’m averaging around 1200-1300 calories split across those two meals. They are mostly veggies, healthy fat sources, and whole proteins. I feel satiated after my meals overall, and I don’t want to eat more food right away, but my intake does seem low, and I can’t shake a bit of panic that I may be severely undereating? I want to make sure this is a good thing for my body and not harmful. I’m not intentionally restricting calories severely. 600ish calories with tons of veggies feels like a lot of food volume right now. I do get hungry between my lunch and dinner occasionally, though. Not on my 18 hour fast, usually. Can anyone with more fasting experience weigh in here (pun intended 😁). Thanks!

Answer

Consider that, as your body becomes accustomed to fasting, it will start using its own stored fat to make up for the calories you are not eating. You want your body to tap into an energy source other than the food you have immediately eaten. That’s the whole point.

Q. What’s the best thing to eat if you want to lose weight?

A. Your own fat.

Answer

>fasting causes you to pull from your stores so you’re not actually starving.

So this is true, but what you’re hitting on is a separate aspect of essential nutrition. While we store energy in our body fat, many of the nutrients our bodies need are things we don’t store, we can’t make, but otherwise need as that nutrient itself. This is true for various vitamins and minerals, but it’s also true for protein and dietary fats. The body has a whole system for getting first chance on these for various bodily functions before it will break them down for energy.

So we need an essential amount of these nutrients for our sizes on most days.

Answer

You seem to be on the right path. Fasting is different from person to person, you do kinda need to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t.

For me, 1500 calories is decent. Cause I’m a male so I can afford more calories. 1300 may be the best one for you. you will have to try it out. maybe for a month. with occasional walking 3 to 5 times a week for 30 to 60 min. and then measure your weight, first thing in the morning, by the end of the month and see if the experiment payed off.