Hi girl! Hold your horses! Start with a bigger eating window, and work your way down to OMAD. Fast for 16: eat for 8. Then when you’re comfortable, get to 18:6. Then eventually 20:4! Let your body adjust to a fasting schedule before jumping right into OMAD. Also, I cannot stress enough, staying hydrated is so important for fasting. Set alarms for water breaks, or get a gallon jug and do a water challenge thing where you write lines on the side of how much you should have had by a certain time. Black coffee (or tea) is your new best friend. Anything other than that or water during your fasting window is breaking your fast and will be harder to see results. Last of all, give yourself some grace! Be patient! It is NOT easy. But it does get easier along the way :) you got this!!
Start with 12:12 for a few days
Then 16:8 for a few days
Then 2 meals a day
Then Omad
Because omad is tough stuff (and effective)and should be approached gently, alternating with 2mad or 16:8 if you need to.
So yeah it does work, but take it easy on yourself going into this as well. Its taken me two months to get used to various IF options, just started omad last week, and it takes some adjusting lemme tell ya. It is…very…..very different.
And get used to putting some pink salt on your food to stay sane during the long fasting hours.
I agree, start slow with IF, if you try to do too much too soon you will be miserable and quit. I started with 14:10, then once I got used to that moved to 16:8. I am staying mostly 16:8 with some 18:6 a few times a week. I personally don’t plan on doing 20:4 OMAD because 16:8 is working for me right now. And that has worked for many others who have reached their goals too! The key is to find what works for you & that you can make your lifestyle & not be miserable.
I was going to comment to start slow, but you’ve got that coming through clearly here!
Other tips would be that you have clearly recognized a food and boredom issue, I definitely have this too! I’ve been fasting since Jan 1, 2021 and it still hasn’t gone away. The thing that has changed is my awareness of the “boredom hunger” vs. actual hunger, for me hanger is a good description because I feel my mood slip - usually after 18-20 hours of fasting. So start small and focus on building intuition for your true hunger. Some other things that helped me with this were keto test strips like 7$ on Amazon. Fasting until I got to ketosis really helped when I got bored hungry! Also, track your progress and use an app. If you follow the fasting you’ll lose weight and it’s so motivating to see the differences. When you get bored you can just look at how far you’ve come!
Also, there’s some great books on IF. I really like “fast. Feast. Repeat” by gin Stephens. She focuses on fasting for weight loss and provides a lot of different approaches. Also, she tells you how to skip around to start quickly if that’s something you need.