Once in awhile, I eat outside my window and the sky doesn’t fall

Yesterday I did my usual 18:6/20:4 -ish thing. My sweet spot tends to be start eating sometime between 10:30 and noon and stop sometime between 2:30 and 4:30. Really just depends on the day. Very occasionally I will extend my eating window to 7 or 8 hours. I really try to be flexible and go with what feels right on a day to day basis. I also roughly count calories and I’m trying to stay in a deficit until I get to the point where my jeans and bras fit a certain way and then I think I can start a more maintenance like regime calorically. I’m pretty close to that goal, maybe 5 or 10 lbs away from it (53F, 5’2”, 136lbs). Anyway, I did this all yesterday per usual and then around 10pm, I looked at the pizza and wings that my family had ordered for dinner and I was like, I need to have some of that. I had 3 wings and a slice of pizza and a few bites of the sweet potato salad I’d made earlier. Went to bed satisfied. This morning I feel still full and I may push my window out a little later and shorten it. Or I may not - I may just go back to my usual. This is a lifestyle and I LOVE IT.

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I love seeing this kind of post! There’s so much fear that IF will cause disordered eating, but for a lot of us… our eating was already disordered. That’s why we gained weight.

For me (and it looks like you as well!) it’s a path to a more free relationship to food and eating! Nothing is banned, and it’s all about flexibility! 🙌

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This is the first time for me trying IF and for me it’s more about trying to build better habits. I was a constant snacker every night while watching sports or gaming or something, anything I was doing I needed food in my hands. For me I’m using the windows as a guide but if I’m a few hours off on a meal I just adjust and don’t worry about it. I love how this seems to be built more as a sustainable effort than a diet

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I do traditional 3mad about once every 2 weeks. Daily I do a variable length fast of 18 to 23hrs depending on how I feel. I think rigid structure is good for many, but the flexibility is what makes IF appeal to me. I also think this way lends itself to more metabolic agility, but my reasoning is anecdotal and based exclusively on personal success

For clarity and as an example, if I have a heavy lifting day I will usually open up my eating window and allow some more protein on the following day.