Hi everyone! Hoping to get some input. Let me start by saying I know everyone has different nutritional needs, and what works for some might not work for others. After doing some research on intermittent fasting, I decided to give it a go. I’ve been doing so for about two months now. I typically eat in the window of 11:30am-7:30pm. I started off feeling great, but think I might be hitting a plateau? I’m feeling more tired than usual, lower libido, and so on. I know this can be caused by different things, but curious if anyone has experienced this after intermittent fasting for a long period.
I also listened to a couple of podcasts this morning on the importance of a protein packed breakfast, and eating within an hour of waking. Now I’m rethinking intermittent fasting entirely. Any thoughts on this? Maybe continuing the time restricted eating, but moving the window earlier in the day to include breakfast?
Again, I know everyone is different and has different needs, but I appreciate any input and personal experience with this!
That really depends on many factors. Intermittent fasting is just a way of eating. You can eat at any level you want. I personally did 2 years of IF with a reduced caloric intake to lose weight and now I have been doing IF for 1.5 years at maintenance and held my weight here for that time. For me it is just an easy way to continue to manage the calories I need.
So why you are having that issue can be for many reasons. You may be eating too little calories for example and that is leading you to be run down. Have you tried doing IF on a day but increasing the amount of calories you are eating? What I personally found over my time doing this is that no one can tell you exactly what to do. I would make mild changes and see how it impacted me. 3.5 years later I don’t even need to weigh myself or count calories. I just can feel where I need to be or when I need to eat more or cut back.
I would say you are two months in and it is still new. People tend to have a honeymoon phase with anything. But say you see some initial success but then you level off. Many people will try and pull back on calories to try and continue the downward trajectory. But weight loss isn’t like that. Early on you can see rapid changes only for them to level off. So people get frustrated. They don’t understand that these points are going to be normal. And that sometimes you have to make changes. I had many long periods where I held at certain ranges before continuing back down.
So no one can tell you what works for you or if you should continue. But really 8 weeks is a short period of time. It took me a solid 6 months at least to get to a point where I was really comfortable with it. I was the guy that used to say I needed to eat before working out and now I will knock off a hard 1.5 hours of cardio in the morning before I work and long before I will eat for the day.