Can’t beat mental game. Thoughtlessly give in and eat food every single time. I’ve tried beginning my fast 3 days in a row and always end up eating the food I’m craving at night. Please share tips and your experiences with the first three days! 😩
It’s hard for me, too. I keep ending mine around three days but I just realized that I’m ending it RIGHT BEFORE IT’S SUPPOSED TO GET EASIER and amazing (energy, clarity, absence of hunger, etc). So I guess we could think of it that way. We’ve gotten through the hardest part, we might as well settle in to see what comes next.
Second the needing proper mental motivation. If you have a set goal and feel some pressure (even if it’s self-imposed) it will help spur you on. I know once I pass 4/5 day mark it really no longer becomes about wanting to eat food because I’m hungry, but wanting to eat food because it feels good/is a comfort etc. But when you have a goal that is more important than food, you’ll keep at it.
Also second keeping busy. Idleness and boredom can easily lead to slip ups.
One thing that you can do to ease those first couple of days is to make sure your body is already making ketones and has adapted to use them. This will help remove one stumbling block from those first days of a fast. It will help you move faster from physical hunger to only psychological hunger.
You can do this eating a very low carb diet for three days or so before you start fasting. I’ve done this for a few short fasts lately and I feel that it helped make that initial fasting transition faster. I just ate eggs, but I love eggs.
This won’t help with the mental challenge, but I feel it helps overall by lowering the physical challenge that piles on top of the mental challenge.
What I did was intermittent fasting for 21:3 for a few days then switch to water fasting. I think it would have been impossible for me to go on my 3 day water fast by just switching from my normal eating pattern.