I finished my last meal at 7.20 last night, and I had some real cravings last night that tried to disguise as true hunger, but I’ve woken up, and it’s 9am, and I’m not hungry at all. So that’s pretty interesting.
It’s really amazing when you realize your body has been trying to communicate with you, but you’re misunderstanding what it wants. This has been the best effect of IF for me. After 6-8 months of fairly stringent IF / diet control, I feel that I’ve sufficiently reprogrammed my body to tell me when it’s hungry, what it wants to eat, when it wants to move and sleep etc with reliability. I give it good feedback by responding accordingly, and we are in a much better place altogether!
We do 3-4 w 3 500 calorie days, the other days our choice. The 500 calorie days are always very refreshing. While we don’t closely track our eat days, the desire for MORE FOOD NOW has gone away. I last had a slice of turkey, mashed potatoes and a little gravy last night at 5:30pm. It’s 1pm now, and I’m just starting to have some hunger pangs.
This is the way. Get through this night cravings; mine took 1.5 weeks, and the rest was easy. I saved my favorite tv programs or book reading and walking the dog during those times. Oh, and water for me through it. I’ve lost 40lbs.