30 Days of 16/8 Intermittent Fasting

On Sunday I finished a 30-day trial of intermittent fasting, testing the variation where one fasts for 16 hours and eats only during an 8-hour window each day. In this post I’ll share what the experience was like.Of the various 30-day trials I’ve done, this was one of the easiest, especially after the first few days of adjustment. I messed up on one day for logistics reasons, eating in about a 10.5-hour window that day, but otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing. Some days I got the eating window below 7 hours. The tightest eating window I tried was about 6 hours.I’ve had some previous fasting experience, including a 17-day water fast in 2016 and and 40-day water fast in 2017, so I’ve gone for longer stretches without food before. In each case it didn’t take much discipline except for the first few days. The same was true of intermittent fasting, although I still had to be watchful of the eating window each day.Calibrating the Eating WindowI started this trial by figuring that I’d just skip breakfast each day, so my first eating window was 12 – 8pm. That was a decent place to start, but in practice it would be shifted later. When noon rolled around, I’d wrap up whatever work I was doing first, and then I’d also have to make something to eat. So when I used this window mentally, I didn’t actually start eating till 12:30pm or later.That was okay, but I disliked the long morning stretches with no food, and I didn’...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Health intermittent fasting Source Type: blogs