Weight-Loss IF club challenge (open to all)

Weight-Loss
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overlandflyer

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i have been intermittent fasting for over 2 years now. admittedly, i was much more focused when i first started and lost weight and even into the first half year or so of maintenance. i still IF, but in the past year, every few weeks i skip a day... usually by eating a too-early breakfast. i try to lessen the damage by cutting calories on those days, but nevertheless, i do sometimes see a small bump. the closer you are to your lowest weight (for me, about a 22-22.5 BMI), the easier it will be for your body to store a bit of fat... as i have said before, your body is smart... fat stores are food in the bank.

this morning i was close to skipping a day. i have thought about when this happens and it's usually when i shift my eating window to late in the day on the previous day. i like the window of 6-8 hours after my last meal to fall into my sleep time, but when i eat late and get up early, it hits kinda hard some mornings. this morning i won, though. i made it through a very tough hunger period (hard, but not long lasting) and when it faded, it was noon before i had breakfast... 6 hours later. after that first hunger episode, i had no more throughout the morning.

so whether you IF or not, the challenge is to ignore your urge to eat the next time hunger hits. my suggestion would be to handle a hunger episode the first thing in the morning. they are not the easiest, but extending your overnight "fast" before breakfast is one of the best times for this challenge. if you make it, you will know you have more than likely burned fat calories JUST BY BREATHING right up until you have breakfast. the most important thing to remember... hunger is not physiological... it is psychological. it is your brain that makes your stomach growl and feel empty. even at a healthy BMI i know i am not going to pass out or harm myself in any way if i do not eat.

if you're game, let me know how it goes.
 
wow... different sort of morning this morning. i'm going to do everything i can to avoid eating past 6pm from now on. i have fairly unusual hours in that i'm often up between 3-4 am. ironically, something i found difficult to do when i had a job... go figure. so let me ask for an easier challenge just FMI (for my? information...?)... when you get hungry, does it have any relation to the last time you ate? .... or is it more likely triggered by the time of day?

so even if you don't want to compete in the challenge, i'd like to gather more than my own opinions on hunger.
 
I generally only eat between 10am and 8pm. This isn't for IF purposes, but because my thryoid medication recommends a 4 hour buffer between meals. I have found it most convenient to take it at midnight as I go to bed, which means no more after 8pm snacking. When I wake up a 8am I'm just not hungry right away (and never have been). After exercising and showering, it is usually around 10am and I'm ready for my first meal. I've found that smaller, more frequent meals work best for me - typically at 10am, 12:30pm, 3:30, 5:30, and 7:45. If I'm able to accommodate that into my schedule, I am never hungry at all.

When I do get hungry (or really when I feel cravings) it is after 9pm and this generally happens on days where my last two meals got combined (e.g. I wasn't able to eat a small meal at 5:30 so I had a larger one at 6:30-7). Almost always this last meal is eaten at a restaurant where the food is not a dense in protein & complex carbs as I would prepare at home. The hunger I feel later is not physical stomach pains, but more of a craving for snacks. If I ignore it for 20 minutes, it usually goes away entirely. If it is persistent, drinking a large glass of water seems to do the trick.
 
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