The FastDay Forum

Hi Debsie,

Yes, I think letting your hunger levels dictate when you eat is no bad thing provided you are not hungry 24 hours a day. I vary between eating only once a day, i.e. a 30 minute window and anywhere up to 16/8 and all times in between. If I'm hungry I eat but as I'm never hungry in the mornings I find that an eating window suits me perfectly. I am not too strict about the length of my window but I NEVER go over 8 hours. Hope you succeed

Ballerina x

[carorees]

Hi Debsie,

Yes, I think letting your hunger levels dictate when you eat is no bad thing provided you are not hungry 24 hours a day. I vary between eating only once a day, i.e. a 30 minute window and anywhere up to 16/8 and all times in between. If I'm hungry I eat but as I'm never hungry in the mornings I find that an eating window suits me perfectly. I am not too strict about the length of my window but I NEVER go over 8 hours. Hope you succeed

Ballerina x

That's what I do too.

I find that I definitely lose weight with a window of 6 hours or less, a 7-hour window seems about right for maintenance but having an 8 hour window every day would probably result in weight gain (but of course, this wasn't the case when I started 16:8 and still had plenty of weight to lose; 16:8 was enough to lose weight then). The best thing about the eating window approach is that you can simply adjust the window size to suit what you need to do. Whether it is to lose weight, maintain or allow some small increase due to social events.

Question for all of you shorter window people (like 18/6 and 19/5 and 20/4): I read the Fast-5 e-book and he makes it seem like you kind of have to do it every single day (including weekends). I'm not sure I could do 19/5 every single (curse word inserted here) day. I'm not worried about breakfast and the mornings. It's more the evenings and going out and maybe having some wine or beer that I worry about. So, does anyone take off on the weekends, or maybe just Fri. and Sat., or do you do this every day?

I constantly switch things up on myself. I used to be a strict 5:2'er. Then I started adding some 16/8s in. Then maybe a 6:1 with the rest of the work week 16/8s. Then I combatted a 3-month plateau with 2 weeks of 4:3. This week I decided to try 19/5 for the work week. I am on the 4th day. I am undecided if this is the way to go for me or not.

Finally--about a week ago, someone (can't remember who or where) posted a list of how many hours to fast and how many days a week you should not go over. Something like if you fast for 24 hours, you should't do it more than 2x a week. I cannot for the life of me find it! I am wondering if 5-7 days of 19-hour fasts a week is too much (too stressful) on the body. Or not?

Sometimes I think I complicate matter unnecessarily.

Thanks.

I have a window every day and I know others also do the same, Barbarita is the Queen Bee of Fast-5,but I think it's only fair to say that we do it every day because it suits us and we are very comfortable with it as a way of life. If you don't want to do it, don't do it, this mantra applies to all forms of IF. Doing what makes you unhappy is always doomed to failure. A mix and match approach to this is, in my opinion, a healthy way to go.

Ballerina x

I do 19:5 every day, have done for 24 weeks, my 'study of one' has not thrown up any adverse effects from doing it daily, so I am following Dr Bert rather than anyone else's opinion. I should point out that I do not restrict the quantity of food I eat in the 5 hours in any way except my own appetite.

However I do plan to increase my eating window when I go into maintenance which is 3 lbs away. By how much and on how many days is a matter of trial and error - more study of one.

My social life is built around lunches and teas. My window being 2 to 7, teas are not a problem, and for lunches I just shunt forward to 1 to 6. I have had early dinners out at 6-7 and for these I move the window to 3 to 8. I am a teetotaller so that makes drink not an issue - I have sparkling water with ice and lemon while others have grown-up drinks. The only minor hardship with this is having a fast longer than 19 hours when this happens, and this will not be an issue in maintenance

Thanks for the replies! I am very, very close to maintenance myself. So maybe it would be better for me to try the 16/8 approach with a 6:1 (24-hour fast) thrown in for good measure.

However, my question in the last paragraph remains. Is it healthy (i.e., not too stressful) on the body to fast every day for 19 hours? Maybe the research isn't quite here yet. Just wondering.

I have to say that it has never occurred to me that an eating window could be unhealthy, so in answer to you question, I don't actually know but I've been doing it now for well over a year and have never felt better.

Ballerina x

The research may never be done; in the meantime I feel great, I can walk over 50 miles a week and jog 5k.

Thanks for the replies! I am very, very close to maintenance myself. So maybe it would be better for me to try the 16/8 approach with a 6:1 (24-hour fast) thrown in for good measure.

However, my question in the last paragraph remains. Is it healthy (i.e., not too stressful) on the body to fast every day for 19 hours? Maybe the research isn't quite here yet. Just wondering.

People have been debating this one for years. this article and comments dates back to 2007 .. long before MM and the 5:2 concepts were broadcast on television in many countries

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fasting/#axzz33mDZ98Iq


Some people believe, yes, it is truly unhealthy if done daily (cardiovascular strain, yadda yadda). not sure if science has proven it one way or another but clearly 19:5 and 16 :8 is nothing like the 3-5 healthy meals a day we all grew up with (or i did anyway}.

Time will tell if we all live to ripe old ages, everyone here in the forum.

so the answer in my opinion .. dont know. I do 4:3 just in case as 4 days are "normal" eat as i want (or at TDEE) at any time of the day I please.

But a growing number in the forum are using the daily eating window approach comfortably and with results so like a lot of things related to our health, the jury is still out.

[carorees]

I was recently looking at the the history of mealtimes and was interested to find that three meals a day is far from the standard meal format for humankind.

As someone else recently posted (apologies to whoever it was that I've forgotten who!) Hippocrates, that famous ancient greek (the father of medicine), said that to be lean one should eat only one meal a day. Similarly, the Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one meal a day, and eating more than one meal was considered a form of gluttony.

For the Anglo-Saxons, when meals were taken, or even how many meals a day there were, varied according to the calendar, social class, and personal preference. Often only one meal was eaten, sometimes two.

In medieval times, eating breakfast was considered sinful and two meals a day was the norm for centuries. Only the infirm, children and those who had to do very heavy manual work ate breakfast and breakfast eating was associated with poor people. During the Middle Ages daylight shaped mealtimes, people got up and started work at daybreak, so by midday they were hungry and the main meal (they called it dinner) was taken at midday or not long after. As artificial light developed, dinner started to shift later in the day for the wealthier, as a result a light meal during the day was needed.

In the Renaissance, as dinner got later so breakfast became more popular, but eating lunch was thought to be a sign of gluttony for men and it was only ladies who ate lunch (hence the term "ladies who lunch"). The first smaller meal (still called dinner) was taken at around 11:00 a.m., and a larger meal, supper, followed six hours later at around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m.

As dinner moved later in the day, people were hungrier first thing in the morning, especially when the evening meal was relatively small and so some started to eat breakfast. In countries where the evening meal was larger, breakfast did not become important. In much of southern Europe it is still not a proper meal, but merely coffee and perhaps a piece of bread or pastry.

At the turn of the 20th Century, breakfast was revolutionised by American John Harvey Kellogg. He accidentally left some boiled maize out and it went stale. He passed it through some rollers and baked it, creating the world's first cornflake and the start of a multi-billion pound industry.

So, we could say that the modern practice of eating three meals a day is a bit odd!

WOW!!! How interesting!

Thank you! And point taken.

I do seem to recall you talking about stressing the body, @caroees, which is sort of what's prompting me to ask this question.

I'm all for fasting. I think it's the way to go, especially after seeing my results and others, both with weight reduction and health markers (BP, cholesterol, etc.). However, I'm not quite so sure about daily fasting. Your comments above alleivate some of those concerns.

Think the is the link you're looking for @Melinda_in_NC:
https://www.fastday.com/fasting/how-sho ... ng-method/

It says:
•if you’re fasting 5–7 times per week keep the fasts less than 16–18 hours.
•if you’re fasting 3–4 times per week fasts can be up to 20 hours long
•if you’re fasting 1–2 times per week fasts can be up to 24 hours long
•if you’re fasting once a week it can be up to 60 hours long.

Based on that you might want to introduce a couple of shorter fasts or days off a week and bring the 5 hour fasts down to 3-4 times a week...but I am no Fast 5 expert!

[carorees]

It seems from reading around the forum and from my own experience that some fast days are much harder than others and some non-fast days are characterised by intense hunger. I am sure that increased stress leads to increased hunger and so listening to your body is a good way of knowing when you have been overdoing it. That rule of thumb for how long vs how often to fast is a good starting point but if you have a very stressful life at the moment then I would reduce the amount of fasting but if everything is going great then 19:5 every day should be OK.

I also think that for most people 19:5 every day would be too much for weight maintenance (they would continue to lose weight) so we are probably not talking about a lifetime of non-stop 19:5. It is likely that one or more days a week with a shorter fast would be fine for maintenance.

This is all fascinating stuff. Maybe an eating window is easier but having said that I find fasting relatively easy too. I agree that three meals a day is a modern invention. Who decided we should all eat breakfast? I was often told at WW that breakfast was the most important meal of the day and I couldn't expect to lose weight if I starved myself! Due to over eating on feed days my weight is not shifting so perhaps I should have another go at doing without breakfast on feed days. It would reduce my carb intake too.

Thanks, Nicky and Caroline. Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for.

My intuition says (for me) that I shouldn't do Fast-5 every day (7 days a week). I think periods of "refeeding" are good for me.

This whole topic (fasting) is just so interesting to me! I've become an evangelist about it.