44-year-old woman, finding IF very difficult: should I persist? page 2

[Apex Predator]

>>>Also the cream in the coffee has to go. This is NOT fasting. Drink lots of water and move. No calories though. <<<

LOL, I know the cream has to go. It is just a "crutch" to get me through this first week of not eating every 2-3 hours. When I do IF for real it will be just plain coffee and water.

Question: so do you all IF every day, only on the days you lift weights, or something else?

I actually wouldn't stress about the cream.

I don't fast that often anymore- I need to eat too much(as much as 7k+calories some days) due to lifting. Though I will sometimes go 10-14 hours without food, I don't notice it or count it as a fast. What I used it for was healing.

[gempdx44]

>>>Another thought is what are you generally eating? I find IF much easier when I'm eating plenty of fat in my main meals and not too much in the way of extra carbs (e.g. sweet potatoes and rice). I find it much more difficult when I've been having fruit or dark chocolate as I get really bad sugar cravings if I have too much. >>>

Good points, maybe I just need to relax and ease into it a little slower.

A typical non-IF'ing day of food/bev looks like this:

7am: two shots of espresso with a TBSP of coconut milk

9/9:30am: breakfast at my desk. Usually a whey protein shake (2 scoops any whey + coconut milk + ice) OR 200-300 calories of breakfast meat

12/1pm: lunch. Usually a salad with protein or chicken/beef with rice

3/4pm: afternoon snack. usually a small apple with some fat/protein in the form of cheese, lunch meat, or nuts

7/7:30pm: dinner. chicken/pork/beef with veggies, potatoes or rice sometimes

10pm: evening snack. almost always 1/2 c greek yogurt with 1/2 c berries, sometimes with a few unsweetened coconut flakes

Beverages: I drink about 64 ounces of water per day (more on days I exercise) and a ton of coffee

[sbhikes]

I found the evening IF easier than the breakfast one, too. But I stopped IFing because I was getting really feezing-ass cold on my IF days, so cold I could not warm up enough to go to sleep.

Now what I have been doing is a bulletproof fast: bulletproof coffee for breakfast then some canned fish for lunch around 1 or 2. Then a nice big dinner. All my carbs are at dinner. It got me over a stall.

Also, whether I do a real fast or not, I always give myself permission to end the fast if I'm really super hungry. It isn't supposed to be hard.

[gempdx44]

Oxide,

>>>Have you thought of an evening IF? When I attempt IF in a couple months, that's what I'm going to try. I grew up eating breakfast and I feel faint without it. I'm not giving it up. But I found that if I have a bigger lunch, I often forget about dinner.
You might also think about working in Bulletproof Coffee as a snack. It fills you up, but it has a lot of fat calories.<<<

I don't think that would work for me. I cannot get to sleep if I am the least bit hungry, I would much rather skip breakfast. Come to think of it, when I was much younger (teens and twenties) I would often have nothing but coffee for breakfast and was fine. It was only when the weight started to creep on in my 30's that I bought into the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day, eat every 3 hours to keep your metabolism humming" type thing.

I have to say, when I eat every 3 hours I NEVER feel satisfied. Because I am trying to conserve calories for the next not-really-a-meal meal. But I ate over 500 calories just now for lunch, and I feel like I will be absolutely FINE until dinner at 7pm. I just need to get through my mornings somehow.

[Apex Predator]

>>>Another thought is what are you generally eating? I find IF much easier when I'm eating plenty of fat in my main meals and not too much in the way of extra carbs (e.g. sweet potatoes and rice). I find it much more difficult when I've been having fruit or dark chocolate as I get really bad sugar cravings if I have too much. >>>

Good points, maybe I just need to relax and ease into it a little slower.

A typical non-IF'ing day of food/bev looks like this:

7am: two shots of espresso with a TBSP of coconut milk

9/9:30am: breakfast at my desk. Usually a whey protein shake (2 scoops any whey + coconut milk + ice) OR 200-300 calories of breakfast meat

12/1pm: lunch. Usually a salad with protein or chicken/beef with rice

3/4pm: afternoon snack. usually a small apple with some fat/protein in the form of cheese, lunch meat, or nuts

7/7:30pm: dinner. chicken/pork/beef with veggies, potatoes or rice sometimes

10pm: evening snack. almost always 1/2 c greek yogurt with 1/2 c berries, sometimes with a few unsweetened coconut flakes

Beverages: I drink about 64 ounces of water per day (more on days I exercise) and a ton of coffee

The fact that you are eating every couple of hours is likely not helping. Consolidate your eating into 2-3 meals of real food(no shakes).

[kaoticturtle]

What you're eating sounds pretty good and fairly similar to what I eat - although I don't tend to have protein shakes and I probably eat less rice and potatoes.

The greek yogurt in the evening will be relatively high sugar (compared to the rest of what you eat) so that could be setting you up to be hungry in the morning but I'm not sure how much of an impact it will really have. Maybe you could try having the berries with some cream instead or just on their own? I've just had a bowl of strawberries on their own and they were really tasty! An alternative might be to have some boiled eggs ones night and see if that makes a difference?

I remember reading one post about IF where someone was insisting that you should start very slowly, and just move your fasting interval by an hour a week. So, eat your evening meal as normal and in the first week, just eat breakfast an hour later than you normally would. E.g. dinner might be at 7.30pm and breakfast at 10.30am. If you're good with that, then in the second week shift breakfast to 11.30am and keep your last meal at 7.30pm. If that's more difficult, then keep doing that interval until its easy, and then the move breakfast back again. Before you know it, you'll be only eating two meals in a day. This isn't the approach that I took, but I can see that it would probably work and might be an easier way in.

[jennf]

If you're just coming off of eating every 2-3 hours then you may not be ready to IF. It shouldn't be hard. You should be able to feel hunger and then easily ignore it. If that's not the case, and you are truly ravenous, then maybe you should wait a while before you IF and concentrate on only eating 3 meals a day, then go down from there. You don't have to be able to do everything all at once

[gempdx44]

sbhikes, our stats aren't too far off, how much fish do you eat when you break your fast? And is that all you eat or do you sometimes add veggies or something else in?

I have tried the bulletproof coffee before and loved it, maybe I shouldn't be so afraid of the fat content.

[kaoticturtle]

The fact that you are eating every couple of hours is likely not helping. Consolidate your eating into 2-3 meals of real food(no shakes).

Good point - snacking doesn't help things! I will always be hungriest a few hours after eating, and then it dies away and doesn't seem to come back as strong for a long time.

[gempdx44]

You all are so awesomely helpful, thank you! So I'm thinking I'll try this for the next week:

7am: wake up
9am: Bulletproof Coffee (for me this is 1 TBSP Kerrygold, 1 TBSP coconut oil, with 2 lungo pulls of espresso)
1pm: eat protein heavy lunch
5pm: workout
7/7:30pm: eat a BIG dinner with lots of protein and some carbs

Then no food until my next BPC at 9am the next morning.

If I am absolutely needing something before bed, a few berries + a few nuts? Eliminate the dairy.