Intermittent Fasting: Tips For Making It Easier
Intermittent fasting works best when it feels easy. When something feels easy, you feel like you can do it forever. On the other hand, making things too difficult leads to eventually quitting.
Tip #1: Go slowly.
Intermittent fasting feels much easier if you go slowly. The temptation is to start with a very long fasting window and try to tough it out. Instead, go slowly. Start out with an 8 hour fasting window and see how you do with it. Then try 9 hours. Then 10. Wait until you can do a window consistently with what feels like very little effort, and then push it out a little bit more.
Tip #2: Stay busy during your fasting window.
The fasting window provides a distraction free chunk of time. If you sit around and dwell on thoughts of food, the fasting window will feel difficult. Instead, stay busy. Clean the house, do your work diligently, read books, learn a new language, call your mom. Do anything you want, except eat.
Tip #3: Keep it simple.
Intermittent fasting seems too simple. The temptation is to make it more complicated. To add lots of food rules or to obsess over which fasting window is the best one. The best fasting window is the one you can consistently with over the long haul. The best food rules are the ones you can see yourself sticking with for the rest of your life.
Tip #4: Keep your windows at the same time each day.
It’s much easier, once you’ve worked up to a fasting window that’s giving you results, to keep it at the same time every day. For example, if you’re doing a 16:8, eat between 12pm-8pm every day (or 11am-7pm or 10am-6pm, etc). This simplifies your life because you’re not recalculating your windows every day.
Tip #5: Eat plenty at your meals.
If you work your way up gradually to your fasting window, you should feel very little hunger, and you should feel good overall. If you are experiencing headaches, fatigue, or nausea, you are likely not eating enough during your eating window. These negative symptoms will lead to quitting. There’s a fine line between not eating enough and eating enough to lose weight and feel good. It is worth it to find that line. Be patient with yourself as you go through the process of finding it.
Tip #6: Remember that fasting is a skill.
Fasting is a skill. You probably will be horrible at it at first. Like any skill, it takes practicing it for a long time before it becomes a well-ingrained habit. Murder your perfectionism. You can lose weight with intermittent fasting even when you make lots of mistakes. The key is that you keep practicing it until you get the hang of it. It took me about a year before I got consistent.
Tip #7: Give yourself variety in the fasting window.
I’m an advocate of “dirty fasting” which in my definition means allowing yourself things like coffee with half and half, unsweetened, flavored sodas like La Croix, and mint and gum in the fasting window. This is especially helpful in the early days when you’re learning how to fast. Throughout the entire weight loss journey, and even to this day I drink coffee with half and half in my fasting window, because it makes the fasting window feel easy.
Tip #8: Use the shortest fasting window that gives you results.
Once you find a window that works, stick with that window. The temptation is to think that if a 14 hour fasting window helps you lose weight, a 16 hour fasting window would help you lose more weight faster, but this is not necessarily the case. Some people find they lose more weight with a shorter fasting window, because with longer fasting windows they end up scarfing food. On the other hand, if you’re extending the fasting window because you enjoy a longer window, feel free. Just don’t do it to hasten results.
Tip #9: If you start to resent intermittent fasting, change it.
Resentment is an excellent teacher. If you find yourself feeling resentful of your fasting window, or any rules you’ve created for yourself, make a change. If your fasting window is too long, shorten it. If your food rules are too restrictive, loosen them up. The goal is to enjoy the ride.
Tip #10: Stay flexible.
Things will occasionally happen that will throw your routine out of whack. Sometimes it’s a party in your fasting window. Sometimes it’s a vacation. Make amendments as you go along so that you enjoy life. For example, make a rule that you always eat at parties, even if they fall in the fasting window. Or that you take a break from intermittent fasting on vacations (or that you switch to a 12:12, etc). Whatever you decide, do it with intention.
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