I went to a party yesterday and had a big glass of wine. Kept entirely on track with food, other than the wine. This morning, I'm feeling famished again. Will have the coffee and ignor it. 12 lbs till I'm below 300. I'm going to write that on my palm so I can see it all day.

Hunger is just a feeling. You let your body know who is boss! Keep busy, drink lots of water, and that hunger feeling will dissapear before you know it. Thinking about it or thinking about food makes it worse.

You'll be in the 200s in no time!

Of course you're right, John. I'm just back from Pilates class. Hunger evaporated and I feel good! But emotionally still getting accustomed to the morning edginess I experience.

I'm more determined to stay on plan over the weekend. We'll see how I am when I'm "in the moment" at my sister's house on Sunday, with all the traditional Greek food I eat only once or twice a year. Trying to figure out how to make the day not about food. But that's bucking centuries of tradition!

Nothing really new to report, except that at work today, my stomach let out a ridiculously audible growl to the point that I started laughing hysterically in my cube.

Good luck with the weekend, Geoblewis, you will do great! Also, you will be under 300 soon! Don't let a growly tummy discourage you!!

I've been having trouble with my 4pm ish to 9ish eating window so I'm going to be trying to do more like 2ish to 7ish and see how I do with that.

After doing this for a while, I'm still getting hungry around 2 so I figure that is when my body would prefer to eat.

Instead of having a meal at the time of breaking my fast, I'm going to have something small, like an apple or an egg and then try to wait a little bit before my first meal. I've heard a few people mention doing this and it sounds like it would be helpful.

Kaseyy, that's what I'm doing. I'm about to have a little proteing snack. My body tends to really want to chow around 3, so that's when I have my main meal. Then around 7 I have another small meal that's really balanced in nutrients.

I'm just starting my second week and I'm feeling okay. Having to get used to being genuinely hungry again. I like working with my body's natural rhythms as opposed to forcing something that is a constant struggle to maintain. This next week I'll count as the real weight loss test. Lost 10 lbs this last week, but it was weight I put on the week before due to a food sensitivity.

Just popping in -- did my first about-24-hour fast Thurs-Fri, and about to start another one tomorrow until Tuesday. I'm still a little afraid to commit to this as a "lifestyle" because I'm afraid it will set off binge cycles, but so far it hasn't -- I clocked in at around 1500 calories yesterday and 1300 today, so exactly 'on-plan' as I used to be before my IF cycle. Fingers crossed that the next one goes as well... I'm a bit premenstrual so I'm afraid it could go horribly, horribly wrong.

Insomnia all-nighter = unplanned indulgence of french toast at 4 am + 4.5mile run at dawn. Guess it evens out, but including a small breakfast and standard lunch, I'm up to almost 900 calories already, so I decided to lengthen my fast to final "feed" ending 11:40am -- dinner tomorrow @6pm.

I have to write an entire paper in that window, so I'll probably let myself drink all the black coffee and sweetener-laced tea I want, but none of the cereal/cookies I usually reach for. Fingers crossed.

Hey there Team IF. Hope all are doing well. I've been reading The IF Life blog this morning. Interesting entry on choosing between IF methods here.

I weighed in at 309 this morning. So happy to be moving back in the right direction. I am determined to keep this trend going!

I overindulged a bit yesterday...quite a bit. And I still registered a loss. Kept to my eating window. Will balance the overindulgence with lower calories today and tomorrow.

Good luck on your paper! Maybe not having the option to eat will let you focus more on your writing? In college I was always a muncher while studying. Reason 19384723 of how I got fat.

Hope all you IF people are doing well! Opened my window today with a normal lunch after my planned sugar (cheat) day yesterday. My body seems relieved, and I don't think I am at risk of continuing to go nuts on the sugar like I feared.

Thanks Txalupa! Yeah, most studying in college happens in places with food -- dining halls, coffee shops -- so I'm glad my partner agreed to meet in the library, where there are fewer temptations. She's also gorgeous and maybe 108 lbs, so just seeing her is a reminder of all the vanity-based reasons why I'm doing this.

Hour 8: just survived (avoided) pizza at a seminar and brownies/cookies at the coffee shop where I got an Americano (black, of course). I'm hungry/nommish, but manageably so. I may actually go to a bar tonight with friends and order nothing but seltzer water -- not entirely sure if I dare.

So far I've consumed two nearly-0-calorie drinks (8oz diet coke, 12 oz americano); I'm going to try to limit myself to only tea for the rest of the night and 1 cup of coffee tomorrow before my fast ends.

This idea of fasting until later is interesting. I'm starving right now and it's
10 pm. I think I might try this.

i really want to try this. i've been trying to lose the same 5 pounds since january of this year and it's driving me crazy. i really want to lose like 20 pounds. and when i think about all the times i lost 10-15+ pounds in the past, i realize that i didn't eat breakfast and would eat larger dinners. on the weekends, i would eat a large meal around 2 or 3pm and sometimes just a small dinner of sushi or something. i think just changing the size of the meal from large lunch to large dinner and vice versa made a big difference for me.

anyways, it just seems like my body loses weight faster when i fast or skip meals. i also like the fullness feeling. eating the small meals makes me sick of eating and also feels like grazing and eating something that doesn't satisfy me, but instead just feels like eating just to eat cause it's on the plan. i want to eat when i'm actually hungry, and ravenous, not just stable or so-so.

i'm glad i stumbled upon this thread, because this may be THE missing puzzle piece that i need to figure out what works for me. i think this is what i was doing in the past unknowlingly and that's why i was able to lose in the past, but for some reason, my weight loss efforts are not working now.

i read the posts up until page 5, and it seems this thread gets a lot of traffic in such a short period of time due to a lot of interest and good results, so i'm going to give this a try.

just one question though, is a 1-hour cardio session okay at medium to high intensity going to help me if i do the workout at 10am? i plan to try the window from 2-8pm.

thanks for reading!

Beila, I have no answers because I'm doing 24-hour fasts and I don't have any expertise to tell you. My instinct would be to say that exercise is good any time you can do it, but you might find it more effective/intuitive/necessary to eat after high-intensity workouts.

But what do I know? I'm going to a flow yoga class in 40 minutes and will be fasting another 6-8 hours after that.

Last night was rougher than I would have liked. Writing on an empty stomach was fine, but then I dreamt of food -- not really of food, but of eating. Woke up feeling guilty before I realized all my noshing was imaginary. Weighed in at 117.5, a low for me, but I'm fairly sure it was just an empty-stomach dip, so it doesn't 'count.'

Still, though, Eat-Stop-Eat fasts can be a bit brutal. I don't think it makes sense to sugar-coat that... you do get really up close & personal with your hunger. I may be a masochist, but I kind of like that.

I think a lot of us are tempted toward over-restriction and get into unhealthy cycles as a result. One way of dealing with that is eating small meals on the dot in a very regulated way -- I've never been successful with that, given my hectic schedule, inability to cook (as a student in dining halls), and compulsive tendencies. I'm hoping these fasts will allow me to get all my masochistic, overachieving impulses out in a controlled, safe way.

I'm not sure what you're asking but yes it is ok to do this. I workout fasted sometimes for almost two hours. There is an adjustment period but you'll be fine. Go for it!