My doctor wants me to try intermittent fasting by not eating dinner at night. However I get hungry and I don’t sleep well if I am hungry. Drinking water doesn’t help. The only times I have been successful is when I ate a big lunch which defeats the purpose.
Any suggestions?
I get up every day at 6, only eat between 7:30 or 8 AM and 3:30 or 4 PM in the afternoon. During that time, I eat just about anything I want. I don’t count calories, but I am aware of them. If I have ice cream, I just get one scoop, medium fries instead of large, things like that. In the last year I’ve lost about 35 pounds and kept it off. I don’t usually get hungry in the evening or late at night unless I ‘cheat’. Though I’m not fanatic about it, if I get invited to dinner or something, I will eat a small meal. But it’s important to get back on the IF quickly. It doesn’t work for everyone, but I was surprised how well it worked for me. Also helps to work out in the morning before I eat, I think. Good luck!
Take a sleeping aid before you go to bed. Works for me. (I seldom eat anything after 19:00, at least five hours before I normally go to bed.)
If you don’t want to risk getting hooked on pills, drink a large glass of warm milk and honey before going to bed. It’ll fill you up and also acts as a soporific.
I’d ignore the doctor honestly. If you can’t sleep hungry, that’s probably worse than whatever reason you’re doing it. Lack of sleep is BAD.
I fast 2 times a week. Bowl of oatmeal in the morning, bowl of soup in the afternoon, strawberries and sugarless jello in the evening. 600 calories total.
I usually do three 42 hour fasts per week, sometimes extending to 48; eating nothing and drinking only water. I sometimes supplement with sodium chloride if I’m working out in the heat. One thing that might help is going on a ketogenic diet. Once you’re in dietary ketosis hunger becomes almost an afterthought. Ketosis is difficult for some people to get into; but three or four days of very low carbohydrate intake and moderate protein should do it. You might want to give that a try.
I found it a lot easier to skip breakfast. No food between 6pm and 10am is not that big a deal, 6-12 is slightly harder but you get used to it.
I do 16:8 intermittent fasting. Generally, I have dinner late, so the hardest part of the fast is when I’m at work during the day. I alternate between plain water, unsweetened carbonated drinks (like Lacroix), black coffee, and black tea to help me through the hardest part of the fast, which is generally hours 13-16.
So, if you finish dinner at, say, 8 p.m., then your fast goes to 12 p.m., and that squarely hits lunchtime. It’s unlikely you’ll feel hungry throughout the night that way.
If I’m reading your OP correctly, your doctor specifically wants you to skip dinner, as opposed to skipping meals earlier in the day? Did he/she say why?
It’s called early time restricted feeding and it has documented benefits for improved insulin sensitivity among other things. It is one of the many studies proving that the old “calories in, calories out” mantra is over simplified.
You know, for a study purportedly showing that an early time window is better than a later time window for fasting, it would be nice if they’d actually compared an early time window to a late time window in the study itself
Read for comprehension. The study covered Early Time-Restricted Feeding (eTRF).
Yes. And it was cited in this thread as well as other online articles as proof that skipping dinner is superior to skipping breakfast. Since it does not compare these two things, it can’t possibly prove that, can it?
One of the benefits of a ketogenic or low-carb diet is that you don’t feel nearly as hungry and you can go much longer without eating. If you’re eating a carb heavy diet, your body will want to eat every 2-3 hours, but if you drop the carbs and become fat adapted, you’ll be able to go 6+ hours without feeling like you’re about to starve to death.
There are plenty of good resources out there, but i think the best way to learn is to watch nutrition scientists on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
I’ve been watching them on youtube, but you can find them on his own website or other podcast aggregator sites. The format is well suited to getting deep into the details. Most are 2 to 3 hours long and it’s just Joe and the guest talking about whatever the guest is an expert in plus whatever side topics come up.
There are several keto/diet expert guests on his show that range from athlete to R1 type researchers. Rather than put up links, I’m going to name them and you can search them on the site you like. I watch on youtube on the channel PowerfulJRE, which is Rogan’s official channel. These have been life-changing to me and I hope you will find some info and motivation in the same way I have.
These will get you off to a good start, listed in order of relevance to keto diet. It’s ok to skip around as you see fit, but you have to watch Dom D’Agostino first. He’s a clinical researcher specializing in the application of the keto diet.
Dom D’Agostino
Nina Teicholz
Robb Wolf
Peter Attia
Gary Taubes
Rhonda Patrick
Shawn Baker
Kelly Brogan
Just chiming in with another recommendation for doing the keto diet + intermittent fasting. I’ve been doing keto since the beginning of the year and without the blood sugar highs and lows I’ve gone from feeling shaky and starving to death when I haven’t eaten in awhile to “eh, I could eat”. It’s almost like a superpower.
To the op - eating a big lunch does not defeat the purpose.
As to time of day. What we can say is that early time restricted fasting has evidence to back it up not only for weight loss but for beneficial metabolic impact independent of weight loss. The same cannot be said for late time restricted fasting. There are good theoretical reasons to think it would not.
The op’s doc is recommending what there is evidence to support. Of course the old lack of evidence is not evidence of lack applies and individuals should do what works for them as individuals.
Last year I started a restricted carb diet to bring my blood sugar down and incidentally ended up doing a 16:8 IF as well–mostly because I’m not really hungry in the morning anyway and it works for me to eat my main meal around 1600 or so then nosh this and that until I go to bed. I wasn’t intending to lose weight but I did drop 25 lbs and have kept it off over the winter (always hard, with the drop in exercise and battling seasonal affective disorder) and I feel much better overall so I’ve decided this is how I’ll be eating from now on. I think a year experiment is plenty of time to judge whether or not a food plan/eating style is workable and this suits me perfectly.
I definitely agree that cutting out carbs is the big secret to not feeling hungry all the time–those blood sugar spikes and crashes really fuck up your perception of how you feel and what you generally feel is that you’re starving ALL THE TIME. I’ve had a few “Fuck this, I’mma cheat today!” days and I usually end up feeling gross and sluggish and sick to my stomach after what used to be a light carb load but is now a super huge one for me. The heartburn is epic, as well. Carbs are poison, I swear.
I just wanted to chime in here and say that keto is not for everyone. I’m miserable when I try to restrict carbs down to keto levels. For me, psychologically, it’s just too restrictive for me to stick to.
As it goes with behavioral things, the best diet/excerise is the one you actually do. I don’t have much to say about whether having an early eating window vs a later eating window is better for weight loss, blood sugar, etc., but I bet that doing either one is better than just not doing anything at all. When I did IF, I did not follow a keto diet and I managed my hunger with carbonated water and coffee. I found that, after a few days, I just wasn’t really hungry when it wasn’t my meal time anymore. I also tracked what I ate and lost about 20 lbs doing it (I lost about 50 lbs before it just using WW.)
Dr. Satchidananda Panda and his team at the Salk Institute have posted lots of info on time-restricted eating here:
I’m also curious about this. Skipping breakfast is still a bitch for about a week but much easier than trying to sleep while hungry. Unless there are good reasons to specify dinner over lunch, I’d say your physician may not have much enough thought into this.
Keep in mind that the worst of hunger waxes and wanes throughout the day and that after about half a week, your body will start to adjust and it’ll will start getting better. When hunger gets bad, I’d go with exercise, meditation, a hobby or leisure.
I have tried very low carb (atkins) and low carb (paleo/primal) and I don’t function well on them.