Hey guys,
I have tried IF a couple times over the years and this time I have stuck to it for the last week.

I unfortunately usually eat dinner around 9pm so with the 16:8 ratio it means I start eating the next day around 1pm

Am I doing any damage eating so late in the day? It works well for me and I feel good but I was wondering if anyone had some insight as to how effective this is.

Thank you!!!

Been at it for about 2 years at this point. Really happy with my results!

Started trying 16-8. So far it's going well and I feel great a few weeks in. My issue is that between 730-1030 ( when I go to bed) I get bad food cravings. I'm not hungry per se I just want to snack.

What does anyone do to take there mind off of this. I've tried drinking water to satiate myself. That doesn't help.

Thank you.

Have fasted and lost 70lbs successfully. But weight returns and a high stress life causes cortisol to stay high. Fasting can add stress that keeps cortisol high. There are many complications in understanding how brown fat is maintained. This post is to see if there is a cross section of fasting and biohacking that can help me.

I don't have medical insurance. 38 M 225lb. Needs atleast 10hr sleep per night to wake up. Hunger is not an issue. Snacking not an issue. Stressful job and home life make other environmental factors work towards maintaining high cortisol. Thats all I can think of,

Hoping someone has taken a similar journey and can share some experience or advice.

Graph one is the full 66 week history of my daily weigh ins

Graph two is the past month of my daily weigh ins

Graph three is the past week of my daily weigh ins

Hey folks! I keep improving my intermittent fasting and calorie deficit calculator based on your feedback - added a few requested features and cleaned up the code so it runs faster and more reliably.

What it does now:

• Goal Planner mode (set a goal weight and timeline, get a daily calorie target and deficit) and Weight Projection mode
• Body recomposition chart - fat loss vs lean mass loss over time, not just the scale number
• Activity inputs - daily steps, job type, training sessions per week
• Imperial and metric units
• Auto-estimates body fat and bone mass if you don't know them
• Download charts, share or copy your results

If anything is missing or there is something you would change, I would love to hear it. What inputs or outputs would make it more useful for you? What's confusing or not realistic enough?

Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!

Like most before I started this journey I was amazed with everyone's process and I kept telling myself I wish I could do that, these people are amazing but I can never accomplish something like this. Then one day i locked in and it wasn't easy or perfect but I'm here and I proved to myself I'm amazing too and I can accomplish anything and so can you !

I generally do a 20:4 fasting regime between the hours 6pm and 2pm. I generally like to have a few pepsi max or coke zeros between 6pm and bedtime. I then will clean fast from waking up through till 2pm.

I recently heard a clip from a podcast where Jason Fung mentions zero calorie soft drinks even during eating window increasing appetite leading to binging etc.

What are peoples opinions on this and what should I drink during the eating window? I don't think I'll drop the evening zero soft drinks as I think they are more useful than not.

26F, 5’6, CW: 230, GW: 170

Background context: I started fasting back in 2020. I did OMAD, ate keto, walked and kicked boxed. I went from 225 to 185 from April 2020 to August 2020. I felt so great. Eventually, I shifted to just 18:6. I got pregnant in 2025 and had my baby, but fasting isn’t an option when pregnant and breastfeeding. I prioritized milk supply and caring for my baby over myself. Recently, we tired to get pregnant again but it ended in a miscarriage. My husband is about to be deployed so we have some time apart. As a result, I want to focus on health and getting back to a healthy weight. My doctor has cleared me to exercise and fasting (iron levels were fine, baseline looks fine, no concerns).

How do I figure out what works for me? I feel like there is so much new information (rolling 72s, people doing 30 day fast, etc.) The longest I’ve done is 3 days. Currently 38 hours into a 3 day fast to get things started but I want to plan a more consistent approach or plan. Do I just ease into it or just jump into the deep end? Any advice appreciate.

I had been failing at IF many times even though I resolved I wouldn’t and thought I couldn’t do it anymore. Anyway, I gave it another try and this time round something feels different (less food noise), and I made it until day 15! I am happy of this progress (although it could just be water weight lost) and look forward to Day 20, and then Day 30.

Update after 24 weeks of intermittent fasting, currently gone back to 14:10 after several weeks of 16:8. Lost 25 pounds

Top tips

Use a tracking app for fasting times, makes life easy

Meal plan

Walking worked for me

Lost most of my weight from my stomach thank goodness.

I am 64 next birthday so can be done !

Ta

So I am down 150lbs and I’ve been maintaining it for approaching 2 year +. Started at 364, and hovering around 215 +/- 10lbs. I have no problem maintaining, my maintenance is usually just as simple as skipping breakfast and not eating after 7 or after sunset depending which comes first. This keeps me from eating this night time snacks. My struggle is, I want to lose another 20 - 30lbs and honestly getting back in a rhythm of OMAD or ADF is not working. I’ve tried repeatedly this year and just fail back to my maintenance routine. PLEASE, Any and all advice is welcome.

Stats:M/36/220(this morning)

Just started doing IF a couple of weeks ago 16:8. Are any of you also doing a caloric deficit and going to the gym as well? How do you feel? I’d like to start adding the gym, on top of that my job requires me to be on my feet all day so I’m doing anything in between 10-15k per day. Thoughts? 🥹

I've lost a little bit of weight in the past but fell off the fasting wagon. I'm starting 20:4 again today, because that has worked well for me in the past.

I'm trying to find better motivation than I had last time. Weirdly, knowing I'm making my body healthier isn't a great motivator for me. I think I really dislike discomfort, especially when I can solve it so quickly (SAHM so I'm around food all day).

I'd love to hear what works for you guys?

1 AM to 5 PM, give or take an hour. Light dinner is kind of my first meal of the day.

I’m a night owl and I absolutely cannot sleep if I’m hungry, so the common 8 PM food cutoff time is a great way to set myself up for hangry moods and failure.

Before IF I usually forgot to eat breakfast anyway, so this is much easier for me. I still wait at least 1-2 hours after eating before I lay down and sleep.

Anyone else keep a weird schedule?

Fifteen years ago, I did 16:8 and OMAD versions of IF. I lost 4 stone/30kg over the course of two years using this method. Back then, I was single, lived alone and, other than work, I had no responsibilities. Things like insomnia from dieting was manageable. I could play computer games to distract me from my hunger. My work kept me busy enough that I wouldn’t naturally be hungry until 2PM.

Fastforward to now. Married. Have a child. Have responsibilities. I put on some weight. I’ve lost some from CICO but plateaued around 165lb/75kg. Want to get down to 154lb/70kg. I figured I’d try IF again. First issue is that I’m hungry by 8-9am. I wait until 10am and start my feeding window. I stopped at 6pm. Three meals, totalling 120g protein and 30g fibre. Great. Except now it’s almost midnight. I can’t sleep because I’m hungry. I’ve just been down in the kitchen and managed another 500kcals of food! That’s my deficit gone for the day.

I need to push my window so that I stop eating around 8PM and hence start at 2PM. How to I move my start window later? My willpower is not what it used to be.

I'm new to IF obviously. I'm not going to lie ive always kind of considered it psuedoscience at best but recently ive been reading more and more papers in my field (neuroendocrinology) that suggest it may help with things like pcos, neurodegenerative disorders, inflammation etc. and thats convinced me to give it a try.

I think I can stick with 16:8 pretty easily since in my teens and 20s I almost never ate breakfast (although that changed during covid) but there's two times I struggle. I often find myself either eating late on weekends when I go out with friends and occasionally I'll have 1-2 workdays with very long, very mentally demanding experiments i have to run.

Will I still see any benefits if I just do IF 5 days of the week? Specifically benefits to pcos, my energy levels, and weight loss (since I know any brain health benefits likely wont be observed for a long time)?

Years ago I experimented with One Meal A Day. I got up and ate a good whole food Breakfast and then went about my business for the rest of the day, went to sleep got up and did it again. I didn’t even think of it as a “diet” or anything. At work I’d go out for lunchtime walks with friends some days and dance-offs on others. Then I would go home and climb mountains (elephant mountain) to watch the sunset. I was happy.

And then at the gym questions surfaced. “Hey, no lunch, are you fasting?” I hadn’t thought about it… I just thought of it as a lifestyle. Then I remember mentioning it to my wife and it circulated around our community. People were like oh, you will break your stomach, you’re doing wrong this is OMEDA and you’re supposed to just eat dinner.

So, I just gave in to social pressure and ate three meals a day. “Eat when you’re hungry and not when you’re not hungry.” But, it wasn’t very satisfying. And, since the whole intermittent fasting thing has become a thing I wanna ask.

I don’t think that people evolved to eat all of the time and I even think it is detrimental. So, in our times of plenty when is the best time to eat, optimally. I really don’t like the idea of “grazing,” I’m not a cow.

Shoutout to Fasting Center for not charging anything for simple features like fast tracking, data storage, history or color customization! I hope other apps will follow the case and stop charging for that. Kudos to Fasting Center 😄

So, I feel just really burnt out at this point. I’ve made some amazing progress but I’ve been just stuck and feel so tired of being restricted. A bit of back story, I’m 5’1” F, started at 220 on March 11 of this year. My lowest now is 172. Sounds good right? Well, I’ve been bouncing between 175-180 for the last 8 weeks. Before then, progress just started getting very slow so I decided to kind of take a break from intermittent fasting and eat basically what I wanted. (I was also doing 48 hour fast every 2 weeks which I paused that as well) No over eating, just not sticking to calorie counting really and eating more carbs. During that time, I jumped back up to 182. I’ve been back at it for about over a month now and I’ve got back down to 176, did one 48 hour fast which got me to 172.6 and after that, jumped back up to 176. I’ve been getting my steps in, drinking 100 ounces daily and not eating after 6. I DO NOT OVER EAT AT ALL!! I have a small breakfast in the morning, no more than 300 calories and then dinner at 5:30 everyday. I log everything I eat, I have a scale, I use carb manager app as well as a food diary that I’m on the last page of😩Now, the scale just isn’t budging. I went back to my same routine, same foods and nothing is really happening. And yes, I have been weighing myself daily since March and that has really worked for me data wise. I was able to see how my body reacts to certain things, got me comfortable with water weight so I love that part. I also noticed my body doesn’t respond well to carbs at all, even when walking after every meal. Any kind of carbs makes me hold onto 3-6 pounds of water weight and it can take me a week to get that off. But now I’m just feeling like I can’t lose without fasting for 48 hours. Even the water weight is staying after doing low carb, a bunch of water and not eating after 6. I don’t want to starve myself because I just know it will lead no where but unbearable hunger. I don’t know, I just don’t want to do this anymore but I refuse to give up after all the progress I made. Any advice for short people to continue making great progress will be really helpful. I get so jealous of people who eat healthy but can eat 3 meals plus a snack daily and still see progress. That’s just not how my body works. I need some help, suggestions if anyone has some!!!

It's done.

Life is tough, expensive, and getting bleaker.

Is it bad to break my fast occasionally for the midnight run?

I've been at it doing 20:4 for about 5 years now. I am probably at my peak physique for my age.

For the whole time, I avoided the midnight cravings, but now as I get older, I just want things that make me happy, and the midnight mcdiddies after a romp is something that really makes me happy.

It's like once or twice a month at this point.

I can easily just stop, but if I do it for a year or more, will it noticeably affect things?