This post is about ways to incrementally change when you are eating, to shift yourself from how you are eating today, to a particular time-pattern of fasting called 16:8 (pronounced “sixteen eight”.) 16:8 means every day you have a 16-hour fast (the “not eating” window,) and then an 8-hour eating window.
I’m going to start by assuming you already want to begin fasting. I’ve written more generally about fasting if you’d prefer to start with WHY you might want to try being more intentional about when you choose to eat.
Putting yourself into “intentional” mode
You SHOULD discuss your fasting with your primary care physician. Ask them what you should be aware of, or how it may affect you—they know the specifics of your body. You will discover they actually know all about fasting and diet. If you are proactively engaged in your own welfare, your physician will be happy to be a font of useful information.
For example: My primary care doctor is well aware of the beneficial effects of diet, exercise and fasting on my cholesterol markers. They are also convinced that my lifestyle changes will not be able to sufficiently improve those markers quickly enough. Thus, our discussions and my choices continue.
(And—yikes!—if your physician isn’t helpful, knowledgeable, and open to discussion, you should find a better physician.)
Fasting is about WHEN you eat
Fasting is easy to understand: It’s about WHEN you eat. Whether we use the word fasting, intermittent fasting (IF), or time restricted eating (TRE), we’re simply referring to when you eat versus when you don’t eat.
Fasting—here, and whenever I talk about it—is not about depriving yourself, nor about starvation or suffering. It is SIMPLY being intentional about WHEN you CHOOSE to eat.
I know, I know… 16 hours without eating probably sounds like a crazy-long time to not eat. But as I said at the top, I’m assuming you are motivated to try this.
Breakfast versus break-fast
Important nuance in my writing: “breakfast” versus “break-fast”.
The meal we call breakfast got its name because it is breaking your overnight fast. See, you’ve been doing intermittent fasting, daily your entire life, every night! Then every morning you break your fast at some point. We’ve simply learned through habituation to rush to food upon waking, and so breakfast became that meal we eat early every morning. (Aside: It is not the most important meal.)
I write “breakfast” to refer to an early morning break-fast meal.
I write “break-fast” when I simply want to refer to whatever you eat, whenever it is, to break your fast each day. For example, I eat break-fast at 11:30 a.m., often with other people who simply call the meal lunch.
Diet is WHAT you eat
“To go on a diet” somehow turned into “self-deprivation to lose weight.” Your diet is simply the entire suite of things you eat. The topic of fasting is separate from the topic of diet. Where there are many reasons to change your diet, this piece only mentions things directly related to fasting.
Let’s clarify what “not eating” means: 16-hours is in reality a very short time to not eat. The only thing you actually need to ingest is water. So not-eating means ingesting just water. That’s the easiest way to do it; If it isn’t water, then don’t put it in your mouth during the fast.
There’s a huge amount of discussion about what else you can ingest without losing the benefits of fasting—plain teas, black coffee, a pinch of salt in water, perhaps even some broth. But “only water” is simple.
This transition to 16:8 IF is easier if you eliminate some of the added sugar and some carbohydrates from your diet. (Or at least change some of the carbs for lower glycemic index carbs; brown rice for white, whole potatoes for chips or crackers, etc.) High carbohydrate diets create blood sugar swings that manufacture additional hunger urges, independent of actual caloric need hunger. The on-ramp to 16:8 and the shift toward lower-carbohydrate (and don’t misread that as “low-“, or “no-“) eating reinforce each other; it’s worth doing them together.
From today to 16:8 IF
Most people eating in the Western pattern are running something like a 14- or 15-hour EATING window. So we could say that’s 10:14 IF or 9:15 IF. Again you are already fasting every day! But you cannot go from that, to 16:8 IF in one jump without suffering, (or worse, without having actual medical problems.)
Here again: Your physician understands your blood panels and if you enter into a conversation about fasting you will be much happier. Rest assured, your body is amazing and with small changes over time it turns out to be easy to get benefits from fasting. I no longer think of how I eat as 16:8 IF—it’s simply normal, healthy eating.
(The strange part is how often everyone tries to feed me. Sometimes I feel like a duck being gavaged with grain.)
Step 0: The end goal is to eat between 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
This is the eating window which fits best with the usual Western SOCIAL styles and patterns.
You can do lunches (but you’ll think of it as break-fast) and dinners with everyone else. No one even has to know you are one of those people who is intentional about WHEN they eat.
Step 1: Pin down the beginning
It turns out that your body will habituate to the TIMES you normally eat. You can move your eating window around every day, but that requires willpower to fight your physical hunger sensations. Therefore your goal is to have the same 16:8 times every day. Yes, seven days a week. Obviously, you can make exceptions any time you want. But the definition of “exception” implies that you are normally doing something the same every day.
The easiest place to start isn’t the morning. “Just skip breakfast” is not at all easy! Breakfast is the meal your BODY is most-conditioned to expect.
The easiest place to start is in the evening.
Pick a hard stop-time for your eating window and stick to it.
You shouldn’t be eating close to bed time anyway (and maybe you should also fix your sleep?) Start by daily shifting your eating window “close” time earlier, away from when you go to sleep. I recommend shifting it, then doing that for a few days, then shift again. Do that until you get to “no food after” 7:30 p.m.
Step 2: Decide about caffeine
If you’re a plain-tea drinker, you get to entirely skip this step!
Up top, I said “nothing but water.” If you’re a coffee drinker, you’ve been sweating (or in denial?) about the idea of giving up your morning coffee. Sorry, but anything you’re putting into your coffee breaks your fast. (There is debate about whether or not zero-calorie additives end the benefits of fasting—but why would you put that in your coffee?)
You are addicted to, and habituated to expect, the caffeine and the sugar and fat in your morning coffee. There I said it.
If you break your sugar addiction and habituated expectation, you will come to love your favorite coffees (or teas if you decide to switch.) I shifted to black coffee countless years ago, and now I lust after great coffee. There’s an entire world of coffee to explore and today you can’t taste any of that.
Therefore, I recommend your second step be to transition to black coffee. If you desire (you do not “need” them) the milk and the sugar, then that’s a break-fast meal. You’ll be moving that meal to later and later each day. You can have any drink you like (e.g., a latte which is half(!) milk and half coffee) with your break-fast meal. My point is simply that since you’re addicted to the caffeine, you probably want to keep the caffeine.
At this point you’re still eating whatever breakfast is your usual, but you’re now having a plain beverage that in itself won’t break your fast. In fact, you’ll soon be looking forward to that yummy coffee. When we start moving breakfast later, you can use the plain coffee as a willpower prop when the night snacking monster tempts you. “No, thank you, Snack Monster. I’m going to bed soon, and then I get to get up and have my morning coffee.” And that coffee won’t break your fast.
Step 3: Widen the not-eating window
At this point, you have a comfortable eating-window close time, and you have your caffeine addiction separated from your break-fast. (You’re still rushing to eat breakfast though.) Now you can turn your attention to breakfast.
Simply by having a set closing-time for your daily eating window (7:30 p.m.) you’re probably already doing a 12 or 13 hour fast every day. That’s already a huge win. There are real—small, but real— beneficial effects (there’s a table of hourly duration effects in there) at this fasting duration.
Your next goal isn’t to skip breakfast outright. That tends to feel punishing and creates an adversarial relationship with the whole project. The goal is to make breakfast lighter and later.
Lighter…
A low-carbohydrate first meal, eaten an hour after waking does two things: It avoids spiking insulin first thing in the morning (which triggers a wave of hunger a few hours later when it subsides), and it starts conditioning your body to run comfortably on less. The entire time you’re extending the fasting window, your body is up-regulating all the biological processes that enable you to run (for many days, by the way) on stored fat.
This is also the step where you can get creative with your breakfast and start imagining what you might want to eventually have for your break-fast meal. You can actually eat anything you desire for your breakfast. You are simply conditioned to eat, whatever it is you think breakfast is supposed to be. This is a great chance to try something else.
Later…
Don’t try to move your meal in tiny increments; That’s just day after day of feeling hungry and thinking about eating while watching the clock. Instead move breakfast a half hour (at least). That gives you time to do something. When you get the craving to eat, remind yourself what you’re doing, then go be busy with something else. The craving to eat will pass. Then eat your breakfast at the time you’ve chosen. I went so far as to plan, the night before, a few small things that I would do if I felt the urge to eat before the time I intended. (“Ah! I’m hungry… go do that load of laundry.”)
Black coffee (or plain tea) is your friend here. It provides pleasantness without breaking your fast. In the very beginning, black coffee was enough to get me through the morning while I was still thinking about food. These days, I love my morning coffee and there’s no urge to eat with my coffee. Depending on what I ate the previous day, sometimes I drink my coffee with others eating their breakfast and the food isn’t even tempting; I just love my coffee and the social aspect of the meal.
Step 4: Break-fast at 11:30 a.m.
The last adjustment to reach 16:8 is simply to continue sliding your break-fast later. An hour later this week. Another hour next week. Your hunger signals will adjust — this is not a permanent white-knuckling exercise. After a few weeks your body simply expects food at 11:30 a.m. The hunger that feels so urgent when you started turns out to have been habit, not physiology, and habits can be changed.
Epilogue
There are complex situations where you may want to be fasted at a specific time of day. You can simply shift your eating window a couple hours every day, until you’re having your break-fast after the desired time. There’s a limit to how late you can eat break-fast though, because you have to eat enough, in the “eating window” while also getting to sleep. All of which will lead you to schedule fasting-required things before 2 p.m. Or, once 16:8 is normal, you simply skip your usual break-fast for the day you need to be fasted at 3 p.m. You won’t even notice that day is a 20-hour fast.
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