See that's crazy to me because if I go about 8 hours without eating. I've got a headache and I get very irritable. Do you believe it's just something you have to start slowly and over time get to that level of say even 1 day? Is it a metabolism thing? Or is that the bodies reaction to not having the "drug" sorta speak and having withdrawals from say sugar and carbs?
I think it varies person to person. I would suggest reading "Fast, feast, repeat", by Stephens, for suggestions on how work your way into intermittent fasting.
I think it is possible to work into it.
For example, lots of people are having carbs every 2 hours during all waking hours: breakfast, snack, snack, lunch, snack, snack, dinner, snack, snack, bed. And drinking something with sugar all throughout the day. And getting out of that can be done gradually instead of all at once.
For me, when I look back on it, I went through these steps:
1. Cut out ALL sugary beverages and ALL artificially sweetened beverages. No soda, no fruit juice, no energy drinks, no diet Coke, no flavored coffee, no herbal or flavored teas, no vanilla flavor added, no squeeze of lemon, no sprinkle of cinnamon -- none of that. Drink water, black tea, green tea, black coffee ONLY. Do just that change for a couple of weeks to get used to it. It took me 2 weeks until I wasn't craving sugary beverages. It was eye opening to me how that worked.
Just get past that first, then:
2. Cut out all snacking between meals.
3. In your meals, reduce sugar and carbs some. Increase meat, eggs, animal fat, and good plant oils (olive, coconut, avocado, and/or palm), green vegetables. Don't have to go cold turkey, and go to nothing but meat and greens. That could be too hard and cause you to quit rather than just modify to a level you are OK with and succeed.
Get used to that, and then:
4. Try moving the meals you eat closer together in time. Have the window in which you are eating be 10 hours instead of 12. Or 8 hours instead of 10. Do not eat any calories or any flavorings or any artificial sweeteners outside that eating window. No flavored beverages (like herbal tea or flavored coffee). Outside your eating window, it's ONLY water, black tea, green tea, and black coffee.
5. Once able to move eating window to be 6-8 hours, try once in a while (once a week, or whatever) a day where you eat only one big meal that day. Again, nothing other than water, tea, coffee (no sugar, no artificial sweetener, no flavorings) outside that window.
6. If you can manage that, try skipping one whole day of eating. I.e., you eat your dinner meal one day, skip the next day, then eat your lunch (or whatever) meal the day after that. If you can manage that, try it once in a while. A couple times a year, once a quarter, once a month or whatever. If adventurous, you can try skipping 2 days and see how it goes.
That's sort of the path my wife and I took into it. Now, for us, intermittent fasting is super easy. For my wife, it has been super effective -- and easy.
On top of that, there are all sorts of other things we did:
-- Exercise some. Even a walk here and there is far better than nothing. Walk after meal is most beneficial.
-- Get some sunlight on your skin (i.e., walk outside, not on inside treadmill).
-- Eat your salad as 1st thing in a meal. Helps in many ways.
-- Consume more vinegar (oil-and-vinegar salad dressing, or some folks make "posca" (old Roman drink) basically a table spoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water, and drink that at start of meal). Helps with insulin response.
-- Take a multivitamin that gives you folate, B-12, vitamin D, etc. Won't hurt you and helps if you don't get enough of those things.
-- Fish oil supplement (but I think only the stuff in bottles is the thing to take, as I don't trust oil in capsules not to be oxidized).
Good luck, my friend!
