I just make sure to Atleast fast for 15 hours, that’s really it. Somedays I can make it 20 hours, some only 16 hours. But have a minimum and I treat it like a high score. Sacrifice will get you to your goal quicker.
I do a mix of 16:8, OMAD, and OMAD+ depending on how I’m feeling on the day and it’s served me well so far. I just keep to not eating before noon and after 8:00pm, along with keeping snacking to little or nothing.
I’ve lost the weight, but I love the structure. I’m more than 2 years doing this and I’m on maintenance and body recomposition. I like a 5 hour window as my baseline. 1pm to 6pm. It helps me limit my mistakes.
Where I am OK varying it is when I get really hungry around lunchtime. I just eat. Noon is cool. But when i do that, I hold fast on that 6 o’clock end time. I’m rigid.
If I don’t eat until 2 or even 3, and I don’t want to be miserable, I’ll have a proper dinner until 7, if that comes up. But I never graze into the night. And I never get up and eat. I’m always not eating until I’m properly hungry. I’m ignoring phony cues. If i get one at a time when I don’t eat, I think about what kind of carbs i ate that day. I source the complaint.
Like you, with the long daily fasts, the 20’s, even when you relax it for reasons, you’re still controlling your appetite and closing the digestion factory. It’s good business for your body.
I eat between 5pm and midnight. That doesn’t mean I always start right at five or finish at midnight. If I think of it all as eating time, then I’ll overeat. It’s just when I can eat. Since May I’ve had 12 days when I ate outside of that window. 11 when out of town on vacation and Christmas day. Even then, I didn’t go crazy. This has resulted in a slight calorie deficit over the long term without counting calories or restriction of any particular food.. Sweet.
I just eat once* per calendar day, whenever it suits me best, disregarding** the concrete arrangement and duration of fasting and eating windows. Some “days” (portions of consecutive calendar days really, encompassing complete eating+fasting cycles) then end up yielding odd constructs such as “30:4” (fasted for 30 hours since the end of the previous meal, then proceeded to eat for 4 hours; e.g. long-lived social dinner, “cheat” movie time w/ junk food, etc.) or “16:1” (e.g., supposing that the 4-hour eating window in the previous example took place between 19:00 and 23:00 yesterday, and I reverted back to my stock late lunch at 15:00 today), but the vast majority of times it’s a plain 23:1 or 22:2 (then followed by a 22:1 or 21:2 the day after, and so forth).
If left to my own devices, I generally opt for consistency, as it allows me to better observe (and reinforce) my natural hunger and satiety signals. I’ve settled specifically for lunch because I’m way less likely to crave dessert or alcohol with that meal, whereas dinner I’m preconditioned to view more as a source of pleasure than merely one of energy.
*I loosely define a meal as the food consumed in a single sitting with ahead-of-time intent; e.g. it’s “fine” to have 5k kcal worth of pizza over several hours, iff that had all along been the plan; it’s however not okay to spontaneously have a mandarin 15 minutes after lunch was declared done, so that would count as a separate meal.
**I still track those metrics albeit on a longer-term basis (currently my average hovers around 22:2 after 230 days); day-to-day, as long as I’ve fasted for at least 12 hours since the last meal (pretty difficult not to) and spent no longer than 8 hours fed, all is good.
I’m not organized or disciplined enough rn to do a rigid fixed schedule. I eat at different times of the day throughout the week and fast for different lengths (14-24 hours) of time. I’m still losing weight.
After I’m done recovering from my knee replacement surgery and able to go back to the gym, I will try to get back on some kind of schedule. I like to work out in the morning and break my fast afterwards, but even then my fasting time will fluxate between 16-20 hours with a 24-36+ hour fast sprinkled in from time to time.
I was losing 3lbs a week average before my surgery and have still managed 1 lb a week average after my surgery whilst sitting on my ass most of the day.
I started very strict, two 36 hour fasts a week, then began playing with times and fast length when I looked the way I wanted to.
Now I still do two fasting days a week, but will often cut the fast at 24ish hours if I like what we are having for dinner.
At the beginning, a strict schedule helped me build the habit. At this point, OMAD just feels normal and I don’t worry much about the timing. I eat my meal after work, which keeps the timing fairly consistent during the week, but some days something comes up and it’s a bit later than usual. On weekends, I frequently eat a few hours earlier than I do during the week.