I understand wanting to eat together and adjusting your window to allow for that makes sense. My husband is like your partner and while he doesn’t understand my IF habits he supports me. A few things that have helped us:
When I am doing a longer fast I ask him not to bring certain things into the house that will tempt me. Sometimes there is a no pizza protocol, he is very patient with me.
When eating together I usually start with a salad and eat it slowly. It keeps me from eating as much as he does and the salad helps fill me up on good stuff.
We do try to do more non-eating activities. Walks, bike rides, window shopping, etc
Sometimes if he is eating and I’m tempted outside my eating window I’ll occupy myself. I’ll take a shower, take the dog out, make a phone call.
Hope some of this helps. It is hard going it alone but talking to your partner, explaining your goals and asking for support can go along way. Maybe you two can figure out what works for you, together. Good luck.
My husband eats whatever he wants all day while I fast. When he’s home on the weekends, I’ll make him what he wants for breakfast and lunch. I decide what sounds good for dinner every night and I cook it for us! He always loves what I make for dinner so its really what sounds good to me!
I still eat lunch and dinner with my family, I just skip breakfast. I’ve also eliminated late night snacking (which was a big problem of mine). If myhusband still wants a snack, he will intentionally eat something he knows I don’t like to make sure I’m not tempted!
That sounds a great eating window and it’s similar to mine. Now I just skip breakfast. Well, actually I don’t skip it: I just don’t eat it until lunchtime. My porridge is now the first course of my lunch, which means that my lunch is smaller. And I still eat with my wife in the evenings. I just don’t snack afterwards, even if she does. It’s much easier just say I’m full after eating a meal with her. And if I want a drink I have it with the meal. We’ve usually finished eating before 8pm so that means I can break my fast earlier than noon most days. Good luck!
I skip breakfast and eat a very small lunch around 1 or 2, and then have a decent sized dinner with my boyfriend. He definitely eats whatever he wants but this let’s me snack a little too and still watch my weight.
I eat from 12pm - 8pm. If I’m around my family while they’re having breakfast, I’ll sit down with them and have a cup of coffee, or drink some water. When my daughter offers me food, I either say “no thanks,” or “I’m not hungry right now.” I’ll take pretend bites if she asks me to. We try to start dinner between 6-7pm, so we can all eat together normally before my eating window ends.
I’ve been doing this for six months now, so I’m no longer personally tempted to eat when other people are eating. With a noon - 8 window, you’re really only missing breakfast and late night snacks. Just make it as normal and congenial as you can for yourselves, and it shouldn’t be a big deal for very long.
Part of the issue with weight gain, over consumption, and eating things that are bad for us is mental. We need a mentality that food is to fuel the body, not something that needs to be done for entertainment or comfort. Just because your partner is eating doesnt mean you need to. Keep practicing that mentality and it will become a lifestyle, rather than a chore that you struggle with.
My husband eats like food is going out of style but you’d never know it looking at him. I on the other hand…lol.
We have totally different eating habits too, besides the fact that he eats for a family of 3 and doesn’t gain a lb while I gain weight just LOOKING at a piece of pizza. I’m an early eater. I like breakfast, always have, always been my biggest meal of the day. My husband doesn’t get hungry until around noon, but he’ll eat all day long including snacks.
So this IF thing has been a doozy. The first few weeks I did it, I felt like we could never eat together! It really bummed me out because we love cooking together. So here’s what we did.
I started eating a little later, around 11 or 12, and we make a nice big healthy breakfast/brunch together. It’s been awesome.
I’m usually ready for dinner around 4 or 5, sometimes 6, and then I’m done for the day. I always ask if he’s hungry before I start cooking, and if he is then we will make an early dinner together.
And that’s it. I don’t eat again when he has his second dinner as he calls it, or his 48485926 snacks throughout the day. I’m not very hungry in the evening anyway, so it’s not tempting when he comes into bed with a bowl of cereal at 10pm. However, if he’s going to eat earlier than my usual eating window in the morning, I go take a walk or get on my exercise bike. It’s too tempting in the mornings when I have a harder time fasting to be around food. Especially if he’s eating something like crepes or pancakes. GTFOH with that 😂
My husband can eat a lot more than what I should be eating so I wanted to try and eat less… problem is that I was addicted to food. I had to start with a water fast to break away from the addiction. I was successful and lost 50 lbs that way by throwing random 3 day water fasts in between OMAD days. Now I had my second child and I gained the weight back it took me a solid month to convince myself to stop eating with / like him but I always have to start with a water fast. The first day is so tough but I’m on my second day and he ate chips and salsa next to me and I had no issue. The beginning is super fragile (IF or fasting) so you have to get your partner on board and maybe explain you won’t be making food decisions, won’t be preparing any food and want to avoid them eating right in front of you at first. Once I got comfortable last time, I was able to just sit alongside and skip whatever meal it was if it was out of my window or on a full fasting day. I was just straight up addicted to food.
I fast earlier in the day when my husband isn’t home. On weekends he knows if he cooks breakfast, to pack it up for me and I eat it later. We usually eat dinner together which is in my eating window, then I eat a dessert-ish snack not too long later so I don’t feel like I’ve missed out if he goes for ice cream later at night.
Same boat 100%. My partner eats a ton. Even before IF it was hard for me to just learn that I need to eat less volume wise than he’s eating… like when I’m putting food on our plates I need to give him twice what I give myself. We were generally taking turns making pretty much every meal but I was often skipping lunch anyway or just having a snack before IF because 3 full meals already felt like more food than i needed.
I made my eating window 11-7 so we could have dinner together. One thing that helped a lot is I’ve started prepping breakfast burritos every weekend to keep in the freezer. That way he has a decent breakfast on the days i would’ve made breakfast before, and i have something i can quickly warm up because eating at 11 can be awkward with my work schedule. Hes still on his own for lunch and we take turns making dinner as normal. I make sure to have a bit of something sweet right before my window closes so i dont feel so jealous while hes consuming 1000+ calories worth of dessert in front of me lol.
Good Morning Are you using any kind of App to keep track of things fast,food,water,exercise? There is App for everything lol “Simple App” is a great tool to use I have been IM fasting since October 22nd 2021 SW 300 my CW is 273 GW is under 200 pounds Have a great Day
I do 18:6 or OMAD fasting, seven days a week (unless there’s a raging party about to happen– e.g., Christmas, when I will Not be fasting and will eat whenever I want while visiting family for the holiday) but my wife does not do IF. If she’s going to fix something, she’ll just ask if I want anything, and if I’m still in my fasted window, I say no, thank you. If I’m in the feeding window, we prepare our food and eat together. She snacks at night sometimes but I just don’t, albeit I’m down in my man-cave sometimes, so her snacking doesn’t bug me. If we have an evening football game or something special on the tube, sometimes I’ll push my fasted window further into the afternoon that day, and then snack later into the evening with her while we watch TV. and then the next morning I push my fast further into the afternoon, to make up for the late stoppage-of-eating (snacking) the previous evening. Works out well, for us.
I do IF and my boyfriend eats whenever he wants, and believe it or not we do eat our meals together lol.
I do 18:6 with my eating window generally 1PM-7PM, so that’s our lunch and dinner. My boyfriend skips breakfast just like me (self employed so he wakes up late). The only difference is at midnight he basically has a third meal or snacks heavily while I don’t.