As an experiment, I’ve been trying IF all day until dinner. It feels hard, but at the same time, I think it decreases the amount of brain space I give to food drama throughout the day. I wanted to check to see if this sounds accurate to you.

Essentially, what I realized is that after about 2 weeks I got more used to the habit of not eating during the day, I still found myself wanting food. (I guess with a human body, we’ll always want food after a certain number of hours, yes?) The wanting doesn’t go away, but now my brain makes that wanting MATTER LESS. Now I think, “Oh, there’s a hunger pang. Do I want some water with lemon, or black coffee?” If the answer is yes, I go get it. And that’s all. Then I go about whatever I was doing.

Now it feels liberating to not have think about what to have for breakfast or lunch–or more like “What do I want for lunch but shouldn’t have for lunch, so now let me convince myself and use will power to get myself to have the salad instead of the fried food,” which I now see as exhausting. I don’t want to have to do that much thought work just around eating. And even when I did choose the salad, which was most days, I still didn’t feel ‘satisfied’ unless I had something sweet afterwards. And then if I had one serving of a healthy dessert, that apparently was not enough according to my brain, and I would ALWAYS want more. It required more thought work to stop eating once I started eating. And unless I kept my portions REALLY small (which did not feel fun), I’d feel tired afterwards. Then I wouldn’t feel like going back to work. That required MORE thought work! All that, just for lunch. Sheesh.

I do have a big cup of bulletproof coffee around lunch time. But otherwise I have black coffee, water, and LMNT electrolyte drink if I get a headache. Sometimes if I’m really wanting a treat l I allow myself a Pepsi Zero.

And then at 5pm I have a glass of wine or two (this is not about 100% high nutrition-only for me, as you can see! LOL it’s more about optimizing my day, my mind, my energy, and my long-term health for anti-dementia and heart disease which runs in my family) and then dinner.

So… I’m tentatively excited that this is seeming to work well for me, so far at least. But am I setting myself up for a bad situation? Is skipping all that thought work around lunch ok? Or am I avoiding huge internal issues that are then going to come out sideways in other inopportune places?

Thank you!