Hi there. Sorry for all of the questions! I am a little concerned that my protocol is still too much food and maybe I’m mistaking withdrawal for “real” hunger per Brooke’s videos. I’m an active person just in general (walk about 5 miles per day since I live in a city and am training for a race so I run 3-6 miles several times per week). I know now not to add food because of this exercise (super helpful). I also know that I’m only a few days in so there is no way I’m fat adapted.

I’d spent a few weeks working with intermittent fasting and ditching snacking between meals. I was still eating sugar and flour so pretty much every 3-4 days I was going nuts and so my weight was staying the same. I want to pick a protocol and stick with it for 2 weeks as suggested but I keep battling with my brain saying “that’s way too much food, it won’t work, it’s more than Brooke suggests in the protocol outlines”.

So…here’s what I am eating. Should I just rip the bandaid off and eat less than this? I feel truly hungry for each meal. I’m just worried.

10am – 6oz fat free plain greek yogurt, 1oz oats, 6oz blueberries, 1oz protein power
1-2pm – huge salad (I prep them in mason jars at the beginning of the week) of greens, mushrooms, herbs, peppers, cucumbers and broccoli. I weigh out 1oz of cheese, 2 tbs dressing and 4.5 oz of hard cooked egg (3 from trader joes)
5-6pm – usually a smaller meal – 4-6oz of cooked veggies, 4oz of protein (tonight was cauliflower rice with chicken meatballs)
Then I fast from 6pm-10am (16 hours)

I know we aren’t supposed to be calorie counting but when I checked to see this adds up to about 1300.

The thoughts I keep battling with are: “This won’t work, it’s too much, it’s more protein and a whole extra meal than everyone else eats when they lose weight” and “We are going to do this for 2 weeks, see what happens and then decide”. As info, I am 5’7″, weigh 181 pounds as of this morning (was 243 5 years ago but have maintained a 60+ pound loss since then). I feel terrified of hunger and even giving up snacking a few weeks ago was a giant win for me, but I wonder if I’m being a baby by not just going for it with the two meals, no yogurt and berries (a remnant from my brief experience with Food Addicts which Brooke mentioned in her series does work and I agree but never made it longer than 3 weeks because of hunger).

Please help, thank you!