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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

12 hours? Sounds like just skipping breakfast would constitute as intermittent fasting for me. My breakfast is usually pretty light anyway.

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You're exactly right. Just skip breakfast and don't eat snacks after dinner and you'll be at 16 hours easy. Try it for a week and see how you feel.

I've been IF'ing for 15 months now and it's great. Lost 20 pounds without even trying and have more energy during the day.

Turns out I IF’d all throughout high school without even knowing it!

this was my realization too when I first started hearing about IF several years back.. "I do this already, but on accident" I have never eaten breakfast in my adult life. I eat once at 11:00AM for lunch, then again at either 6:00PM or 9:00PM for dinner depending on if I train that night or not. I don't snack or drink any calories, so this is basically intermittent fasting right? It seems weird but it does make sense, I am relatively lean and don't put much effort into it.

Yes, this is basically 16:8 (16 hrs without food, 8 hr window for meals)

I'm the same way. People always nag me to eat breakfast but that actually just makes me hungrier and throws off my schedule. Generally if I don't eat anything I won't get hungry for a few hours after waking up, until 11-11:30 like you. I'll have a "big" lunch, like chipotle burrito size, then a light dinner 7-8 hours later. No snacking and stick to drinking water, black coffee, and alcohol. I remain at the same weight I was in high school and haven't fluctuated more than +/- 5 pounds over my entire adult life. It honestly rules and I don't even know how I got into this routine, just that eating breakfast usually seems gross to me.

Yeah, I read through most of the paper, and by their description I can say i've been doing TRF (Time Restricted Fasting) for most of my adult life, and occasionally IF (Infrequent Fasting) i.e the odd day.

I never had time for breakfast, and when I rarely have lunch I usually don't much feel like dinner afterwards. I've never had weight problems (yes i'm >30) but I wonder how one can self determine any of the suggested benefits beyond that... I'm tempted to buy one of those keytone measurement thingies just to see if this is really the case for someone who has never done any different.

[edit]...Thinking back, I do a lot of climbing, and I am surprised some days when I perform really well in spite of skipping eating up until that point in the day - maybe it was actually always an advantage after all as this paper is suggesting. Curious to see if my sends correlate with high keytone levels now :P

What time do you eat and how many times. Did it improve your concentration?

My window is 12:30 to 8:30, so I eat lunch, maybe some snacks in the afternoon, and then dinner. I usually try to get one more snack in right at 8:30, too. No other dietary changes, like high protein or low fat or anything; the lunch, dinner, and snacks are all normal food.

I do find that my concentration has improved in the morning, as I'm not digesting a big breakfast. I start to get a bit hungry around 11:00, but (as you'll read about if poke around the forums and such) it's not a "Ohmigod, I'm going to die!" type of hunger, but more of a "Okay, almost there. Just focus on working for another 90 minutes" hunger that kind of feels good.

Lastly, when people discuss IF, you'll hear a lot of theories about why it works, how it works, what's the best way to IF, including in this thread. But don't try to overthink it, and just try it yourself for a week. Skip breakfast, don't snack after dinner, (optional) go to bed at a reasonable time. If you don't like it, or you're not losing weight[0], then go back to your former routine. Not a big deal.

[0]But I've never heard of anybody not losing at least 1-2 pounds that first week.

I mean... it's literally named "break fast" for a reason!

Generally I've seen 16 hours being the ideal mark for daily fasting.

Purely anecdotal, have not gotten a proper BF-test and don't count calories, but it seems since I started constraining my eating to 8 hour blocks a few months ago that I've gotten visibly leaner to the tune of a couple % points. I lift daily and eat fairly clean with 2-3 cheat meals per week.

it really doesnt take much to implement an intermittent fasting regimen.

one easy way to hit it is to simply move to an 8 hour feeding window, eg 10-6

really taking advantage of the time you are sleeping as 'fasting' time, makes the concept of fasting a lot less daunting

I try to move that around a bit just to avoid feeling hungry when I go to sleep.

Surely you want hunger hitting when you approach sleep, so you maximise the time you're not conscious of the hunger (because you're asleep)?

I find it difficult to get to sleep if I'm actually hungry when I get into bed.

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