I started intermittent fasting in the new year. I shared an update 2 weeks in – it was looking positive.
7 months in, I think intermittent fasting (or IF) is here to stay. I have fallen in love the simplicity of eating one fewer meal and feeling healthier.
3 weeks ago, we made a slight change that resulted in a large improvement to an already great experience.
For the first 6 months, we ate roughly in the 8 or so hours between 1 and 9. I say roughly because there some variability in the evening depending on when our kids went to bed. As they’ve been gradually staying up well past 8pm, our dinners gradually got later too.
So, we decided to test eating between 830am-430pm instead.
This has turned out to be a masterstroke as it accomplishes a few things at once. First, it ensures we finish our last meal well before we sleep. We’d attempted to do this by doing our dinners with our kids. With a 3.5 year old and a 2 year old, those experiments turned out to be a bit of a farce. :-) So, after a few attempts, we concluded that we’ll have to wait a couple years before family dinners become a reality.
Second, we get a nicer variety of food as breakfast becomes one of the two major meals. That somehow changes the equation vs. lunch and dinner.
And, finally, we’ve unlocked an extra hour of sleep.
It is amazing how tiny habit changes can unlock so much daily happiness (and productivity). This is definitely one of them – a keeper.
