I've always found fasting easier by shifting the eating window to the end of the day rather than the beginning, i.e., doing all the eating after 5PM for a nice big dinner. I've found that the initial fast-breaking in the morning seems to be what triggers hunger soon thereafter around lunch time, whereas not breaking the fast in the morning seems to make it easier to coast through most of the workday without feeling any hunger.
Agreed. It also pre-loads the calorie deficit. If you eat in the morning, you haven't accomplished anything until you fail to eat at night.
In my case, hunger is one of the few things that can cause almost complete insomnia (like, lie awake actually all night, not just fitful wakeups), which means it works much better for me if I'm hungry in the daytime, instead of in the evening.
I'm pretty sure that's why muslims break their fast at night during Ramadan. It's much easier to go through the day hungry than it is through the night.
Presumably, this is a case of "listen to your body." People's metabolisms work differently and what works for one person may not necessarily work for everyone.
Same here. If I decide to eat only between 5:30 PM and 10 PM, that's a resolution I can generally keep for many consecutive weeks, and then seamlessly resume after an occasional midday meal. If I eat my breakfast at 8:30 AM rather than 5:30 PM, then it is a Sisyphean effort for me to fast through the rest of the day. No way could I establish that as a permanent lifestyle.
I figure that if my appetite spikes while I'm sleeping, I'm very unlikely to act on it.
If I eat breakfast at 5:30 PM, I generally want another meal around 10 PM, which is about the same interval as breakfast at 8:30 AM, lunch at 1 PM. But with the latter, I also want another meal at 5:30 PM, then maybe a snack at 10 PM. For the delayed meal schedule, that would probably put increases in appetite around 2:30 AM and 7 AM, which are easy enough to ignore if I'm not awake.
So my stomach timer runs at about 4.5 hours. If I'm awake, it's difficult to ignore when it times out, and it takes about 12 hours for the "eat now" alarm to stop screaming so loudly. So skipping a morning breakfast (with some effort) and midday lunch (easily) is about the only way I can manage to skip any meals without driving myself crazy from attempting to ignore the constant "eat now" appetite signaling. It then takes maybe 20 hours before the hunger signals start, which is not so much an "eat now" imperative as "get really irritable and impatient, be more stupid, and stop enjoying whatever it is you're doing". And that seems like a good a time as any to eat. If I ever push past 24 hours, I'm just not fit for participation in civilized society for a while.
I've found the same, and for the last year I've been almost always skipping breakfast and usually skipping lunch. I've gotten used to it, and I rarely experience the gnawing kind of hunger that doesn't pass as quickly as it arises.
I wonder if I could adapt just as easily to the reverse, like gp.
I don't think it matters when you fast per se, big lunch vs big dinner vs big breakfast. Some people claim a big breakfast and light dinner is better because you aren't digesting at night. If you do eat a bigger dinner it should be eaten earlier in the evening.
