Happy Saturday! If you’re new to The Diet Oracle, welcome! For the past few days, we’ve been testing out an intermittent fasting schedule from The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting by Jason Fung, MD and Jimmy Moore. Most days I will be following a 6:18 eating/fasting pattern, though this regimen includes two 24-hour fasts over the course of the week. (For more information about my routine for the week, check out this previous post.)

So let’s take a look at Day 4 and see how it went. After my first 24-hour fast, going back to the 6:18 schedule seemed like child’s play…

Breakfast: Skipped. My husband, bless the man, got up early and made waffles and bacon for the boys. So much for child’s play! I had my usual cup of coffee with half and half.

Lunch: Sausage, scrambled eggs, buttered whole wheat toast, strawberries. Obviously channeling some of that angst from having missed out on breakfast…

Snack: Tablespoon of peanut butter and 1/4 cup bran cereal (Odd choice, I know. I’ve had weird cravings for high fiber, whole grains.)

Dinner: Grilled steak, Caesar salad, slice of French bread

I can definitely say that after the full day of fasting yesterday, the 6:18 schedule was a lot easier–despite the man filling up the house with smells of breakfast deliciousness! I missed digging in with everyone else, but sat at the table with my coffee and still enjoyed their company and the sight of faces sticky with maple syrup.

Throughout the pages of The Complete Guide to Fasting, the authors repeatedly talk about the importance of staying busy and avoiding food situations when you’re fasting. These past four days, however, have really proven how impractical that advice may be for those of us who spend more hours in a kitchen than in an office. As a wife and mom to four boys, avoiding food is simply not an option. Not only that, but I spend a quite a bit of time fixing meals, clearing plates, wiping milk mustaches, sweeping up Cheerios, and any number of other food related tasks. I think anyone who is considering intermittent fasting either for weight loss or health should take a clear-eyed look at their own daily grind to gauge whether or not fasting is a realistic option.

My calorie intake for the day ended up at 1484 calories with 59% of calories from fat, 19% from carbs, and 22% of protein. Still an amount calories appropriate for weight loss with a high percentage of fat and low percentage of carbohydrate. To my surprise, the scale was only down 0.2 pounds this morning, for a total of 2.2 pounds since I started the regimen. I would have thought that after the 24-hour fast, my weight would’ve dropped more than this (if only due to water loss and such).

Alright! We are half-way through this little experiment with intermittent fasting. Day 5 is Sunday and around here, Sunday is a day of REST. So I will not be skipping any meals. I will, however, stick with 3 meals and limit snacking as much as possible. I will also be testing out one of the recipes from The Complete Guide to Fasting, homemade pizza with a cauliflower crust!