GUIDO PETRI

From May 29 until June 25 2016 I committed myself to a strict diet in the style of intermittent fasting. I spent 18 hours of a day with no or little caloric intake (mostly just caffeinated iced tea - about 100kcal per bottle), consuming my daily calories in the other 6 hours. My eating window was from 4pm to 10pm every day.

I'd heard of IF before - back in 2013. I spent either one or two weeks doing it but decided against continuing in the end mostly due to logistical reasons (not having food around when I could break my fast, for example). This experiment was designed to give me a new try and see how far I could make it while on IF. Originally, I wanted to start and end with the Ramadan period, but I ended up starting a week earlier and ending about 10 days before the end of Ramadan.

During the beginning week or so I had some trouble adjusting - constantly thinking of food and desperately waiting until 4pm so I could eat. After that first week, however, my body got used to it a little bit and it wasn't as bad as that initial transition. I didn't notice much change in the amount I ate every day. Mostly I just condensed all my consumed calories into those 6 hours that I could eat instead of actually reducing any caloric intake. My mood was a little bit different, but not irritable - merely constantly craving food and not really as focused as I could have been.

Overall it was an alright experiment. I decided to cut it short before the end of Ramadan because I figured I'd done my 4 weeks of toiling and was really, really, really hungry. Not one of the most difficult things I've done, but also not the easiest.