Not a typical day as an IF practitioner

I’m an intermittent fasting (IF) practitioner again and have been since the middle of August 2018 when beginning my current fitness, health and wellness journey.  

This isn’t the first time I’ve been riding the IF pony.  The first time was almost 10 years ago, and I shared my experience here at Pierini Fitness:  My intermittent fasting journey

There are several versions of IF and you can read up about them if you’re interested because I won’t explain them in today’s blogflection.  Some prefer to use the term “time restricted eating” and explain the subtle difference between it and IF.  Again, I’ll not take valuable content space here lecturing you about it.

I don’t know exactly but would guess that my average fasting period is about 19 hours, so this means my feeding window is about 5 hours.  Sometimes I fast longer and other times shorter.  Therefore, I’m guessing my feeding windows have ranged from two to eight hours in a 24-hour period.  Some would refer to a short feeding window of two hour as OMAD, an acronym for one meal a day.

I thought it would be interesting to share with you a day in my life as an IF practitioner, so I chose to share my feeding window last Saturday.

It began at 10:25 a.m. after a fasting period that started 7:40 p.m. Friday evening.  This means my fasting period was 14 hours and 45 minutes.  This is a little shorter than normal because, again, my shortest fasting period is typically 16 hours.  Friday was an atypical day and, as a result, my last meal ended much later than normal.  Typically, I like to be done eating by 6:00 p.m.

So, when beginning my feeding window, I ate three pieces of fruit – a banana, an apple, and an orange – during a one-hour period.  That was it until later in the day when I had my main meal.

It consisted of treating myself to one of my favorite meals at a restaurant I frequent about once every two months.  I treated myself to a full rack of barbeque baby back ribs and a “naked” baked potato, naked meaning I ate it plain without the typical gobs of butter and sour cream that many prefer when eating one.

What’s the bottom line of this big meal I feasted on?

BEFORE – 1,672 calories

AFTER – 0 calories

That was it?

My total caloric intake was 1,965 calories and my feeding window this day, which ended at 5:00 p.m., was 6 hours and 35 minutes.

I normally don’t pay much attention to macros except as an afterthought.  In case you’re interested, here’s how the day went in the macro department:

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.  Where’s the vegetables or, not enough fiber.

Every day is different.  Some days I’ll have a starch-centric high carbohydrate, low protein and low-fat day.  On other days, it’ll be very high fat, monosaturated fats preferred, along with balanced protein and fat day.

All in all, most days are much different but, for me, last Saturday was not a typical day as an IF practitioner.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum