A Quick Hack to Help Intermittent Fasting

My intermittent fasting plan restricts eating to between noon and 8 PM. Sometimes intermittent fasting is hard because I get hungry. I've noticed instead of committing not to eat for X hours it's sometimes mentally easier for me to commit not to eat until after I finish drinking X cups of water, coffee, or tea.

Even if I end up eating earlier than noon on those days, it seems to be nearly noon and I may stop eating earlier to compensate. Such noon-breaking events seem to occur less frequently than on days where I am hungry but I do not adopt my commitment to drink three cups of liquid. I am also often surprised by the fact that on mornings where I am hungry and I do drink three cups of tea, my hunger sometimes completely vanishes for a while, or drinking cups of liquid may take me until after noon or 1 PM.

I try to drink 3 cups of (sipping while I work, not just chugging them) and this winds up basically holding me over until noon.

Tea seems to work best because drinking three cups of coffee can actually make me even more hungry but tea doesn't seem to. I still get a bit of caffeine though.

I'm generally a huge fan of fasting including water fasting and intermittent fasting, although the use cases are very different. For sustained weight loss, particularly in combination with intense exercise, I recommend intermittent fasting. I've utilized it mainly this year, since January, and I've lost 30 lbs from 205 to 175 to date, in combination with exercise. 175 is actually up from a low of 170, and my goal is in the 165-170 range so I'm fairly happy, in particular considering that I've gained strength. My body fat percentage is almost exactly 10% today.

Water fasting does lead to some quick weight loss, but I don't really recommend it for that purpose, although perhaps occasionally it may help. I love water fasting for resetting caffeine and other chemical tolerance levels, for breaking food addiction, for promoting deep sleep, and for mental clarity. There is also a religious element to water fasting for me.