This is the 10th week of the third quarter in my Hare and Ke intermittent fasting. In the third quarter, I have been practicing 24 hours fast one day a week. In the beginning, I was doing dinner to dinner 24 hours fast but I tried doing lunch to lunch 24 hours fast last week and I did it again yesterday.
Having done it twice, I find lunch to lunch 24 hours fast easier than dinner to dinner 24 hours fast. When I did dinner to dinner 24 hours fast, that last 4 hours had been the hardest part, but with lunch to lunch 24 hours fast, the last 4 hours are in the morning and I don’t get hungry in the morning. I am so used to not eating in the morning from my regular 17 hours fast, it feels the same as usual.
That is good news because it is better for circadian rhythms. It is preferable to activate autophagy during your sleep, and the earlier you have dinner, the more effective it is.
People in blue zones tend to eat dinner early around 5 pm or 6 pm. In Japan, too, we used to eat only two meals a day until around 1700, and we had lunch around noon and had dinner around 4 pm.
The only drawback of lunch to lunch 24 hours fast is that you can’t have dinner. Dinner is often the most important meal since that is when all family members get together.
However, in my case, I don’t have dinner with my family on Monday. My wife and son have dinner at the in-law’s house. It is the perfect time to skip dinner.
If you have dinner with your family every day, another option is to do it on the weekend．In that case, you can have big lunch with your family and that can be your family bonding time. You can’t do it though if you practice Hare and Ke Intermittent Fasting and place Hare period on the weekend.
In that case, you would have to prioritize family bonding time and do dinner to dinner 24 hours fast. I don’t think it would make that much difference, anyway. Some people get hunged up with the detail like that, but it may not be worth going through all the trouble just for a slight change.
You can try to have dinner early though if your family members can come home early. You can have dinner around 5:30 and finish dinner at 6 pm.
Another option is to do lunch to lunch 24 hours fast together. Or at least you can get them to do 16 hours fast by skipping dinner. If it is only once a week, they can do it, too.
By the way, my son doesn’t want to have breakfast recently. He doesn’t get hungry in the morning. Because I don’t think intermittent fasting is good for kids, I tell him to have breakfast, but he sometimes skips breakfast on the weekend, which is the only time I have breakfast.
The Ikigai Diet: The Secret Japanese Diet to Health and Longevity
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