This is the fifth week since I began my intermittent fasting. I do the 16/8 method and skip breakfast. I finish eating dinner at 8 pm, and eat lunch at noon or 1 pm the next day, leaving 16 hours in between.
Like many people who practice the 16/8 method, I drink coffee in the morning to have something so that I feel as if I had breakfast. Coffee does really help us cope with our fast in the morning, but there are some drawbacks.
The first one is sugar. Many of us put sugar or some kind of sweetening in the coffee. Well, if we have sugar, there is no point in fasting, so, it has to be black coffee.
The second thing is caffeine. It can reduce your melatonin if you wake up with coffee, which will affect your sleep at night.
It is better if you wait 90 minutes after you get up. If you get up at 7 am, you don’t drink coffee until 8:30. Also, it is good to wake you up with natural sunlight. You want to go outside to absorb sunlight in the morning.
That is why I go Nordic walking in the morning. I get up at 7 am and I help my son get ready to go to school. I leave the house with my son at 7:40, and I go Nordic walking. I come back after 40 minutes and make coffee. While coffee is being made, I do High-Intensity Interval Training and stretching for 15 minutes. By the time I finish them, it is 8:40. Then, I drink coffee.
This way I get to wake myself up with natural sunlight and drink coffee after 90 minutes of getting up.
By the time I finish my coffee, it is already 9 o’clock, and three hours to go till lunch. Coffee keeps me going and I don’t get hungry until 11 o’clock. When I feel hungry, it is only one hour to go, and I can easily bear it. I even enjoy the hunger because I know autophagy has been activated and it is regenerating my cells.
What to Eat When You Practice Intermittent Fasting
I Began Doing Intermittent Fasting
The Ikigai Diet: The Secret Japanese Diet to Health and Longevity
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