When we start Daily Intermittent Fasting, we gradually change our thinking from Diet Mentality to Lifestyle Mentality.  Diet Mentality (which is actually responsible for many of us not reaching our weight and health goals) says that week days are for self discipline and strictness—and weekends are for excess. This cycle yields a net gain or net balance of weight for most traditional dieters. Our week day perfection is undone in two or three short weekend days of indulgence.

With Daily IF, we no longer need to go off and on. We no longer need to “suffer through the week” in order to reach the weekend splurge. We can follow our new Daily IF seven days a week! You might need to adjust your eating window for certain occasions (any of the seven days a week that an occasion arises), but the whole idea of gluttonous weekends is now behind us!

It’s easy to say that we should treat weekends like every other day, but other people do not do that–and we live with other people. Thus, rather than treating weekends differently than you do weekdays, consider each day’s schedules, meal plans, social events, etc. The problem with acting like weekend days are different than every other day is that even if we don’t have something special on the weekend, we still often have our guard down and eat indulgently  (with the Diet Mentality).

Instead, look at each day and plan your longer fasting window/shorter eating windows and vice versa on each day’s merit–not based on where it falls on the calendar. If you have a party Thursday night, plan your eating window around that. If you have a Sunday family dinner at noon, plan your fasting window around that. Treat all seven days the same–with longer and shorter windows based on each day’s activity, while still keeping your fasting hour average where you want it to be.

Again, this is a Diet Mentality. There’s no perfection in eating–and no over-indulgence in eating–with Daily Intermittent Fasting. If you want some low carb days to put yourself into fat burning faster, have them (any day of the week!). If you want ice cream on Wednesday, have it! If you have a birthday party on Thursday, eat cake!

When we assign “good foods” to weekdays and “bad foods” to weekends, we give ourselves license to overeat, eat outside our eating window (“I’m already blowing it today with a lunch then a birthday party!”), and wreck everything we’ve done all the other days. Eat what you want when you want it–based on your schedule and social events for the week.

Like we taught our children with doing their schoolwork and chores, “every day can’t be special.” Life is life. It is filled with a lot of ordinary days (and many wonderful ones and many ordinary ones that are also wonderful!). When we start extending our eating window every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we are back in the Diet Mentality (and we have trouble getting our fasting average per day back up!).

Extending your eating window for a carry-in lunch at the office on Tuesay, eating with the grandkids on a Wednesday at noon while you’re cutting their PB & J sandwich, a Friday birthday party at noon, Saturday brunch with the family, and Sunday dinner at your favorite Mexican restaurant all just made your fasting window way too short for health and weight management and fat burning–and your eating window way too long to control total intake. Judiciously choose (ahead of time!) which days you will have long fasting windows and which days will have not so long fasting windows. Every time you shorten your fasting window under 16-18 hours, you run the risk of not getting your body into fat burning those days.

One way that weekends can be different and challenging to Daily IF is that we are often not as busy as we are during the work or school week. Another difficulty is, of course, that people eat out and have events morning, noon, and night on weekends!  In order to keep the Daily IF hours fairly high on the weekend, we need to look carefully at our schedules and fill our time up with non-food activities.

Look at each weekend day and see when you can fast FOR YOU! Then look at your schedule and fill down time that is not in your eating window with things you enjoy. Plan activities that you can’t eat while you do–reading to your children; taking a walk, run, or hike; yoga; cleaning; organizing; knitting or other hand crafts; etc. Plan your down hours so that you don’t find yourself bored and wandering out to the kitchen looking for food. Also plan for really yummy foods that you can look forward to. Sometimes just knowing that you’re going to have a favorite food during your eating window can help you be strong even during slower times of off days.

#1 Your Fasting Window Might Not Be Long Enough to Burn Through Your Glycogen Stores: IF Journal Episode 4

#2 You Might Not Experience Appetite Correction (AC) in a Longer Eating Window: Appetite Correction by Burt Herring

#3 You Will Likely Consume Too Many Calories for Weight Loss to Take Place: Delay, Don’t Deny

#4 Your Body Will Experience the Other Benefits of Daily IF More Fully. The Obesity Code

#5 You Will Likely Experience More “Personal” IF Benefits With a Shorter Eating Window: IF Journal Podcast

IF Fasting Journal here at Donna Reish

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