On intermittent fasting you might be able to maintain your existing diet. You have to stay 0 calorie for 16 hours each day, that means basically nothing but tea/water during the fasting period. I read lots of stories and articles about the keto diet, and found many people felt initially much better for a number of weeks/months, but then negative side effects began to surface.
A lot of studies have shown constantly bouncing in and out of ketosis is the best way, and it creates a body capable of running on fat or carbs as energy. You can purchase ketosis urine strips to test yourself and see if your fasting is working. Basically pee on the strip before your first intended caloric intake each day, and you'll know right away. !ENGAGE 40
I think I found my Ketosis Expert! Had no knowledge at all tests are around. Will check this out further.
Coffee is also ok, I hope?
Be able to eat carbs and all the rest in the 8 hours given, is perfect. Have seen too many people not looking healthy at all when either removing meat/fish from their diet or removing carbs completely. I think for most of us, such drastic changes to our diet can be ok for a short period of time, but we will start missing whatever we don't eat. At some point in time, it's really difficult to continue with such a diet. I was always told: Make adjustments that can become the new normal. What I noticed is when I go for low carb food, but still allow myself to eat carbs, I can manage for a longer period of time. Usually, when time itself starts running out on a daily basis due to work or whatever, I tend to start eating bread/protein meals against, since I love it and it's very very quick to make.
Yesterday and Today can be classified as proper intermittent fasting days for me. Yesterday it was 18 hrs no food, and today 19 hours. Let's see how I can manage the next few weeks. Am for sure motivated! Funnily enough: Your comments and information helped me to be in this positive state :)
Curious how your journey will go. I chose to ultimately forego breakfast, and those first few weeks it was like my body was trying to kill me, almost kicking drug addiction. After a week I could sense when my body ran out of sugar, because my stomach would begin churning and my mind kept telling me to eat some carbs or sugar.
In the end that feeling eventually wore off, and now I don't even think about breakfast anymore. You could do caffeine, but just remember caffeine could be a wild ride on an empty stomach if you aren't accustomed to it.
Breakfast is something I mostly skip for the last so many decades, so that is not a problem for me. I also stopped adding sugar to anything, decades ago and hardly eat sweets. In effect I was kinda half way to Intermittent fasting, usually something like 12 to 14 hours no food. But, I have the habit to eat my last bits just before going to sleep, which is not good at all. But I can experience graving for carbs (mostly bread) when ditching all the carbs from my diet, hence I believe I shall try to stick to low carb diet... or better, to mix a normal healthy mix between everything and stick to the 16 hours of fasting. The later is what I'm gone try to do and see how that works out coming period.
Thanks again for all the support and experiences!