Intermittent fasting became a trend and I decided to test it myself. 16:8—sixteen hours of fasting, eight-hour eating window. For me, that meant skipping breakfast, eating from noon to 8 PM, and otherwise not eating. This wasn't about weight loss, or not primarily about weight loss. I was curious about the claims—the autophagy, the cellular repair, the metabolic benefits.
The wellness claims are dramatic. autophagy is a real thing—your cells do clean up during fasting. The metabolic benefits are real too, or at least the research is suggestive. Not proof, but suggestive.
My experience: the first week was hard in a way I didn't expect. Not because I was hungry—I expected hunger. But because breakfast had been a habit so deep I didn't realize I was doing it. My hand would reach for food at 7 AM out of pure muscle memory. The coffee I'd always had with toast was suddenly just coffee, and it felt weird without the food.
Hunger itself came in waves. Around 10 AM, a spike. Around 1 PM, another spike. By 2 PM, mostly gone. By the time I started eating at noon, I was hungry, but not desperately so.
What I noticed by week two: the hunger spikes were manageable. Not because I was getting used to it—though I was—but because I started noticing them without reacting. I could feel the hunger and just... notice it. Let it be there without acting on it.
Hunger is a signal. It tells you something. But like all signals, it doesn't require immediate action. You can feel hungry and wait. The sky doesn't fall. The world continues. You don't die if you don't eat for a few hours.
The wellness influencers present this as a hack for willpower, but I think it misses the point. The thing I actually learned was about the difference between hunger as a signal and hunger as an emergency. Most of the time, when I thought I was hungry, I wasn't actually hungry. I was bored. Anxious. Tired. Looking for something to do with my hands and mouth.
The fasting window made this visible in a way it hadn't been before. I could see the pattern. The 10 AM hunger was never about food. It was about the mid-morning slump at work. The 3 PM hunger was about the post-lunch crash. The "hunger" was a request for stimulation, not nutrition.
By month two, I'd stabilized at a routine. Some days I'd eat breakfast anyway, if I was hungry. The religion around it isn't helpful. I didn't become a convert. I just added a tool to my collection.
The actual benefits for me were less dramatic than the claims. No dramatic weight loss. No sudden energy. But I did learn something about hunger that I think will stick.
It's just a signal. It passes if you let it.
That's useful to know.
The hunger will come back. It always does. The question is whether you need to act on it.
Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't.
The signal isn't always right. It's just a signal.
I'm still practicing. Still learning the difference.
But I'm getting better at waiting.
