When I started fasting with just 16-18 hrs extending time window before my first meal of the day I did feel something like fear of hunger. Will it be difficult? Will it be just another torture? It was not particularly bad and on the next fasting day I would fast a little longer till I reached 24 hr between meals with small dinner at the end of the day. Last week was my first 36 hr fast, which is almost a month since I started fasting.

After several fasting days I noticed that tea with zero calorie sweetener makes me very hungry and difficult to make it to 5pm without food. I suspected other ingredients in the sweetener packet triggered insulin production and hunger till I read about “cephalic phase response”. Human brain responding to sweet taste just the same it would to real sugar in your tea.

The other thing that happened to me every time I was fasting is urge to go shopping for food. I was dreaming about wonderful things I could buy for breakfast or dinner tomorrow, and how I would prepare them. Turned out, as we were eating less on our non-fasting day in general we could not consume all the goods I was bringing home, so I started putting surplace food in the freezer. Today I went to buy toothpaste and shampoo, and could not help but walk through food isles trying to remember if we need anything. Well, I ended up with a jar of pickles – we did run out of them 🙂