Does Intermittent Fasting Affect Libido?

Here’s what happened when I tried it

Like everyone else, I’ve been hearing about intermittent fasting for a while. It seemed like every few weeks I’d learn about a new YouTuber or blogger who took it up and was touting its wonders.

I watched the videos, I read the articles, but I could never take it very seriously. I was sure it wouldn’t work for me.

I don’t do well with restrictions, and nothing says restriction like not being allowed to eat at certain times of the day.

I never managed to stick to any proper diet. Eliminating most fats, avoiding carbs, and trying to do away with processed foods all ended the same way — with me gradually reintroducing the foods I took out of my diet. I do much better just eating relatively healthy without imposing too many rules on myself.

I figured intermittent fasting would go the same way. I would try it for a few weeks, and then be back to eating three full meals. So, why bother? Why not skip right to the part where I stop doing it?

I’ve also never been a breakfast skipper. I hate the inconvenience of cooking and eating breakfast, but I still made sure to eat one every day.

So, every time intermittent fasting came up, I would just roll my eyes.

Then, I started getting treatment for my hormones.

Falling into Intermittent Fasting

My hormones went to shit a long time ago. For my whole adult life, they’ve been out of balance, and doctor after doctor was left stumped or flat out dismissed the issue. I only started getting the treatment I need when I turned 30.

Once my hormones started getting regulated, everything started changing. Slowly but surely, my body and my brain chemistry adjusted and I found myself getting less and less hungry.

Eating frequently became a serious struggle. If I had breakfast, I still felt completely satiated at lunch. If I powered through and ate lunch anyway, there’s no way I could even think about food at supper time.

That got frustrating because I’m not just one sick lady, I’m also a mom with lots of young kids, and young kids need routine. Now, I was either fucking with my family’s schedule or feeling like I was living in a different time frame than them.

If I skipped lunch, I’d want to eat an early supper. If I forced myself to eat lunch with the kids, they’d end up eating supper without me because I only wanted to eat really late (if at all).

Either way, Mr. Austin would end up having to make an extra meal to accommodate my out of whack schedule. Not exactly ideal (I like to keep a happy husband).

We had found a way of arranging our lives that worked well for my family, and I was throwing a wrench into it. And for what? Breakfast? Not worth it.

I still didn’t like breakfast and I was still eating it out of some weird self-imposed obligation. I really wanted to skip it, so I did what I do with every other life decision: I googled it.

This time, intermittent fasting didn’t seem so crazy. Instead of sounding restrictive, it aligned nicely with my natural appetite.

What really got my attention, though, were the purported benefits. Some of them were exactly what I needed. My chronic hormonal imbalances gifted me with two giant middle-finger-shaped symptoms: fatigue and a flattened sex drive.

I liked the idea of doing away with having to decide on one meal. Decision fatigue is a real bitch and it hits me hard — I only have so many spoons, and I don’t want to waste one trying to pick between tofu scramble and oatmeal.

Learning that intermittent fasting can raise testosterone was especially promising (my testosterone levels are so low, more than one doctor has done a double-take when looking at my charts).

And seeing intermittent faster after intermittent faster claiming that it gave the more energy and raised their libido made me downright excited to get started.

I made up my mind to try it. Mr. Austin wanted to get in on it, too, and we decided to give it a one-week trial and see how things go.

That was six weeks ago, and neither of us is planning to give it up.

My Progress Report

Intermittent fasting falls on a spectrum. Most people do an 16–8 fast (eating within a 8-hour window and fasting for 16). 18–6 felt more natural to me. It was in keeping with my daily rhythm — I didn’t have to eat an early lunch or a late supper.

I already said I was happy to get rid of breakfast, but I’m also happy to be done with late suppers. I like that the late suppers felt like a date — Mr. Austin and I don’t get a lot of time without the kids, so eating after they’re in bed felt really intimate. But that was more of a silver lining than a perk. The late supper was an uneasy fit with my early bird lifestyle — I was eating a big meal just a couple of hours before going to sleep, which wasn’t great.

I also don’t want cooking and eating supper to bleed into my boning time (I have a short kid-free and still-not-too-tired window to work with).

It took a few days to adjust to 18–6, but after that it felt natural. Lemon tea and water in the mornings suit me just fine. I don’t have to shore up my willpower to keep myself from eating outside my prescribed window — it’s more like I don’t feel the urge to eat and no longer felt the need to make myself eat.

And, more importantly, it worked.

It’s hard to gauge my energy levels because they’re always in a kind of flux (my hormones shift, my cycle affects it, and the fatigue that comes with low testosterone hits me hard sometimes). But I noticed a general trend of being able to do more, focus more, and power through more. It’s not superhero levels of energy, but it means I’m struggling a little less.

But it’s the higher libido I was really hopeful for. Being a sex writer and life-long sex obsessive who just can’t muster a full lady boner on some days bummed me out.

There is one huge, gigantic, monumental confounding variable right now though. My doctor put me on a higher dose of DHEA, which means I currently have the libido of a bonobo in heat. I quake a little whenever Mr. Austin says something even slightly dirty to me, even if it’s a casual comment in the middle of the afternoon while we’re at the grocery store.

So, my sex drive is gunning hard. But before the DHEA there were some noticeable improvements that I can attribute to intermittent fasting.

I normally have highs and lows, but my lows were super low. It’s to the point where I can completely lose my arousal for no real reason other than I need to work hard to keep it up. I can go from fully horny to not feeling horny at all within a minute and nothing can lift it back up from the floor (trust me, I tried everything).

Since I started intermittent fasting, the lows haven’t been as low, probably due to some hormonal improvements. My libido dipped, but it rarely crashed. When I lost my arousal, I still felt like I could regain it if I tried.

I was open to having sex a lot more often. I never felt helpless, like I couldn’t get there if I tried. I knew I could work myself up if I really wanted to. It was such an empowering feeling.

I realized just how much it was helping when I got a terrible sinus infection last month. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I had trouble focusing and barely got anything done. I just whined, rewatched a few seasons of The 100, and cursed at my shitty immune system. And still, during all that, I still had sex a few times because no amount of discomfort could stop me from getting those spikes of horniness. And I’m glad I got there, because it was a really nice break from feeling like hell.

(Props to Mr. Austin. Get yourself a man who’ll still fuck you when you’re sick!)

I was also what I like to call mentally horny. My mind has been deeper in the gutter since I started intermittent fasting.

I thought about sex more (quite an accomplishment, since it’s literally my job to think about sex constantly). And these weren’t abstract thoughts. My mind went to “Oh man, I could really go for some of that right now” way more often.

I started intermittent fasting because I was pissed at breakfast. But it turned out to be exactly what my body needed.

On the Upswing

Looking around online, I found divided opinions on intermittent fasting and libido.

Some people warn that it will kill your sex drive. Others swore that it would boost it.

It probably has a lot to do with differences in people’s physiologies, or where their hormone levels are.

I don’t know, I’m not a doctor (and my husband is the wrong kind of doctor). All I know is that, in my case, it definitely worked.

I’m just a sample size of one (well, two — Mr. Austin has been even hornier than usual — just when I started catching up, he went for a sprint), but I can’t deny that intermittent fasting helped me get aroused and maintain my arousal.

Now that I’m on a high dose of DHEA, feeling sexy is not an issue at all — I’m a walking mess of awkward desires. But I’m still doing intermittent fasting. DHEA suppresses some of my appetite, but even before that, it just felt right. It fit into my life really well.

Intermittent fasting gives me more energy. I lost a few pounds. And I’ve been a lot hornier since I started. I don’t know if it will last, but I’m going to keep riding this thing (and Mr. Austin) while it does.

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