The 3–8–2 Formula For Fasting 13 Hours A Day Without Being Miserable

It’s easier than you think and doesn’t involve starving yourself

No, intermittent fasting by itself won’t make you lose weight, become super productive, or change your life.

But when clubbed with a calorie deficit and done using the right strategies, it can help you manage your health and productivity better.

Here are some tricks I use to fast for more than half the day without starving myself and being miserable.

Appetite Suppressants

In the mornings, when I start to feel hungry, I drink black coffee to temporarily delay eating breakfast.

Zero-calorie drinks like green tea and black coffee have been proven to suppress your appetite by making you feel full for an hour or two without breaking your fast.

If hot beverages aren’t your thing, here’s a list of some other cooler appetite suppressants that have zero calories.

Personally, I like writing in the mornings on an empty stomach but not feeling hungry either, due to having had coffee. Because when I’m not thinking about food or digesting it, I can put all my energy towards producing my best work.

Suppressing your appetite without feeling hungry can be great in this manner for your productivity too.

Sleeping More

When you’re asleep, you don’t feel hungry and can’t eat. So, the longer you sleep, the longer and easier your fast will be.

It’s simple math. If you eat dinner 3 hours before bed and sleep for 8 hours, by the time you feel hungry in the morning, you’ll already be done with 11 hours of fasting.

Sleeping for 8 hours a night being good for weight loss, muscle growth, productivity, and overall well-being is an added incentive to sleep for longer.

Optimizing Your Dinner

When you eat and how much you eat for dinner are important to successfully complete a 13-hour fast without too much struggle.

If you eat too much and too close to bedtime, you’ll be disrupting your sleep because your digestive system will be active and trying to process whatever you ate.

When your body needs to rest, you don’t want your digestive tract to be active and trying to break down whatever you ate for dinner.

Furthermore, the closer to bedtime that you eat, the later your fast will start and the later will be its finish time.

• Have dinner 3 hours before your bedtime. Not 2 because that’ll disrupt your sleep and not 4 because then you might feel hungry whilst trying to fall asleep.
• Make dinner your heaviest meal of the day in order to keep you full for as long as possible. Eat enough to keep yourself full for at least 3 hours (until bedtime). But don’t overeat as that’ll disrupt your sleep.

Use Good Old H20

Have you ever felt hungry for seemingly no reason? Despite having eaten enough?

If and when that happens — be it late at night or after waking up, drink water.

Water tricks your brain and stomach. It creates an illusion of being full. It’s a known suppressant of ghrelin, the hunger hormone.

Starting your day with a glass of water not only helps delay hunger but also hydrates your body at a time when it’s the most dehydrated (from 8 hours of no water intake during sleep).

Using Distractions

If you do all this, and still somehow feel hungry, try to distract yourself for a few minutes with an engaging activity that you enjoy.

When you’re deeply engrossed in something, it’s easier to resist hunger because your mind is distracted from the thought of food.

Sometimes, when my fast is almost over or it’s almost time for bed at night but I feel hungry already, I distract myself by watching a show that I love, playing a video game, doing some work, or just drumming up an interesting conversation with a loved one.

Once you’re able to resist this initial hunger pang and get over the first hurdle, it only gets easier from there.

The most effective hack to stop thinking about hunger is simply to keep yourself occupied.

The Formula

• Have dinner 3 hours before bed
• Sleep for 8 hours at night
• Use water and appetite suppressants to keep yourself full for the first 2 hours of the morning

Once you get used to this, your body will adapt and you’ll rarely even feel hungry before your 13-hour fast elapses.

Use the 3–8–2 formula to effortlessly fast every day.

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