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Step 1: learn not to eat or snack at night. Tell yourself no more food after 7pm. Don’t eat again until at least 7am. 12 hours is easy - you will be sleeping for most of it. But this will get you used to the idea of there is a period of time each day where eating is off limits. After a while, it will become natural. To minimize transition pain and hunger, do this for 2 weeks before extending the fasting window.

Step 2: after 2 weeks of a 12 hour fasting window, begin to simply skip breakfast. Lunch will be your first meal. I like to do 7pm to 12 noon the next day to get a 17 hour fast each day. That gives me 7 hours to eat. There are several ways I like to do this. Some days, I’ll have lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, dinner and and after dinner snack. While this gives me better meals than if I were eating 6 small meals a day, I will sometimes just do 2 meals: lunch and dinner in my eating window. This way, both of those meals can be satisfying meals while I still stay at a calorie deficit. Or I will do 1 snack instead of 2.

Step 3: After you are used to the 16–17 hour fasting window for some time, at least a month, you should occasionally do a 20 to 24 hour fast. By the time you are used to the 16 hour window, extending it will actually be easier than you think. There will not be hunger or fatigue because you will be well fat adapted. How “occasionally” should you do this? Usually a couple of times a month. You will know when you should. Maybe you were on vacation and had a major cheat day or three and didn’t care what you ate. An extended fast can quickly get you back on track.

The main thing to understand as you integrate IF into your daily routine is that there will be a transition period of a couple of weeks to a couple of months. During the transition period, you may get hungry or you may feel fatigued. This will go away as you become fat adapted. In fact, once you get used to IF, you will have less hunger and cravings if any and you will have more energy than before.