Why I Stopped Intermittent Fasting Consistently
Fasting helped me lose weight and keep it off, but harder training forced me to rethink how much hunger was actually worth.
I started intermittent fasting for one reason: I was tired of losing weight only to gain it back. Fasting gave me a simple way to control calories without obsessing over every meal, and for a while, it worked exactly how I wanted it to. Then I started training for a trail race and realized the thing helping me manage my weight was also making it harder to train, recover, and feel normal. Why I stopped intermittent fasting ultimately came down to that tradeoff.
TL;DR
Fasting can yield quick results on the scale, but the hunger pangs and low energy also make it easy to abandon quickly. I stopped intermittent fasting consistently because I realized that I needed to train harder, and eating more regularly made me feel and perform better.
Key Takeaways
- Intermittent fasting can help with weight loss, but it doesn’t appear to be better than just restricting your calories in any way you please.
- Hunger, low energy, training demands, and social meals can make intermittent fasting difficult to sustain.
- Fasting may offer metabolic benefits beyond weight loss, but claims around longevity, brain health, and cellular repair are still much less settled.
- Why I stopped intermittent fasting ultimately had less to do with whether fasting “worked” and more to do with finding an eating pattern I could live and train with.
My Experience With Intermittent Fasting
You either fast or you don’t, and the folks who do it swear by it. If you’re new to it, intermittent fasting just means cycling between set windows of eating and not eating — anything from a daily 16-hour fast to going a full day or two without food. Fasting rebuilds your cells, they say; it clears out your gut; you’re more focused and sharper. There might be some truth to those claims — the research is mixed, and some of the loftier promises are still pretty speculative — but my reason for fasting has always been to lose fat and keep it off.
Dr. Layne Norton, a Ph.D. in nutritional science who has gained popularity for debunking nutrition myths online, frames fasting primarily as a weight-loss tool. “It’s a very simple diet to follow,” he says on an episode of his podcast. “If you have people restrict their feeding window, they tend to spontaneously reduce their calorie intake and reduce body weight.”
Until relatively recently, my weight had consistently fluctuated every couple of years. And I’m talking big jumps — like 30, 40 pounds. Losing the weight and gaining it back was demoralizing, frustrating, and unhealthy. Eventually, months before my 30th birthday in 2023, I committed to lasting change. I bought an Apple Watch and started tracking my steps; I ate less food and cooked more at home; I lifted weights twice per week, which I told myself was better than zero times per week. Slowly but surely, my weight dropped from 215 pounds to about 180. It’s the best I’ve ever felt about my body and health, but I knew the real challenge would be keeping it off.
I soon realized that the reason body fat kept finding its way back onto my frame was that my calorie management was out of whack. I’d either be dieting or I wouldn’t. And for me, keeping the weight off meant staying on top of how much and what I was eating, even when I wasn’t actively trying to lose weight. This doesn’t mean you can’t ease up, drink some beers, have some pizza, and stay lean. You can, and for your mental and social health, you probably should. But staying lean-ish year-round requires diligence and planning, and there’s no way around that.
The key was finding a form of calorie restriction I could sustain for the long haul. You can track your calories and control your portions, cut back on certain foods or macronutrients, or give yourself less time to eat (i.e., fasting). I gravitated toward fasting — and sometimes still do. On a mild day, I’d keep my eating window between noon and 8 p.m. Some days, I’d do a 24-hour or even a 48-hour fast.
All that sounds extreme, I’m sure, but fasting showed a lot of upside. Mainly, I could bank a lot of calories. If I didn’t eat for an entire day or skipped even two meals, I could feast at night without worrying as much about my weight. And not eating at all was simpler and gave me significantly more dietary freedom than figuring out my total calories for the day and dividing that number among three comparatively meager meals. It made me more socially relaxed, too. In the past, I’d plan what I was eating ahead of time, to a T, or be “that guy” who ordered water and grilled chicken at restaurants. With fasting, I could starve in private and eat what I wanted with my friends.
“Why are you doing this?” my wife asked me midway through my first 48-hour fast. It was a fair question, since not eating for two whole days is objectively unusual. I’m not religious, I don’t have a medical reason to fast, and the fast came out of the blue. I told her it was a mental challenge, a way to free myself from the distraction that is food. The real reason, though, was that I saw a number on the scale I didn’t like, and with another night out coming up, I wanted to get that number down as much as possible.
A lot of the weight that disappears during an extended fast isn’t body fat; some of it comes from depleted glycogen, the water stored with it, and less food sitting in your digestive tract. I knew that, but my mood was increasingly becoming tied to the number my scale shot back at me. Fasting yielded quick results in that regard, and I got hooked on watching my weight drop rapidly. Soon, though, my relationship with fasting took a turn.
Not too long after that two-day fast, I signed up for a trail race. My training had been unfocused, and after years of ducking serious cardio, running gave me a new way to test myself physically. Over a couple of weeks, my weekly mileage increased from virtually zero to 15 to 20 miles. I was hungry every minute of the day. I kept up my 16- to 24-hour fasts, but I couldn’t ignore the energy dips and constant rumbling of my stomach. And just like that, I was faced with a new reality: I could keep fasting the way I had been, or I could eat to train well for my race.
I dove right back into eating three to four times a day. Breakfast was potatoes and eggs. Lunch was a turkey sandwich. I’d snack on hummus and pretzels, and dinner would be lean protein with more potatoes and veggies. It was far more food than I’d gotten used to, but I soon noticed more energy during my workouts. My mood was generally better — a point my wife made, too — I had more patience, and I found myself stepping on the scale less often.
The harder adjustment was getting comfortable with eating more while still managing my weight. And the scale did move a little. I was eating more carbohydrates, replenishing glycogen, and holding more water. I understood all of that intellectually, but after spending so much time using fasting to drive the number down, seeing it creep back up still bothered me.
Writing this article, it’s easy to look back and realize how much of my desire to fast stemmed from wanting to stay at a certain weight. But it wasn’t until I stepped away from fasting that I really saw it. I’d gotten used to treating hunger like something to beat and fasting as proof of my discipline. Once I started eating regularly again — and watching my running mileage and times improve week after week — it became harder to justify being hungry all day just to see a lower number on the scale.
How I Eat Now
To say I’m done with fasting would be dishonest. It still works well for me as a weight-management tool, and it’s always easier not to eat a few hundred calories than to burn them off later. So now I follow what I call “tactical fasting.” If I’m not hungry when I wake up, I’ll push my first meal back to lunch. If I have an off day or a light activity day, I might do a 24-hour fast if I’m up for it.
What I don’t do anymore is see the scale jump after a big meal and react by stopping eating. I realized I didn’t need to go 24 to 48 hours without food to keep the weight off. I needed a way of eating I could actually live with.
What the Research Says About Intermittent Fasting
Most research about intermittent fasting (IF) focuses on weight loss. A meta-analysis of more than 6,500 adults found that IF and general calorie restriction both reduced body weight compared with eating as one pleases, reinforcing IF’s usefulness as a calorie-management approach. The researchers did find that alternate-day fasting — not eating every other day — resulted in slightly more weight loss than continuous calorie restriction.
Again, though, the evidence that IF is substantially more effective than other diets when calorie intake is similar is questionable. A randomized trial assigned 139 adults with obesity to calorie restriction alone or calorie restriction plus an eight-hour eating window. The time restriction, researchers found, didn’t produce significantly more weight loss or greater improvements in blood pressure, glucose, or lipids. The point is that fasting can be a useful way to facilitate fat loss, but for most people, it doesn’t appear much more effective than other approaches. Calorie restriction is still the main catalyst for weight loss.
As for the other reported benefits of fasting, the picture gets murkier. Human studies suggest that certain forms of time-restricted eating can improve insulin sensitivity, blood sugar, blood pressure, and other markers of metabolic health, sometimes even without weight loss. There’s also evidence that fasting activates cellular processes such as autophagy, though much of the more dramatic research around longevity, brain health, and cellular repair still comes from animal studies or early human research.
Frequently Asked Questions
There isn’t one reason. Fasting can cause uncomfortable hunger pangs and make social situations awkward to navigate. And while research suggests people can stick with time-restricted eating fairly well on average, adherence tends to slip when fasting is stacked on top of other diet changes.
Not necessarily. The evidence remains limited, and fasting’s effects may vary with energy intake, body weight, reproductive status, and the fasting protocol. Severe energy restriction can disrupt menstrual function, while some early research suggests time-restricted eating may actually improve hormonal and metabolic markers in women with PMOS.
Usually, nothing dramatic. You may eat more frequently, replenish glycogen and the water stored with it, and see the scale rise slightly even without gaining much body fat. Whether you gain weight in the long term depends much more on your overall calorie intake and eating habits than on whether you continue fasting.
It can, if you can stick with it. But current evidence doesn’t show that intermittent fasting consistently produces substantially greater long-term weight loss than conventional calorie restriction. A 2026 Cochrane review found little to no difference in weight-loss outcomes compared with standard dietary advice, with long-term evidence still limited.
Bottom Line on Quitting Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting worked for me — and still does sometimes. But a diet can help you control your weight and still stop being the best fit for your life. I now care less about following a particular fasting schedule and more about eating in a way that supports my training, keeps my weight manageable, and doesn’t make food feel like something I constantly have to outsmart. If you’re rethinking your own routine, here’s what to eat after intermittent fasting to refuel well.
Experts Who Contributed / Medical Byline
- Andrew Gutman, NASM-CPT, wrote this article.
- Lauren Keary, NASM-CNC, reviewed this article for accuracy.
