Attempting a 24-Hour Intermittent Fast

Lately I feel like I've been eating absolutely like crap.  Most of this is happening at work (there's always crap in the coffee room) or while out with friends.  I've been busy working on a big work project, so eating out has become an easy way to catch up with friends.

So last night, I went looking for possible strategies to help me deal with the coffee room thing (eating out with friends I'll have to deal with by saying no more often, and making other, non-food hang-out plans with people).  While doing so, I came across information on a 24-Hour Intermittent Fast.  After reading about the health benefits (this wasn't the first article I found about it, it was just the easiest one I could link to that I read), I went looking to see whether it was safe for people with diabetes to attempt such a thing.  The short answer was: yes, but monitor your blood sugar the whole time.  I even found a couple of fasting schedules for people with diabetes to try in this how to get started guide on Diabetes Daily.

Since my last food-intake last night just happened to finish up at 7:30pm, I decided to give it a go.  I go to bed later than their schedule, so I just didn't eat anything last night.  I'm not going to be very active today and will be monitoring my glucose quite a bit (which isn't really anything out of the ordinary for me to be honest).  And if I go low at any point before 7:30pm tonight, I'm going to call it off and treat the low.  But even if that happens, as of right now I've already fasted for about 18 hours, so I think I should be seeing some health benefits, right?  Especially since some people argue that all you need is a 12 hour fast (which is about what most people get while sleeping - although this book by Dr. John M. Berardi with Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon and Nate Green says people who are more sedentary may need 20-24 hours of fasting to get the full benefit in Chapter 1 (which is all I have read of their book so far)).  But, long story short, I'm giving this a try today and shall let you know what happens with it later. :)

Also, if you were wondering, apparently we are hard-wired to eat food that is put in front of us.  Some people argue that we can build up willpower to not eat junk food sitting on a table in front of us.  But that's not super helpful for me, especially when I'm tired (which happens to be every day I have to be at work earlier than like noon because as I already said, I go to bed later). So I think I'm going to have to brainstorm some of my own strategies to deal with the junk food, which may involve avoiding the break room. :(