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It’s been a while since I’ve done a meal post, so I decided to do a write up of my latest way of eating – intermittent fasting combined with the keto diet. Up until the beginning of this month, I’ve been following what I call a keto-ish diet, meaning that I followed a moderate keto diet where I allowed myself up to 50 grams of carbs per day.
Doing a moderate keto diet was definitely working to help me lose inches, but the scale was barely budging. You can imagine how disheartening it is when you strictly follow a diet for very little weight loss seen on the scale. My weight loss journey is ongoing, so I decided to once again tweak my way of eating to boost weight loss beyond losing just inches.
Enter Intermittent Fasting or IF. It turns out that when coupled with the keto diet intermittent fasting (IF) is even more effective for fat loss than keto alone. Since I’ve started doing both, I’ve noticed a steady weight loss of between 1 to 1.5 pounds every week. This may not seem to be a lot to some, but to me, it was a giant leap forward.
For this post, I will show an example of a Keto IF meal plan for a typical day. I’ll first discuss a brief primer of the various schedule a person can following while doing IF then move on to some of the foods I enjoy on a Keto-IF diet.
Intermittent Fasting Schedule
My post on Intermittent Fasting and Keto takes a more in-depth look at combining IF with keto so I won’t get into too much detail here. I’ll just give a brief overview of the types of IF fasting schedules that you can follow. The main idea is to choose a fasting time slot that works best with your lifestyle.
When doing IF you can choose to eat during a four, six or eight-hour window and fast for the rest of the time. The window you choose depends on your own personal daily schedule and goals. I do IF on an 8-hour eating window, meaning that I have my first meal at noon and my last meal by 8 pm. The rest of the 16 hours of my day are spent fasting.
I find this schedule very easy to manage because much of my fast time is spent asleep. I wake up at around 7:00 a.m. so I only spend 5 hours awake during my fast. You would think that I’d experience a bit of discomfort, but that is rare, and if I do feel a hunger pang or two, I just have a glass of seltzer water and I’m good to go.
The main point is, if you decide to try IF, you get to choose the eating window that works best for you. Next up, I focus on describing examples of keto-friendly meals that I have within my 8-hour eating window including breakfast, snacks, and dinner.
Breakfast
I am a creature of habit so I can basically eat the same thing every day without getting bored. I know that others may like to change things up so feel free to check out my recipe page for some ideas. Following are some of the foods and beverages I use for my noon breakfast:
- Coffee with Ripple creamer
- Fresh berries (strawberries being my main choice)
- 2 slices turkey bacon
- 1 fried egg
- Keto Mug Bread or Low Carb Tortilla (made with either Carbalose, Carbquik or THM baking blend mix)
This breakfast usually totals between 500 and 600 calories depending on the low carb flour I use for my low carb bread or tortilla. This is perfect because it sets me up for successfully eating enough calories during my 8-hour eating window.
Lunch or Snack
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Since I started IF this month, one of the side-effects I noticed is that I rarely, if ever, feel hungry. This means that by my three o’clock lunchtime, I often forget to eat. This causes me a bit of anxiety because I know I need to get my calories in before the close of my eating window.
Eating when you’re not very hungry is no fun, so I’ve devised a few snack ideas and small lunches to keep me on track. A typical day’s IF lunch or snack may include:
- Snack bowl containing lightly salted mixed nuts, mixed berries, cubed cheese and a handful of olives.
- Salmon or tuna salad with avocado slices
- Mesclun salad with olives, walnuts, berries and a light protein (chicken breast, flaked fish or cheese)
These light snack lunches are just enough to keep me sated without that uncomfortable feeling of being too full. Of course, the sky is the limit with great fresh ingredients anyone can put together for a light meal. Just use your favorite healthy foods to make a satisfying meal that will hold you until dinner.
Dinner
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I have dinner between 6:30 and 7:30 pm and it usually consists of a protein with a side of vegetables. This keeps life very simple for me and dinner is definitely the easiest meal for me to prepare. I make liberal use of frozen vegetables that are quick and easy to prepare after a long day of work. Here are some examples of a typical Keto-IF dinner:
- Air-fried or baked jerk wings with jicama fries and slices of avocado
- Pan-seared lamb chops with a side of garlic-broccoli rabe and tomato slices
- Air-fried or baked king salmon with garlic-roasted asparagus
- Garam-masala spiced ground beef with fresh cilantro with a side of cauliflower fried rice
You get the main idea. I pair my favorite proteins with healthy vegetable sides. There are literally thousands of recipes available on the internet that anyone can use to create their own Keto-IF dinner combinations.
After-Dinner Snack
After having dinner, I usually still have between 100 to 300 calories and about 20 grams of carbs remaining for my daily requirement. I use these calories to give myself occasional treats that remain with the confines of being Keto and low carb. I use these calories in the form of simple snacks like:
- Lightly salted mixed nuts with organic dark chocolate chunks
- Pimento-stuffed olives with cheese cubes
- Health bars (only brands with organic and keto-friendly ingredients)
- Keto chocolate mug cake
- Keto ice cream
- Chocolate Keto Fat Bomb
Again, the sky’s the limit when it comes to delicious and satisfying keto snacks. Use your imagination to come up with your own combinations, just make sure that all snacks are within your daily caloric and/or carb range.
Final Thoughts On Intermittent Fasting Meal Plan
Just when I think I’ve found the perfect weight loss plan, up comes another one to tempt me away from my current plan. This would normally hold true to my past pattern, however, I truly believe that my advancement form Keto to Keto-IF is an evolution rather than a switch to the latest fad.
The more I learn about IF, the more I am convinced that autophagy is the ideal way to safely lose excess fat. Autophagy is not concerned with weight loss, it’s concerned with using the time off from digestion to repair the body and “clean up” cellular debris. When we IF we naturally create a deficit of calories that forces our bodies to rely on stored fat for energy.
It never ceases to amaze me just how wonderful our bodies are. When we start feeding ourselves well and when we IF, we form the perfect environment for several health benefits including but not limited to:
- Fat loss
- Reduced inflammation
- Mental clarity
The best part for me is that I find IF to be the easiest weight-loss plan by far! I love and need structure and IF provides that structure by telling me when to eat and when to fast. Add in knowing how much of a calorie deficit I need to lose weight and I eat accordingly. Viola! Automatic weight loss!
I’ll continue this experiment for the rest of the month to see how much I can lose compared to when I was only doing the Keto diet. I have a sneaking feeling though that this will be one lifestyle change I’ll keep. The results are too great to do otherwise.
Do you want to try or have you tried IF and or Keto? Let’s discuss in the comments. Until next time: Happy Eating!
Thank you for this article. I have tried IF as well, but find that I don’t manage to confine my eating to only 8 hours very well. I haven’t been able to use it successfully, but have upped the fat in my diet quite a bit and find that I’m more satiated while losing weight. I saw your recipe page too, and am hoping that one day you will have recipes there for your fave fat bomb and keto mug brownie.
Hi Kendra,
Thanks for reading. I have a recipe for the fat bombs on my other site here: https://customcarbscuratededibles.com/keto-fat-bombs/ Let me know if you try the recipe and how they came out for you. As for the keto mug brownie, I’ll post a recipe for that soon.
Cheers,
Dawn
I have heard about the Keto diet but not the Keto-IF diet till I come across this post. It is something refreshing to me. I like the flexibility to be able to select fasting timing according to my lifestyle. I have ever considered fasting to lose weight before and it always worries me that I will be hungry plus, I often have gastric problem. I am really impressed that you are not that hungry till dinner. I like your strategy of having a fuller meal before fasting to avoid being too hungry. Maybe I will give it a try and hopefully I will be able to shed some weight especially my tummy!
Hi Lynn,
Doing IF with Keto has really been effective for me for losing weight. The high fat from keto keeps me so full that I’m often in jeopardy of not eating enough calories. As you know, undereating is just as harmful as overeating so I have to make sure to eat enough food during my 8-hour window.
Eating this way has actually made me use inches and fat consistently. It’s slow but that’s the way it should be. If you decide to try it again, feel free to contact me if you need any tips or recipes.
Cheers,
Dawn
Hi Dawn, I must admit I have not tried the keto diet, I have tried intermittent fasting though, on the 5:2 diet. I had some success but gave up eventually as it just didn’t fit in with the shift patterns I was on. Guess what I put the weight back on, no surprise there.
The IF ( intermittent fasting) sounds like something a lot of people could do. With the eating window choice up to the individual it will be a lot easier to fit in to their lives.
I personally ended up doing the Mediterranean diet to lose the weight I needed to lose. Not a diet as such just a change in eating habits. I did it slowly over a year and shifted 56lbs and I have kept it off too.
Thanks for the info, it is good to see all the different diets people are using to help them lose weight.
Frank
Hi Frank,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, you’re right about diet – one size does not fit all. As long as we can follow a sustainable diet then we can lose weight easily and enjoyably.
Cheers,
Dawn
This is a great article Dawn, I am glad I came across this. I must admit, I have in recent times considered giving intermittent fasting a go but never got to actually do it. I think I’ll adopt an 8-hour window similar to yours and see how I cope. As you rightly said, a lot of the 16-hour fasting window is spent sleeping so this should be a good starting point.
Combining intermittent fasting with keto sounds like a great plan. I do see reason behind this combination’s effectiveness. It is worth trying!
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your kind words. It means the world to me whenever someone finds my content to be of value. If you do start IF and need any tips, please feel free to drop me a line and I’ll do my best to help out. It really is not difficult and for the first time I feel that I am losing weight the right way and without any stress.
Cheers,
Dawn