Not parent poster, but I have done the same thing for a long time. I tried 5:2 and 16:8 (the former refers to days, the latter hours, of course). I find that th

Not parent poster, but I have done the same thing for a long time. I tried 5:2 and 16:8 (the former refers to days, the latter hours, of course). I find that the long fast (8pm to about noon the next day) is almost undetectable (it helps that I enjoy espresso; some might find it horrible or too acid on an empty stomach). 5:2, on the other hand, was bad for productivity as I would spend the low-cal days thinking about food. I dropped from about 110kg to 94kg (disclosure: also training a lot of BJJ, weights, etc) mostly by IF'ing. I ate ice cream and all sorts of fun stuff the whole time (not tons of treats, but it wasn't a 'hair shirt' diet). Average weight loss was about 50g per day (averaging closer to 70-100 initially, then dropping off). Weighing in every day and putting it in a spreadsheet helped. I found it way easier to focus on "food hours" vs "food choices". Honestly imo some 0imes you're just going to have pizza or a burger or ice cream or something. If you can eat clean and healthy 100% of the time, good on you, but it's hard to stick to that day-in, day-out for months, and I know plenty of 'clean eaters' who eat way too much 'clean food' and/or cheat and/or give up and are as a result fat. IF with noon-8pm as a feeding window and a focus on hours not Magic Food Choices also allows you to largely behave like a normal person socially unless your life revolves around social breakfasts (which would be cool, I guess, but not that typical).