Category: Fasting

By: Ray Taylor. Not a Doctor.

A note on links: Some links in this post are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only link to products I actually use or would credibly recommend. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Every fasting article online tells you the same thing. Start with 16:8. Fast sixteen hours, eat in eight, easy.

Then hour eleven hits. Your hand is already on the cabinet handle. Your brain is screaming that you cannot make it. So you cap out, you eat, and you tell yourself you do not have the willpower for this.

I want to tell you something I wish somebody had told me. You were not failing. You were handed the deep end and told it was the shallow end.

When I started, I had zero willpower. None. I am the guy who used to come home and put away a whole box of microwave popcorn, all six bags, with a two-liter of soda in one sitting. So if I tell you fasting got easier, hear me right. It did not get easier because I got tougher. It got easier because I stopped trying to leap and started taking one small step.

This post is the small step. It is the gentle way in, the one nobody sells you because it is not flashy. By the end you will know exactly where to start, what the hunger actually does to you, and why your body is on your side once you stop fighting it.

First, the truth about my numbers

I am not a doctor. I am just a guy who got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

In July of 2022 my A1C was 11.7. I was on metformin, glipizide, and insulin, all three at once, and I was still getting worse. My blood sugar hit 450 in a hospital bed. As of March 2026, my A1C is 5.5. That is in the normal range. I take zero diabetes medication. That whole climb took about three and a half years.

I am not telling you that to brag. I am telling you because the guy typing this could not skip a single snack at the start. If I got there, you can get better too. Fasting was a huge piece of how, and I want you to be able to use it without the part where you feel like a failure by lunchtime.

Before you skip a single meal, read this

This part is not optional, so I am putting it up high instead of burying it at the bottom.

Before you change when you eat, talk to your doctor first. This matters most if you take medication, and it matters even more if you take insulin or a sulfonylurea like glipizide. Fasting can drop your blood sugar low, and on those medications it can drop it dangerously low. That is a conversation to have with your doctor before you skip a meal, not after.

I learned this the dumb way. When I started, I jumped in with no medical advice and no plan. It worked out for me, but it was genuinely dangerous, and I would never tell you to copy that part. Get your doctor in your corner first. Then everything below is a much safer road.

Why hour 11 feels like an emergency (and is not)

Here is the thing nobody warns you about. Hunger is not a straight line that climbs forever until you pass out. It comes in waves.

You feel a wave rise. Your brain reads it as a five-alarm fire. Eat now or something terrible happens. So you panic and you eat, and you never find out what was on the other side of that wave.

I found out by accident. Early on I took a long walk in the Florida heat, fasted, not really meaning to push it. Here is exactly how it went in my head, and I wrote it down later in my book just like this:

“The fasting itself felt suspiciously easy. Hunger came in waves, sure, but it wasn’t the ‘I’m going to pass out from hunger’ I was expecting. It came, I felt it, kept going, it passed.”

It came, I felt it, kept going, it passed. Read that again if you are scared of the hunger. That is the whole secret in one sentence. The wave is real. It is also temporary. It crests, and if you do not feed it, it rolls back out, and you are fine. Usually better than fine.

That walk gave me my first hard proof too. I check my blood sugar when I wake up, around 4:30 in the morning, and that day it read north of 300. After the walk, still fasted, I pricked my finger out of pure curiosity and got 196. Down over 100 points, and all I had done was walk and not eat. One day. One surprise. That was the first clue that this fasting thing was doing something real. I am not telling you your number will do that, every body is different, but that single day flipped a switch in my head. That one walk was the start of the whole climb I lay out in how I got my A1C from 11.7 to 5.5.

The gentle on-ramp: start where you already are

You do not start at 16 hours. You start with the overnight fast you are already half doing.

Think about it. You eat dinner, you sleep, you wake up, you eat breakfast. You are already fasting for a chunk of that without trying. The gentle way is simply to be a little more deliberate about it.

Start here: a 12-hour overnight window

Finish dinner, then do not eat again until the same time the next morning. Stop at 7 in the evening, eat at 7 the next morning. That is twelve hours, and you sleep through most of it. That is not white-knuckling. That is digestive rest you barely have to feel.

Master that first. A week of it. Let your body learn that nothing bad happens overnight.

Where you go from there is the part that needs a real plan and a doctor in your corner. When to add time, how far to take it, when to hold steady, that week-by-week progression is exactly what I lay out in the book. For today, do not even think about it. The only move that matters is the 12-hour window. The people who quit are the ones who try to leap straight to the destination. The people who stick climb one stair at a time, and the first stair is tonight.

What is actually happening in there

Here is why fasting is a real tool and not just skipping meals.

For the first stretch after you eat, your body runs on the food you just gave it. But somewhere past the 12-hour mark, that runs low, and your body switches over to running on stored fuel instead. Around that same window, a repair process called autophagy starts to ramp up. Autophagy is basically your cells cleaning house, clearing out the junk and damaged parts and recycling them. It is real, it is well documented, and it is a big part of why a scheduled break from eating does more than just cut calories.

That is as deep as I am going to take it here, because the truth is there is an hour-by-hour map of what your body does the longer you fast, phase by phase, and it is more than a blog section can hold. The point for today is simple. When you fast, your body is not starving. It is getting a window to do work it cannot do while it is busy digesting. It is on your side. If you are wondering how fast any of this shows up on your labs, I broke that down in how long it really takes to lower your A1C.

What I sip during the window

People always ask what you are allowed to drink while you fast. Keep it simple. Water, plenty of it. Black coffee, no sugar. And plain tea.

The one I reach for is unsweetened Numi green tea. It is light, there is nothing in it to break the fast, and it gives me something warm to hold when a wave shows up and I want to do something with my hands. That is honestly half the battle, having something to reach for that is not food.

If you want the rest of it, everything I actually use, the food in my kitchen and the gear that keeps me moving, I put it all in one place on my toolkit page so you are not guessing in the grocery aisle.

The reframe that makes it stick

Fasting is not starvation. It is not a willpower contest you are doomed to lose. It is giving your body a scheduled break from digesting so it can do other work.

Once that clicked for me, the whole thing got lighter. I was not depriving myself. I was making an appointment with my own repair crew. And I got there as the guy with zero willpower, by starting smaller than felt impressive and only moving up when the last step got boring.

You can do that. Anybody can do that. It is not toughness. It is stairs.

Want the whole thing in order? That is exactly why I wrote the book. Type 2 Ain’t My Type lays out the full system the way I actually did it. The 12 week plan, week by week, plus the toolkits for the parts that trip people up. The food swaps. Reading labels. Beating the cravings. Eating out. Staying in remission once you get there. It is everything I wish someone had handed me at 11.7.

This is not medical advice. Always talk to your doctor before you change your diet, your movement, or your medication, especially if you take insulin or a sulfonylurea.

Start tonight, not someday

You do not have to fast sixteen hours tomorrow. You do not have to skip a meal you are scared to skip. You just have to stop eating after dinner tonight and not eat again until breakfast. That is the whole first move.

Consistent persistence overcomes resistance. Every. Single. Time. The kind of persistence that actually works is not the heroic kind. It is the boring kind. One overnight window, then the next, then the next. That is how an 11.7 A1C and three medications became a 5.5 and none. Not in one heroic leap. In a thousand small, dull, repeatable steps.

You may not land all the way in remission like I did. But you can absolutely get better. Lower numbers, more energy, maybe less medication down the road, all of it with your doctor in your corner. It starts with one quiet decision to put the fork down after dinner tonight.

Tell me in the comments: what hour does your hunger usually peak? Tell me the number, and I will tell you the trick I use when mine hits.

P.S. New here? I put together some free guides that walk you through the very first steps, including your first day. Start here.