What do you guys do when you “mess up”/give in on fast days?

This might not be the popular way to do it but as long as I fast at least 2 days a week I consider that success. The majority of the time it’s 4 days but sometimes it’s 3 or 2 and considering that a “failure” wasn’t helpful to my progress. Things happen, people come into town you haven’t seen in awhile, your partner wants to do something nice and brings home your favorite fast food on your fasting day…it’s a lot less stressful to be flexible. Our diet is already at a faster pace of potential weight loss than other diets even when we “fail” and I’ve had days I’ve eaten 300-500 calories and I still see a positive difference in my digestion and chronic pain on those days so I don’t think an “unclean” fast is completely devoid of health benefits either. I go into every day with the potential to fast (even eating days if I feel like it) and with the intention of just having water but sometimes I have tea, sometimes I have 100-500 calories, sometimes I eat the entire day. I try to make my planned fasting days my productive days and that usually helps to keep me on schedule but sometimes I’m just not feeling it. Meal prepping freezable meals (that I like) helps a lot too- I can visually see my effort to eat on only certain days and know the budget that went into that. If I eat more than those meals that’s more money and time, etc.

Most importantly I think it’s harmful to be angry with yourself for eating instead of fasting and could turn into disordered eating. Try to be a neutral observer at those times “oh, I had some food. Okay.” And move on. My husband bought 100 calorie packs of potato chips and after resisting them all day I literally couldn’t sleep thinking about them and went and ate one pack in the middle of the night after having fasted. It was enough and I was good- I didn’t even feel like eating the next day. There’s a difference between taking a bite of something and binging- if I know I’m not going to be satisfied unless I have 5 donuts and just 1 won’t be enough I know that’s an emotional/stress response and I try my best to resist that because giving into that doesn’t do me any good but sometimes you just have a craving and a little can fix that.

/r/AlternateDayFasting Thread