Intermittent Fasting at 56: What I Changed After 18 Months

How this actually started

I did not start intermittent fasting because of some research paper or podcast guest with perfect jawlines and blue blockers.

I started because I was 56, sitting behind a screen too much, coaching baseball in the evenings, and feeling that classic combo: soft around the middle, brain fog after lunch, and sleep all over the place.

I wanted something simple. No macro spreadsheets. No 11-step morning routine. Just one lever I could pull without reorganising my life as a developer, builder, and coach.

That lever was intermittent fasting. Specifically, the classic starter pack: 16:8.

The original plan: textbook 16:8

My first setup was textbook.

• Skip breakfast.
• Eat from 12:00 to 20:00.
• No calories outside that window.
• Black coffee, water, electrolytes in the morning.

I ran that for months. Probably 9 straight. I am stubborn, so I kept it even when it clearly didn’t love me back.

On paper it worked. The scale moved. My waist dropped a belt hole. Blood pressure improved. Resting heart rate ticked down. Classic beginner IF wins.

But you can have results and still be running a bad config.

The hidden cost of strict 16:8 for me

The problem with 16:8 for me at 56 was not hunger. It was everything around it.

Here is what started to break after the honeymoon phase.

1. Afternoon brain crash

For the first 3-4 months, my focus in the morning was sharp. Fasted coding felt great. Less distraction. Good energy.

Then I started noticing a pattern. Around 15:30, my brain just stopped caring.

• Pull requests looked heavier than they were.
• Decision fatigue hit harder.
• Context switching became painful.

I would eat lunch at 12:00, usually something protein-focused. Then by mid-afternoon I was slow, or weirdly wired, not in that clean focused way but in a jittery, slightly anxious way.

I was not bonking. I was just not operating in that stable zone I want for deep work.

2. Training and coaching mismatch

On paper you can design a perfect feeding window. Real life does not care.

I coach baseball. Practices and games often stretch into the evening. Kids and parents are not scheduling around my 20:00 cut-off.

More than once I caught myself doing this dumb mental math on the field:

• "If I eat this snack now, my window is ruined."
• "If I wait, I will end up under-eating protein again."

That kind of food math in your head during batting practice is stupid. I think any protocol that makes you less present with your team or your family is not sustainable, even if your Whoop loves it.

3. Under-eating without noticing

This one is sneaky. At first, I thought intermittent fasting was magic. Leaner, lighter, less bloat.

Then I started tracking protein and calories properly for a few weeks.

With a tight 8-hour window, I was often 20 to 40 grams short on protein. Not occasionally. Most days. I just did not feel like eating more at the end of the day, which sounds fine until you try to keep muscle and strength at 56.

I was losing a bit of strength on lifts and on the field. My joints felt a touch creaky. Recovery felt slightly worse after hard training days. Nothing dramatic, just not going in the direction I wanted.

4. Sleep went sideways

The bro-science version of intermittent fasting says it fixes everything, sleep included.

My sleep did not get better on strict 16:8. It got weirder.

If I pushed my last meal to 20:00 and tried to be in bed by 22:30, my sleep tracker would show more wake-ups and worse HRV. I also felt warmer in bed. That is not shocking. Digesting a large second meal late in the evening is not a recipe for deep rest.

Could I fix it by pulling the window earlier? Sure. But then it smashed into evening coaching again. The schedule was the problem, not the theory.

What I kept from intermittent fasting

So did I throw fasting in the bin? No. I think that would have been just as dogmatic as pretending 16:8 is perfect.

Instead I kept the parts that clearly worked for me and ditched the rigid template.

1. No more random snacking

Before fasting, my eating pattern looked like a front-end build log with six hotfix commits. All over the place.

I would nibble while coding, test “just one” thing from the fridge, grab something after practice, then add a bit more before bed.

Intermittent fasting forced one big mindset shift: eating is an intentional activity, not white noise in the background.

I still mostly eat in 2 or 3 proper meals. I rarely snack. If I grab something outside meal times, it is because I planned it, not because my hands were bored.

2. Shorter eating window on work-heavy days

Some version of time restriction still works well for me, especially on heavy coding days.

On those days, I still like the mental simplicity of a shorter window. I just do not pretend it has to be 16:8.

My usual pattern now:

• First meal: somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30.
• Last meal: usually done by 19:00.

So more like 14:10, sometimes 13:11. I treat it as flexible guardrails instead of a diet law.

3. Morning fasted focus (with brakes)

I still like working fasted in the morning. I just respect the fact that my brain has limits.

If I wake up recovered and slept well, I can push the first meal to 11:30 with good focus. If sleep was trash or I have a long coaching block late, I eat earlier. Simple rule: I do not sacrifice recovery or mood just to “hit a number”.

What I changed after 18 months

Here is where it gets more interesting. These are the deliberate changes I made after a year and a half of treating my body like a very opinionated build system.

1. I moved to a flexible 14:10 as my default

Some people can run 16:8 forever. I am not one of them, and I think a lot of people over 50 are lying to themselves about how sustainable it is.

My current default is simple:

• Target: 14:10 most days.
• Range: anything between 13 and 15 hours fast is fine.
• No guilt if life pushes it to 12:12 occasionally.

This still gives me the upsides I care about: time without food, some digestive rest, cleaner morning focus. But it reduces the downside risk of under-eating and messing up sleep.

2. I increased protein first, then thought about schedule

If you are mid-50s and losing weight, and you are not paying attention to protein, you are speed-running sarcopenia.

That is not dramatic. That is just math.

The biggest fix I made was this: I set a clear protein target for the day, then I arranged my window around hitting it, not the other way around.

For me that looks like:

• Rough target: 1.6 to 1.8 grams per kg bodyweight.
• Two or three solid protein hits: breakfast or early meal, main meal, optional lighter meal.

If I see that I will not hit the target comfortably in a 16:8 window, I just do not run 16:8 that day. Simple. No moral drama about it.

3. I stopped fasting hard on heavy training days

This was a big mental shift. Old me loved doing “hard things” for the sake of it. Under-eating on training days felt like discipline. It was just dumb.

Now my rule is clear:

• Heavy training or long coaching days get priority on food and recovery.
• Light days or pure desk days are where I push the fasting window a bit more.

If I have a long baseball practice plus my own workout, I eat earlier and sometimes later. If that shrinks the fast to 12 hours, fine. My joints and muscles are happier, which means I can keep doing this in 10 years, not just for the selfies.

4. I brought back a small, strategic breakfast

This will offend some hardcore fasting bros, but I think a small protein-heavy breakfast is underrated for older lifters and coaches.

A few days per week I will:

• Eat a small breakfast between 8:30 and 9:00.
• Make it almost entirely protein and maybe some berries or light carbs.
• Keep lunch and dinner lighter if I am less active.

This kills the mid-afternoon productivity crash and helps with total protein. Yes, it shortens the fasting window. No, I do not care.

5. I aligned the last meal with sleep, not the clock

Instead of obeying an 8 p.m. cut-off, I now work backwards from my target sleep time.

If I need to be in bed by 22:30, I aim to finish eating by 19:30. Three hours of no big meals before bed has been more impactful for my sleep than arguing about 14 vs 16 hours of fasting.

I would rather protect deep sleep and HRV than chase a neat round fasting number.

Why 16:8 is not for everyone (especially over 50)

Here is my honest take after 18 months.

16:8 is a good intro protocol for young, relatively sedentary desk workers who need structure and are overeating by default. It cuts eating opportunities and cleans up nonsense snacking. Of course they feel better.

But if you are 50+, trying to stay strong, active, and sharp while juggling work and coaching or parenting, then rigid 16:8 can bite you quietly.

These are the three traps I keep seeing, including in myself.

Trap 1: Treating 16:8 as religion, not a tool

People love templates. 16:8 is simple and binary. You are either inside the window or you “failed”.

That works until your life gets messy.

In my case, the more I made the 16:8 number sacred, the more I bent my sleep, my training, and my social life around it. That is backwards. Fasting is a tool. Not a boss.

Trap 2: Undereating protein and pretending it is fat loss

The scale going down feels nice. The mirror looking a bit leaner feels nice.

But if your strength is trending down, your recovery is poor, and your muscles feel flatter, then you might just be shrinking everything, not just fat.

With an 8-hour window, especially if you do not love huge meals, it is very easy to miss protein targets consistently. I did. A lot of people do. Most will never track it honestly enough to see it.

Trap 3: Ignoring sleep in the name of discipline

Sleep quality is a better long-term lever than fasting duration in my opinion.

If your last meal is always slammed into the late evening because you are protecting your 16:8 window, you are trading long-term health for a short-term neat number.

I would happily run 12:12 with amazing sleep over 16:8 with trash sleep. There is no badge for “most hours fasted, worst recovery”.

How I use intermittent fasting now

So where did I land after 18 months as a 56-year-old dev, builder, and baseball coach?

It is not a protocol. It is a set of rules of thumb.

• I treat fasting as a default, not a rule. I usually fast 13 to 15 hours, but I change it when life, training, or sleep need different.
• Protein comes first. If the window makes hitting protein hard, I change the window.
• Heavy days get more food. Light desk days can tolerate longer fasts.
• I protect the 3-hour gap before sleep more than any strict eating window.
• I keep breakfast optional, not forbidden. If my body and calendar say “eat”, I eat.

Intermittent fasting still works for me at 56. Just not in the Instagram way.

If your life is more like a messy pull request than a perfect tutorial, then I would treat 16:8 as a starting point, not a target. Test it. Break it. Keep what actually survives contact with your real schedule.

Your body does not care about round numbers. It cares about energy, recovery, and consistency. Build around that, not some clean-looking fasting app screenshot.