A few months ago I talked about why I’m not practicing intermittent fasting. In case you wanna read about this first, you can find the blogpost here.

However, sometimes your eating habits change because of your current life situation or just because you choose to try something new.

So actually right now I’m kinda practicing intermittent fasting by accident, just that it’s not breakfast I leave out but dinner. Before you judge and say it’s unhealthy, I only do it to lose weight etc. – wrong, that’s not the case at all.

First of all: I actually never got the not having breakfast thing. I always thought if you wanna do intermittent fasting it would make way more sense to cut out dinner. Personally I need food in the morning as I get super hungry if I don’t eat plus I need the energy in the morning and during the day to keep me going. In the evening the day is done and I’m going to bed soon anyway, so why would I need a big meal then? It just makes more sense to me to have your food or most of your food in the morning, noon and afternoon and not at night. But maybe that’s just me. It also depends on your sleeping habits. I tend to go to bed quite early and get up early. If I’d stay up until 2am, well yes.. leaving out dinner probably wouldn’t be the best idea.

Okay, now to my situation: I currently have a job at a bar in a country hotel in the outback in Australia. This means I work from afternoon to late in the evening and I don’t have the possibility to eat during my shift plus I don’t like eating while standing behind the bar. I prefer to sit down for my meals and to not have them while working. I did that years ago and it’s just so stressful and unhealthy.

So right now I always have a big breakfast, maybe a small snack later, and then a late big lunch which keeps me full for the rest of the day. My evening shift usually ends around 9/10pm and then I go to bed an hour later or so anyway and don’t really need to eat something before bed anymore. Plus I’m often just too tired and can’t be bothered to prepare another meal. In the beginning of my job I ate less during the day and then actually did have a meal after work but I found that it’s harder for me to fall asleep right after that. I just don’t like going to bed with a full stomach, I also believe it’s not healthy for you. While you’re sleeping there are a lot of different regeneration processes going on within your body so it’s better to not keep your body busy with digesting all the food you’ve eaten just before going to bed and let it focus on regeneration. Plus I prefer to use the time I have to myself after work to get ready for bed and then read a book or listen to a podcast and fall asleep early instead of „wasting“ that precious time with preparing food and eating.

But trust me, I eat enough and I will definitely go back to my usual 3 meals a day when I’m done with this job and if I should have a job with different working hours in the future. I don’t have an unhealthy relationship with food at all, I’m completely over this. I just do this for practical reasons, it just fits my current lifestyle better if I eat this way. And if I’m really super hungry after work I will have something to eat, especially on weekends when my evening shift can go until after midnight.

I’m sharing this with you to show that there just isn’t the „one right way“ to eat, a way that fits everyone. We always have to consider that people are different. We all have different jobs, different schedules and different habits. Someone who works night shifts doesn’t have the same schedule as a mother who stays at home all day, a mother doesn’t have the same schedule as a student, a student and so on.. it always bothers me when people claim to have found the one right way of eating which works for everyone, it’s not that easy. I think it’s always best to listen to your body and to find out what works best for you with the current situation you’re in. Sometimes 2 meals a day might work best, sometimes 5. It all depends on your circumstances and on what you physically and mentally feel most comfortable with.

Back in Germany my days looked completely different to what they do right now so it only makes sense that my eating habits changed as well and that’s okay, we don’t have to stick to a certain way of eating for the rest of our life.