On a 16-8 schedule can you split the 8 hours? has anyone done it this way? is it still effective?
For example, I'd prefer to allow 4 hours in the morning for breakfast/lunch and 4 hours in the evening for dinner/snack.
8am-12pm (breakfast/ lunch)
12pm to 4pm (Fast)
4pm to 8pm (Dinner/Snack)
8pm to 8am (Fast)
Nah, that's not a fast. The fast has to be one solid block of not eating and one small solid block of eating for all the food you're going to eat for the day.
So if you wanted to eat breakfast at noon and eat dinner before 4pm, and snack in between, your eating window would be from 12 pm to 4pm, and you would fast from 4pm to noon the next day. That's a 20-hr fast or 20:4 fast. But a 20:4 fast is better suited for people who want to eat their meals closer together like Lunch/Dinner or Breakfast/Lunch.
Since you want to do a breakfast meal and a dinner meal, you would be better off doing a 16-hr fast or 16:8, having an 8-hr eating window like:
8am to 4pm (eating breakfast at 8am; finish eating dinner by 4pm)
9am to 5pm
10am to 6pm
11am to 7pm
12pm to 8pm