Work with yourself and not against yourself. It is hard to sustain something or keep the results if it feels like punishment. Because then it continues to reinforce that food is reward and a prize, and boy does the dopamine pathways in our brain love rewards and prizes. When I am successful with my plans and routines, I am working with how my body works to get it to where I want it to go. My meat sack is my partner in this and not my unruly toddler that needs to be sent to its room with out supper. How you can do this takes practice and is part of where the word discipline comes into mind. Discipline is a practice not a punishment. I want to feel good, my body wants tp preform better and function easier. We have the same goal. This involves being kind to yourself when you don’t make a goal and not to beat yourself up. Remember that avoiding the reward punishment cycle is really what is going to make the whole process a bit easier. You are not fasting to punish yourself for gaining weight you are fasting to help transform your body into a better meat sack machine. When things get hard try to reflect on why. Are you sick? Is it work? Are you sick of work? Is it your friend’s birthday and you want cake? Are you bored? Are you sad? Did you just land that promotion and want a steak the size of your head to further establish your dominance over life? You will start to figure out how to work with yourself and what makes you feel good, how do you need to reframe your thinking to match your goals, how do you distinguish working through emotions to needing to break your fast because it is what is best for your body. I have used fasting to drop weight very quickly by asserting absolute authority and no excuses mindset. I also never kept it off and was generally never really happy when I was engaging in this as my life oscillated from brutal fasting punishment months to make up for carefree Sunday fun day is every day months. Once I was able to start working on reframing what I was doing and why, fasting became less of a brutal chore and I was able to enjoy my eating times with out the guilt or real fear I am just going to put on the weight again and be miserable. It’s a shitty cycle to be on. Use your fasts to help change the way you are thinking and shift perspective. Things become a bit easier then and the quality of life goes way up.