Free planner · Free PDF
The 16:8 fasting planner
Four weeks from a 12-hour overnight fast to a true 16:8 — two hours at a time, so hunger and energy have a chance to adapt.
Time-restricted eating is the simplest form of intermittent fasting: you eat within a daily window and fast the rest. It is also the one most people abandon in week one, because they jump straight to sixteen hours. This planner mirrors the way Lamplit's own fasting programmes are built: a week at 12 hours, two weeks at 14, and only then a true 16:8.
It comes with a window worksheet, a 28-day log that records how you slept and felt alongside the hours — because that is the real scoreboard — and the safety list that most fasting guides bury or skip.
Read this before day one
Fasting is a tool, not a cure. It should never come at the cost of adequate nutrition.
Not during pregnancy or breastfeeding, and not for children or teenagers.
Not with a history of disordered eating.
Diabetes — especially on insulin or other glucose-lowering medication — only under medical supervision, because of the risk of dangerously low blood sugar.
Medication that must be taken with food: check the timing with your pharmacist or doctor first.
Persistently dizzy, exhausted or unwell while fasting: stop, eat, and talk to a clinician.
The four-week ramp
The middle weeks are the ones people skip. Two full weeks at 14 hours is what makes 16:8 feel easy instead of heroic.
| Week | Fast | Eating window | Example | What to focus on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1[1] | 12 h | 12 h | Dinner finished by 20:00, breakfast at 08:00 | Consistency. Most people are already close; the job this week is to make the window the same every day. |
| 2 | 14 h | 10 h | Dinner by 19:00, first meal at 09:00 | Hold 14 hours. Hunger in the last hour is normal and fades within days. |
| 3 | 14 h | 10 h | Same as week 2 | A second week at 14. This is the step that makes the next one work. |
| 4[2][3] | 16 h | 8 h | Dinner by 18:00–19:00, first meal at 10:00–11:00 | A true 16:8. Prefer an earlier window: the metabolic evidence is strongest for eating earlier in the day. |
Choosing a window you can keep
Write your week-one window in the log before you start. Deciding at 21:00 whether the kitchen is closed is how the habit breaks.
Choose an earlier window when you can. Early time-restricted eating improved insulin sensitivity and blood pressure in a controlled trial even without weight loss.[3]
Anchor the window to something fixed — a train, the school run, a meeting — not to hunger.
Keep food quality high inside the window. A shorter window is not a licence to eat poorly; a randomised trial found no weight advantage from timing alone.[4]
Water, black coffee and unsweetened tea are fine during the fast.
Watch energy, sleep, mood and training — not just the clock. If fasting wrecks your sleep or your workouts, it is not the right tool for you.
28-day log
Rate energy and sleep from 1 to 5. Two bad weeks in either column is a reason to widen the window, not to push through.
Day 1 – 28
- Last meal
- First meal
- Fasted h
- Energy 1–5
- Sleep 1–5
- Notes
How to use it
- 1
Read the safety list. If any line applies to you, this is a conversation with a clinician before it is a planner.
- 2
Write your week-one window at the top of the log. Twelve hours: most people only need to finish dinner a little earlier.
- 3
Log every day — last meal, first meal, hours — and score energy and sleep. The scores are what tell you whether it is working.
- 4
Add two hours in week two, hold it in week three, and go to 16 in week four only if the scores held up.
- 5
In Lamplit, set your eating window in the free Fasting tracker: a live timer counts the fast, the window prompts remind you when it is closing, and the same energy and sleep scores sit next to it.
Common questions
Is 16:8 better than 14:10?
Not clearly. The trials with the strongest metabolic results used windows of six to ten hours, and the benefit tracks more with eating earlier and keeping the window consistent than with squeezing out the last two hours. If 14:10 is the schedule you can keep, it is the better schedule.
Can I drink coffee during the fast?
Black coffee, unsweetened tea and water do not break the fast in any meaningful sense. Milk, sugar and calorie-containing drinks do. Be aware that the caffeine curfew for good sleep — six hours before bed — still applies.
Will I lose weight?
Maybe. The evidence for weight loss from timing alone is mixed: some trials show a modest effect, one well-run trial showed none. What the better trials do show is improved blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and lipids with an earlier window — even without weight change. Treat weight as one signal among several, which is why the log has energy and sleep columns.
Who should not do this?
Anyone pregnant or breastfeeding, children and teenagers, anyone with a history of disordered eating, and anyone with diabetes unless supervised. If you take medication with food, check the timing with a pharmacist first.
Sources
Where an item rests on a specific source, the number in brackets points to it. Every source is linked.
- 1.de Cabo, R. & Mattson, M.P. (2019). Effects of intermittent fasting on health, aging, and disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 381(26), 2541–2551. Read the paper ↗
- 2.Wilkinson, M.J. et al. (2020). Ten-hour time-restricted eating reduces weight, blood pressure, and atherogenic lipids in patients with metabolic syndrome. Cell Metabolism, 31(1), 92–104. Read the paper ↗
- 3.Sutton, E.F. et al. (2018). Early time-restricted feeding improves insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and oxidative stress even without weight loss in men with prediabetes. Cell Metabolism, 27(6), 1212–1221. Read the paper ↗
- 4.Lowe, D.A. et al. (2020). Effects of time-restricted eating on weight loss and other metabolic parameters in women and men with overweight and obesity: the TREAT randomized clinical trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 180(11), 1491–1499. Read the paper ↗
Last reviewed: August 24, 2026
This planner provides general information about time-restricted eating and is not medical or dietary advice. It is not suitable during pregnancy or breastfeeding, for children or adolescents, for anyone with a history of disordered eating, or for anyone with diabetes or another condition managed with medication — those situations need individual guidance from a qualified professional.
