The FastDay Forum

Thank you for sharing! I too am struggling with good fast days...have slipped to 16:8 and feel like a hungry bear coming out of hibernation. I was thinking it was the cold or lack of activity. Shared same thoughts as @bbt053 in wondering if it was the second round of 6 month plateau (started with WW last January before finding 5:2).

Now I'm torn between having a pig out week or still fighting for good fasts.....

Bless you all and especially Candicemarie, for this is what happened to me today at 21 hours into my fast. Soooooooo grumpy and irritable and HUNGRY I ate two boiled eggs. Then two hours later made fish and chips. Then ate the banana/yogurt/nut dessert. Then four squares of 85% chocolate. Then a milky decaff coffee. Then hoola hoops. Then went to bed feeling a hopeless failure who had let the side down and really should stop all this dieting and weighing stuff because I was obsessing about food far too much.
Phew! Thank you for explaining Famine Reaction, this must be what's happening to me, for here I am at 4.20am, wide awake but not hungry thank goodness.
So. Now. A plan.
Listen to my body, eat when actually hungry, make it real food.
Anything else I should know dear people?

Very instructive @candicemarie. Interested to learn that this process can take a couple of weeks, especially as I am also out of my routine right now. Congrats CM on your self awareness

Just wanted to post about my recent experience of Famine Reaction ..may hopefully help others going through similar,or allow them to recognise what is happening when they are going into FR
...coz i didnt know what Famine Reaction was ( had read about it,but -goldfish brain - had quickly forgotten again..)which could have been disastrous as was on the point of jacking it all in and drawing a chair up to the fridge...
Anyway,my story..
Over Christmas,even tho i ate everything i wanted, i didnt really want very much..i even lost two lbs!
Returned home after Christmas and was horrified to notice immediately that all the things that had left me cold at Xmas (biccies,chocs,etc) i was suddenly craving..to the point had a real inward tussle to restrain self in the Co Op from buying the ( by now) reduced tins biscuits / Quality Street/ christmas cake. .. Not to mention the newlyinstalled Valentine and Easter goods now on display!
Fellow shoppers could have had no idea that behind my mild facade a war was raging..
The impulse for sugary fatty stuff was intense and all i really wanted was to put my head into a vat of cream,or climb into a mountain of chocco..
but i wanted nourishing stuff too...roast dinners,casseroles,fish,buttery scrambled eggs,tons of veg..
However,whatever i ate, i was still starving,all the time...and cold,hungry,restless,miserable and a big crosspatch24/7

I was dismayed and puzzled ..had felt so smug at xmas!...which was only a week or so earlier..
i really felt i was going to have to abandon IF coz fast days now felt impossible..i somehow got thru one hellish fast day then had to abandon the next one...and on feed days i was ravenous, and exhausted from my efforts to resist eating!

Luckily somehow i happened upon an old posting by Debs about famine reaction..the link she posted led me to Dr Amanda Sallis and her work on Famine Reaction ..thanks @Debs

What i read there made so much sense and at last i understood what was going on...
Which was that suddenly my body had gone,
"oh hello..she is losing weight,better help her out here and send her strong reminders to get as much food as poss down her gob! Famine on the way,eat up!everything and anything!"

The body becomes so desperate to hold onto fat that it sends out urgent impulses you just cant ignore in its efforts to stock up on nourishment.. It's not lack of willpower,its not greed..its complex physiological reactions we have no control over..survival instincts as old as time to keep the human race going!

With some advice from Caro and also after reading a free chapter of Sallis's book "Don't Go Hungry " i put the plan into action to restore normal service asap..
I knew i needed to up the calories big time ( cheery prospect! ) and possibly face gaining in the short term in order to lose longterm

Feed days,well how jolly they now were! i ate well and didnt count calories,luxury for me, just made sure i got three decent hot meals to pacify my inner workings!
didn't want to stop fasting completely if poss coz was too scared i might never get back on board once i stopped
So the next fast day that came along, i did 16:8 instead with some extra cals..but not too many.
Had one day where i totally overate and enjoyed every moment of it!
Sparks flying off my knife and fork heehee!

Sallis says it could take anything from a week or two to a month to reset things and Caro suggested my fast days would give me an idea of when FR had passed
So when i did a normal fast monday just gone with just the usual fleeting hunger pangs,i knew i was over it...the awful gnawing relentless hunger had disappeared so i guess i have reassured my body for now..
"move along please,no famine here! "

Took only a week or so to get sorted ( quite disappointed in a way..a bit longer " off the hook" with the extra grub would have been nice)..but then, i probably would have put a pound or two back on,tho it would have been worth it as long as i beat the Famine Reaction!
As it was, i've lost another two pounds since my 2lb xmas loss.and funny thing is..the day after my "Wahey!Big splurge eat loads" day,was when the compliments started rolling in! Suddenly everyone commenting i was looking slinkier!
Wasting away to an elephant hehe!
It seems feed days are as important as fast days...they have their part to play in thwarting that ole FR and keeping the scales moving onwards and downwards.
There's also something called the Fat Brake that Sallis writes about..works alongside FR..but thats another story
So folks watch out for those warning signs and take speedy action if you feel the FR setting in! XX its just Mother Nature wanting to keep the species going!

Thank you @CandiceMarie,\

I'm so appreciative to hear your story. As a newbie, I'm trying to absorb as much advice as possible. I wondering if you could clarify this for me. Am I right in thinking that I need to not under-eat on my feed days, in case the famine mechanism sets in? Is that the main thing here? And I'm thinking of my fast day tomorrow and thinking I better eat lots of biscuits before then as its going to be hard (3rd fast). I managed not to eat the biscuits, but did have toast and butter. So does it mean when you have cravings eat something substantial but not too high in cals? I think I'm over- thinking this.
Thanks for the help.
Jo

Thanks for taking the time to share that CM, very interesting stuff & something we must all keep in mind. Glad you're back out the other side

@Jo05 yes, you do need to eat on non-fast (feed!) days. I, and I think many of us, have found that your body needs the variety, I think of it as surprising it !
Think of it this way, you eat normally (try not to exceed your TDEE though ) for a couple of days & your body says, hey all is well, no famine. Then you fast, WOAH that surprised it, wasn't ready for that, didn't take the necessary precautions & make sure it clung on to what it could

Thanks for taking the time to share that CM, very interesting stuff & something we must all keep in mind. Glad you're back out the other side

@Jo05 yes, you do need to eat on non-fast (feed!) days. I, and I think many of us, have found that your body needs the variety, I think of it as surprising it !
Think of it this way, you eat normally (try not to exceed your TDEE though ) for a couple of days & your body says, hey all is well, no famine. Then you fast, WOAH that surprised it, wasn't ready for that, didn't take the necessary precautions & make sure it clung on to what it could

Sooo interesting @AnnieD,

I like knowing we are getting closer to outwitting some of our biology. Gosh what a journey!!!
You're going well...i hope i keep going too.
Jo

A timely reminder, thank you!

I had this last October, a couple of weeks after I hit maintenance. Scared the pants off me. I swapped to very low carb, low sugar and high fat - and although my calorie intake went through the roof, the extra fat immediately made me feel satiated and coupled with the reduction in carbs and sugar, I carried on maintaining beautifully. Was really weird to be tucking into bacon, butter, coconut oil and cheese!

Well that explains it!! The same thing happened to me. Smug mode over xmas and losing weight despite the extra food! Then eating everything in sight like it was more important than oxygen and putting weight on faster.
A week later I am losing again and not feeling hungry for high calorie food. Not going mad after all then lol.
cilla x

[Moogie]

Fantastic post CandiceMarie, thank you for sharing with us. I'm sure many will find it useful. I haven't experienced this, thankfully, but it sounds awful and I'm glad to hear you've come out the other side happy, healthy and still fasting!

Thanks for that @CandiceMarie And yes very useful will now reread just to take it all in again because I've achieved absolutely nothing in the last month.

Hope you're feeling a little better today

Thanks CandiceMarie, you have made me feel not so bad about my wayhay days when I I eat anything I want.mi do it once a week and I have not gone through a famine reaction. I am a big believer in confusing the body. glad you got past it and back to normal.

Thank you CandiceMarie for sharing your experience. For the last two weeks during which I am trying to 4:3 the fast days haven't been too bad but I have been eating like an idiot on feast days because I have been tempted by every food I see I have also felt extra cold, snappy & generally below par & have stayed the same weight! so this may be what is happening to me. My OH even changed the batteries in my weight scales because I thought they were malfunctioning I do hope it has resolved now because it is my third fast this week & I am hoping my scales will have moved downwards when I weigh in tomorrow morning
Good luck also to everyone else in the same situation it is so frustrating when our bodies are uncooperative!

I second, third and fourth all the replies of thank you! Thank you @CandiceMarie for sharing.

p.s. thank you for the link @Debs too.

Another thank you from me @CandiceMarie. It seems that many of us have been going through the same since Christmas - strange when we were doing so well up to the big day. I'm back on the straight and narrow now, I must try to remember next Christmas to be prepared for famine reaction - and read up about it in the meantime.
Cheers.

Edit
Thank you for the link @Debs

[carieoates]

Great thought provoking post, as usual. But this has made me think, and now my brain is whirring away....

Just a thought, but with so many individuals experiencing this, I was wondering if Xmas was the trigger.
Being at home, and or socialising, and not having our usual routines, did this confuse our "inner faster" and we are all now re-setting.
I'm only wondering as we are all at different stages of our own assault course which is 5.2.
I for one have had the light bulb moment and all the high fat, low carb etc, 4.3, IF talk. I've gone back to the beginning and thinking that 5.2 works all on its own. Eat less twice a week. And if it ain't broken, don't fix it.