The FastDay Forum

[Debs]

@JayeGirl, hi! To answer your question re 16:8, it is fasting for 16 hours and eating for 8. So effectively missing a meal. This ia what I do most days as I have been through a period where I found all day fasting too hard. I feel that I can do it consistently every day too. I am comfortable if I know I am going out in the evening, not eating until I go, knowing that I can't overeat.
I don't count calories, my life would be too miserable, and I don't deprive myself either but missing meals now, no longer terrifies me and I no longer worry if I don't know where my next meal is coming from!
I don't know about being a fad, but although I haven't been as successful as I would like, like @Rawkaren, I know that if I didn't fast I would be even bigger, and I am no longer scared of eating food I enjoy. I have noticed though that I get heartburn these days when I eat too many refined carbs like bread and cakes, a reminder to limit my intake.

@JayeGirl, hi! To answer your question re 16:8, it is fasting for 16 hours and eating for 8. So effectively missing a meal. This ia what I do most days as I have been through a period where I found all day fasting too hard. I feel that I can do it consistently every day too. I am comfortable if I know I am going out in the evening, not eating until I go, knowing that I can't overeat.
I don't count calories, my life would be too miserable, and I don't deprive myself either but missing meals now, no longer terrifies me and I no longer worry if I don't know where my next meal is coming from!
I don't know about being a fad, but although I haven't been as successful as I would like, like @Rawkaren, I know that if I didn't fast I would be even bigger, and I am no longer scared of eating food I enjoy. I have noticed though that I get heartburn these days when I eat too many refined carbs like bread and cakes, a reminder to limit my intake.

Thanks for replying. Can you explain more about the hours? Exactly what hours do you not eat and are those 16 hrs including your sleeping hours?

On 5:2, well 3:4 these days I don't eat for 24hrs (including my sleeping hours). So I will eat today around 8pm and won't eat again until 8pm tomorrow, Monday being my first fast day. On Tuesday a none fast day I will eat around 1/2pm when I'm hungry. So I've had a further shorter fast of 15/16 hrs. On none fast days I only eat two meals as I don't eat breakfast (just not hungry) and I don't snack other than maybe an apple.

Well this thread has at least become active @peebles I only use mobile (Android phablet) to access this site and have no issues at all, is it an Apple issue? Next I see that some people haven't had a lot of success with 5:2 long term for weight loss, the people I know who have been fasting on less than 500 cals per week for 2 years, no longer lose weight. There is also a lack of participation in 'fasting today' threads, this seems to be because people don't find it useful, think that is 'shouting about it' or other reasons, not necessarily because they are not fasting. In real life, most of my friends who tried fasting no longer do it: too hard, can't come to grips with sacrificing only some days per week, need to be disciplined every day and others who felt they were developing eating disorders. I personally like the fact that I don't have to be disciplined every day. However in saying that, my eating is way less healthy because of that. Unlike some people who came to fasting from an unhealthy way of eating, I came from disciplined healthy, I had long dumped traditional ways of unhealthy eating...e.g. popcorn at movies (mindless eating), rice with curries, potatoes with meals, bread with everything, chips, fries, baking cakes etc. I took up oddball eating with fasting, vegie soups for breakfast, but brilliant for keeping hunger at bay. Sadly I also found I could eat crap on feed days and lose weight by cutting cals 3 days a week. Trouble is bad habits have been formed and if there is a slip in fasting, then weight is regained. So my ultimate goal is to eat healthier again at least 6 days a week. My conclusion on whether this WOE is on the decline, is yes, but for those of us who feel it suits us better than 7 day a week dieting, I feel we will stick to this for a long time. But I don't think anything lasts forever, not even Royal marriages so time will tell.

JayeGirl
There is more information about 16: 8 fasting under the new Fasting Window Forum and perhaps this topic might give you some more information. Summed up in this post by Navwoman:
In a nutshell you can eat/drink 8 hours in every 24 - usually the same 8 hour period e.g between noon and 8pm every day. So that's 8 hours eating/drinking and 16 hours not eating / drinking.
fasting-windows-f45/just-what-exactly-is-16-8-t7601.html
Basically you miss breakfast every day and if doing 16:8 (not eating:eating) start your eating window at 1pm and you can eat until 9pm. So, you are getting the benefits of a 16 hour fast followed by a 8 hour period of eating. No calorie counting but keeping aware of what you're eating so you don't overdo it. Yes the 16 hours does include when you are sleeping. Some people just do 16:8 all the time, others combine it with two 500 calorie fast days and other people follow 16:8 if they go on holiday. Fast Five refers to not eating for 19 hours and eating for 5 hours every day.
Hope this helps rather than confuses!

@GMH,

I use a Nexus 7 tablet and when I access the forum using it, which gives me a mobile view, when I log in there is no confirmation that it worked. I am taken back to that cartoon screen. If I go to the menu on the side (not entirely obvious) at the very bottom it shows a silhouette, which I now know means I'm logged in. But again, it isn't obvious, and when I first tried to get into the new site it took me quite a while to figure out that I was logged in. The real value of the site and the existence of an active forum is also not real obvious from the cartoon screen, which takes up the whole screen and gives very little actual insight into what the site offers.

I think we need only look at the tiny number of new posters over the past 6 months to conclude that the site is not designed in a way that makes it easy to join.

And in the U.S. I am hearing MORE about fasting these past few months than before. It was in all our news media this past week due to the publication of a study that claimed all kinds of very questionable, miraculous health benefits for fasting based on mouse studies and a 3 month human study. (I don't doubt there are wonderful changes in three months, but that is the case with most diets. The s--t hits the fan after 6 months and by two years most diets that look wonderful at 3 months have not produced any lasting good. Some have produced worse outcomes than before the diet started.) The difficulty so many of us have had heading into 1 year with disordered appetite and regain is a huge red flag to me about real health benefits.

So you would expect to see many more people coming here to discuss fasting based on that media spotlight, but that is far from the case, and most people participating are people who have been here for many months and know the value of what is here.

Well, I have never dieted before, lost 23lbs to relieve my arthritic knee which is now singing to me . Happy fasting -lower carb, smaller portions.....good food.
Back in late 2013 I researched diets and found MM site, found Moogies inspirational blog and this fabulous site.
I'm also here to stay. and support everyone as best I can.

It may not help that the forum and tracker have been down intermittently over the last few weeks. I found diving on at different times of day that I just got a blank page. The fastday home page was always there. I checked once that it was not just happening on my Kindle Fire, but no, I got the same with Windows 8.1.

Problems with getting on/running sllloooowwwwww here too. Moogie's says the techies are on it :0)

Please let's keep this going any way we can, the need for untrolled informed discussion is deeply needed.

I hope to see the forum survive, too.

Its worth noting that the low carb forums stayed very active long after the media had decided LC was a fad. But that was back before social media eviscerated high-content online discussion.

This forum is still coming up on appropriate Google searches. What I hope Moogy is doing is looking at Google Analytics to see how people are navigating the site, how many pages they are viewing before exiting, whether people are leaving at specific pages, whether they are finding the forum if they land on the home page, and using that very helpful tool to see what changes could be made to the site to encourage more forum page viewing and new member persistence.

Without access to those stats we are just guessing about why new members aren't swelling the ranks as they must if a robust community is to continue.

I fear it won't unless the home page is redone to make it easier to get to the forum. Now it is not, and it takes far too much scrolling through the cartoons and hunting for links to find it. The cartoons signal a tone very different from the intelligent support found on the rest of the site. A more compact, clearer home page with a more inviting, easy to find forum link would really help,