The FastDay Forum

Hi all, my 15-year-old daughter seen her weight slowly creep up over the past couple of years and now has probably 10 kg to lose. She has read about the 5:2 WOE and is keen to try it. She hasn't dieted before, is pretty sensible and level-headed, which is why she is keen to get her weight under control before it becomes a problem.
The only thing is, she made the mistake of mentioning it to her friends, and they now won't leave her alone, telling her that they love her too much to allow her to continue on this unhealthy and self-destructive path.
I actually warned my daughter that it might be better not to tell anyone about it to start with, but my warning came unfortunately about 12 hours too late
She is not overly emotional, and doesn't have an unhealthy emotional relationship with food, but her friends have introduced an extremely unhelpful emotional element to the whole issue. I suggested that she forget about it for a few weeks and then just quietly start again when the fuss has died down, but she is committed to starting now, and I applaud her courage.
Practically, she can't miss lunch at school without someone noticing, and fasting at the weekend is not an option. Could 16:8 be a way of avoiding the aggro?
Comments... suggestions... very welcome.

If she does 5:2, she could have most of her fast day calories at lunch. If her friends persist in asking her what she is doing, it would not be lying for her to say she is slightly reducing her calories (it is a slight reduction when looked at over a week). She may or may not see results with 16/8. Even with 5:2, make sure she knows to expect slow losses (.5-1 lbs/week). The slow loss should also keep her friends from freaking out. It is great that she is talking to you about it.

It is great that she is talking to you about it.

Sorry, I have no advice. Having been one, and seen it from the inside, I think teenage girls are unfathomable. I just wanted to repeat @Goodmorning's sentiment and send my best wishes to your daughter.

Good for her. Important that she forge her own way and have the results of her independent experiment speak for themselves. To me, with just a bit of consistency and with what we've learned here, the result is already very much stacked in her favor. Early successes are easy, solutions for early obstacles are simple and well known. A willing to experiment and learn is all that's required.

It seems too that you have a golden opportunity here to share future meal planning efforts with her for everyone's benefit.

If she feels stressed, consider having her read some of the replies in the comebacks thread as counter arguments that'll cause her peers to think rather than just react. A devastatingly simple example might be: "I lost 2 kg last week and feel great. How are you doing?". Then just let that thought simmer in the silence that inevitably follows.

Consider too the high likelihood of others around the table at school needing a similar intervention, she could be a potential leader by her example.

School holidays must be coming up so why not start with her then? Perhaps you could do it with her for a couple of weeks and plan busy days out for the 2 fasting days each week. By the time she went back to school she would have a couple of weeks under her belt and be in the swing of things. Having her main meal at lunchtime on fast days is a really good idea. Maybe soup or a salad at lunchtime and the same again for dinner would be the way to go. Teenage girls seek approval from their friends all the time and don't want to be different but if she loses a couple of kilos and keeps it up she will get the results she deserves and gain some self respect as well as the respect of her peers. Please let us know how she is getting on and well done for being such a supportive mum.

So far all good advice here! I usually advise avoiding the term "fasting," as it tends to freak people out--and everyone, not just teenagers, is keen to express their (uneducated) opinion. Even just the unvarnished facts: "I eat 500 calories 2 days a week, and normally the other 5"--gets some people all riled up. But that I've lost 32lbs and kept them off for nearly 2 years (after giving up on losing weight) is evidence that this WOL works. Have her come on the forum herself, we don't bite!

I agree that 16:8 often doesn't work for weight loss, can for maintenance. Here's a pdf I put together for a friend of mine on "how to 5.2."

5-2 et al.pdf

5.2 Basics

(590.6 KiB) Downloaded 149 times

Re: having lunch be her "main meal" could work--IF that's when she's hungry! Could be counterproductive if she isn't hungry then; many of us find that eating can trigger hunger, and we tend to push our calories as late in the day as possible. I don't eat till after work on light days, usually about 6pm (I am a late dinner person, even on normal days, I usually eat dinner 9-10pm). So if she isn't really hungry at whatever preset time "lunch" is scheduled, it might not work too well for her to eat just to silence the critics. How about saying, "Hey, I'm trying something where I eat when I'm hungry, and I'm not hungry now..." Doesn't need to be attached to 5.2 or fasting or anything else. Another option is having something she finds very filling/satisfying but has limited calories. My go-to for that is hardboiled eggs; as well as just eating plain, you can make a very nice salad with greens, peppers, cucumbers, etc--veggies with very low cals--and adding a low cal (but not "diet") dressing; see more in the pdf about salad dressing choices. With lots of greens, she can look like she's eating a lot, but have less than 150 calories.

We're having similar discussions at home, similar weight to lose. Our daughter is now taking less food to school but to ensure she gets enough sustenance I make her a small side salad to take with her, some raw vegetables with healthy dips or protein to fill her up (without the sugar). We'd often do it but it was on top of quite a large lunch/snack box. In our household portion sizes are our biggest downfall, closely followed by using food to celebrate/comfort ourselves.
We plan after school snacks to make sure she does not each much sugar on weekdays. Desert is only for Friday-Sunday nights, same with any fruit juice/soft drinks. Perhaps your daughter can start by having no food after 7pm till breakfast the following morning? Once we brush our teeth we tend not to eat anything else. It might help the body to adjust to being less often nourished/fed.

Thanks everyone, your responses have been really helpful.
@Wmr309 and @Goodmorning, yes, saving the main meal for lunch time is probably the least worst solution, although I'd have to make sure there was a not too awful very low-calorie option for the evening meal.
@ferretgal I agree that using the F-word was probably entirely the wrong tactic, but unfortunately it's too late now to unsay it! She has a bit of work to do on eating more veggies and salads but she's up for it. As for coming on the forum herself, maybe she will now. I posted here on her behalf because, being very new to this myself, I couldn't be sure I wouldn't get roasted for encouraging a 15-year-old girl to diet (I know it's not a diet)! Of course I should have realised that things are different here. And thanks very much for the pdf, I have saved it.
@Pilchards Her stomach was in knots this morning at the thought of having to face these so-called "friends" again, but she's being so level-headed about it (when she's not in tears from frustration, that is!) that I think she'll be fine. It's as if her friends are in some kind of competition, who can be the most concerned. Two of them actually refused to speak to her yesterday, because of this. Honestly it's so weird, I've given up trying to understand (@ravingkiko) And so has my daughter - she said she'd just stick with the ones who are supportive and ditch the ones who seem to thrive on negativity.
@ADFnFuel thank you so much, very wise words. I particularly like "Early successes are easy, solutions for early obstacles are simple and well known". And comeback ideas are very welcome. As for others needing similar intervention, maybe not so much. All her contemporaries are tall and willowy and seem to live on Mars bars and crisps. They have no idea what it's like going clothes shopping and finding nothing that fits or looks flattering, which is what makes their negativity all the more galling. My kids drink water, eat fruit, have crisps once a week, eat sweets rarely, and desserts even less often. But there's no point wasting energy on complaining how unfair this is.

[carorees]

Hi and welcome

In my experience 16:8 can give just as much weight loss as 5:2 if done right (i.e., not thinking that it is 8 hours non-stop eating of junk food). And for a young person, even 16 hours of fasting might not be necessary. In a study of young men, simply ensuring they had no calories between 9 at night and 8 am in the morning was enough for them to lose weight with no other changes. She could start by either skipping breakfast and not eating until lunch or taking a healthy breakfast to have in morning breaktime (a low carb breakfast that looks like a healthy snack) and ensuring her evening eating finished by 8 hours after that (so depends on when you like to have your evening meal essentially).

Trying out things in the school holidays sounds an excellent idea though.

Good luck with whatever she decides.

According to Moseley's 5:2 site (and I imagine the book), children under 18 years of age shouldn't fast. That may just be a butt-covering statement, but I wonder if you've checked with your daughter's doctor. He/She may have advice about how to best fast safely.

Thanks @MaryAnn for bringing this up. Before I posted this thread I searched the forums to see if anyone had already posted a similar question. Among the results for "teenager" were lots of people saying "I haven't been this thin since I was a teenager" but also many others who said "I've been overweight ever since I was a teenager".

My thoughts on this were - if teenagers are not supposed to diet, when are they "allowed" to lose that extra weight? Are they supposed to wait until they're in their twenties, after they've got used to years of poor body image, low self esteem and reduced mobility?

I was an overweight child and teen, and I finally lost the excess weight when I was about 16, during my O-level year. I knew I would be at home alone with the biscuit tin for 4-6 weeks during study leave, and I knew if I didn't make a conscious decision not to, I'd end up the size of a whale. So I cut out all cakes and biscuits and the weight disappeared. My daughter doesn't have this option because we rarely have cakes and biscuits in the house anyway. Her metabolism is obviously less efficient (or maybe that should be more efficient... ) already than that of many of peers, so I'm not overly worried that she's going to "wreck" it further. If anything, having less weight to carry around will make her more inclined to exercise and so help to reconfigure her metabolism.

One slight concern for me, however, is the IGF issue. One of the central ideas of the documentary was that fasting reduces this growth hormone, which reduces the likelihood of cancer (a major issue in my family). So maybe fasting can also stunt growth - I haven't seen any discussion of this anywhere. However, according to my doctor girls tend to stop growing after puberty anyway, and she hasn't added any vertical inches for a couple of years. But I agree this could be a concern.

I will talk to my doctor about it. He's young and open-minded so it will be interesting to find out his views.

[carorees]

A few thoughts:
Increasing the overnight fast to, say 12 hours and not snacking between meals, is not anything different to how teenagers used to eat in our grandparents' generation, so she could try that first.
Fasting increases growth hormone but decreases IGF-1 but it is the lower protein intake during the fasting hours that affects IGF-1 most and so ensuring adequate protein by swapping carbs for protein will ensure she gets enough protein to support growth.
Small changes like extending the overnight fast and swapping out some carbs for protein is likely to have a big effect at her age and so why not start gently and see how she goes?

Yes Caro you're right. Thanks for the more accurate info about the growth hormones. I'll go and read some more about that. She's doing well on 5:2 so far and not finding it difficult, so she has the motivation to continue. But different eating windows are a good option to bear in mind in the future.

Just my two cents' worth (probably all it's worth... )... Consider sticking with one strategy at at time (5.2 OR 16.8, OR carb restriction, etc), or you won't know later what IS working, and what ISN'T, and could end up with unnecessary restrictions... At least for me, the bane of my "dieting" in the past (not being able to stick with something that's overly restrictive). I admit, 16.8 did not work well for me, I don't do well with daily restrictions. Oddly, though, most days I don't eat first thing, but I don't react well to being "told" (even by myself!) that I "can't" eat till a certain time each day, or that I have to stop eating at a predetermined time.

Note that I was one of those annoying teenagers who was thin and ate crap (5ft 7in and 98lbs!)...caught up to me, though, eh?

@Ferretgal I'm exactly the same! I hate being told I can't do something, which is probably why I've ended up putting on weight whenever I've tried to diet in the past. And mix & match never worked too well for me either. I had a friend and together we'd do Michel Montignac for breakfast (pre-Atkins), Rosemary Conley for lunch and food combining in the evening. You can probably guess how that worked out!
My partner is doing something similar but I'm not allowed to talk to him about it - completely taboo subject. He's doing high fat / high protein / low carb, mainly for pre-diabetes. But he keeps sneaking in carbs, which as far as I can make out turns it into a regular high calorie diet. He wonders why he's not losing any weight.