The FastDay Forum

Hiya,

I'm just coming to the end of 5 days on Phase 1 of the Harcombe Diet (for anyone unfamiliar it's no carbs/dairy/sugar for 5 days.) I find I lose weight very quickly on a low/no carb diet, my question is can I combine this somehow with the fast diet? I.e Stay off bread/refined carbs completely from now on, have no carbs on fast days and low on non-fast days (i.e one meal a day - such as porridge or a jacket potato.)

Has anyone tried this? Is it too much? Am I going to keel over?!

I'd also like to try and stay off sugar now I've gone through the 5 day cold turkey, is it going to be impossible to eat ENOUGH calories on non-fast days without the odd chocolate bar etc? How do people eat enough calories?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Emma

[carorees]

Hi Emza and welcome

If you're happy with the low carb approach it is fine to continue it with fasting and the two go very well together. Many of the 'hard core' intermittent fasters use a low carb approach. If you are already used to low carbing you are less likely to keel over on a fast than someone used to eating a diet high in refined carbs!

Whether you will be able to eat enough calories on your feast days depends a lot on your TDEE. If you exercise a lot or are particularly tall, you should check your TDEE (link in the FAQs). You can have 25% of TDEE on fast days. Most people have no trouble eating enough once they allow themselves a few treats (but these don't have to be carb based...cheese, avocado, nuts and seeds are all nutrient dense for example).

This way of life is so flexible, I wouldn't worry, just start and see how things go, it is easy to adjust things as you go on.

Good luck!

I find the low-carb and 5:2 diets quite complimentary. I've been doing the 5:2 aspect of my diet for nearly a year and the low-carb for nearly 3 years.

I do fall off the wagon sometimes such as holidays and Christmas. I do have a weakness for fish & chips and Cornish pasties and at Christmas I do go for the roast spuds, pudding and mince pies.I find however, that the first fast day after such an event can be used to kick-start my low-carb lifestyle again and any weight or inches gained can soon be checked.

I'm not super thin but I'm fairly lean and active so combining low-carb and 5:2 certainly hasn't done me any harm. If anything I find I eat more vegetables and salad now than I did when I followed the recommended 'balanced' diet. I've just swapped starch for nutrient dense and vegetable alternatives.

I'm a big fan of low-carb, as it makes me feel better, and like Itadakimasu says, I eat more veg/salad, as I have to fill the carb "space" on my plate. And I do think good fats are good for you. But I find I cant stick to it when I eat away from home, which is quite often, which is partly why I am fasting as well.

Hi I am newby to this forum and a devotee of Zoe Harcombe. I have lost 4 stone since May 2011, it was slow but steady. I don't follow exactly the Harcombe diet but I am in tune with her way of thinking, reading her research and books have helped me get to grips what was making me fat. Every GP and surgery nurse should be made to read her work, for years I have been given the wrong advice.
I started experimenting with 5:2 after Christmas. I think this week I may have got something right with regards to my hours of fasting. If you do low carb you naturally detox your body of sugar which makes 5:2 easier to do, you shouldn't crave sweet stuff or get the headaches or keel over. I finshed my fast this lunchtime, I didn't want breakfast I started Wed evening at 7.30 after a dinner of well roasted fatty shoulder of lamb and loads of green veg and french beans tossed in Garlic butter yummy. I am now a uk size 16 at 5ft 6" I am comfortable with that and have become a shopaholic interested in clothes again. I am still classed as obese and I know I need to lose some more weight but I am 57 and sick of 'dieting'. I am now thinking long term for health reasons, if I lose a little with 5:2 its a bonus but I don't want to go back to how I was and this is my way of trying to control that. Stick with Zoe and give 5:2 a good try, I am sure you will be ok with it.

[Tracieknits]

I cannot stay on a low carb diet for very long. I don't think it's realistic or sustainable. I do try to make healthier choices - whole grains breads and brown rice and less sugar, but I have no interest in attempting the restrictive and imho unpleasant way of life that is low-carb.

I like the 5:2 diet because I think it is sustainable. I can live with this! I just have to get through today, and then I can have that food I'm missing *tomorrow*. I've done the low carb detox - I was miserable. Yes, the cravings do lessen, but even after three weeks of no sugar or white flour, the cravings do rear their ugly head when someone has a birthday party and there's a lovely cake in front of your face. I don't think that's any way to really live, and I know I cannot sustain it.

I think when you have a lot of weight to lose, the best diet for you is the one you can sustain and see yourself doing for the long haul - or for life. And for me, that will never be low-carb.

My TDEE is pretty high, mainly because I'm the mum of a 2 year old! I started 5:2ing in January but found I was so worried about going into starvation mode and not eating enough I was eating more chocolate and sweet things on non-fast days than usual!

The reason I did the 5 day phase 1 of the harcombe diet this week was actually for the amazing effects it has on my skin, I have had psoriasis since having my daughter and something about phase 1 always clears it up a treat, whether its lack of sugar, yeast or candida kill off I dont yet know.

I do find it hard to sustain the harcombe diet tho, I know I'm gonna want spaghetti Bol or shepherds pie one day! Which is why I prefer 5:2 ing. I lost half a stone in January in a month but after a cold and a night out piled it all back on in 10 days! Hopefully this time I'll be stronger..(and just losing 5 pounds in the last 5 days is a great start!)

I think carb tolerance varies a lot from person to person. Over the past 2 years I've found that my body copes best with about 100g carbs a day. That's pretty easy to achieve, and allows me the odd slice of toast or pasta dish once in a while. This is my 7th week 5and2ing, and I find the combination is a good fit.

I cannot stay on a low carb diet for very long. I don't think it's realistic or sustainable. I do try to make healthier choices - whole grains breads and brown rice and less sugar, but I have no interest in attempting the restrictive and imho unpleasant way of life that is low-carb.

I think it depends on what you mean by sustainable. If sustainable means that you never eat another cake or portion of chips then life is going to be fairly miserable. I don't take any diet on holiday with me and I don't take it to anyones birthday party, wedding or works do.

For me, sustainable means that I can have a treat now and again but then I can resume my usual diet. The first fast day after a holiday is a new beginning and that's what is so good about 5:2

[Tracieknits]

Well to each their own - but for me each time I would give in and have a bit of what was forbidden, it seemed like all of the hard work of "detox" was thrown away and I was massively craving carbs again. I'd be back to square one and have to go through the painful withdrawals from sugar. So yeah, it was very miserable and not the least sustainable.

So while that's fine if it works for some, being low carb is NOT a requirement of doing 5:2 and I don't want anyone to feel pressured into it. It's okay to do them together, but totally not required.

because I'd done low carb for over a year it seemed like second nature to do a low carb version of 5:2 . Food is food you count calories just the same.
I spent quite some time converting to low carb before I felt good so I can see why some might not think it worth the effort.

[carorees]

I recently read a paper saying that some people do well on low carb diets while others do well on low fat diets and for people who do well on low fat diets their weight loss was much lower on a low carb diet. And vice versa. So let's not start arguing about which is best! As Tracie said the best diet is the one you can sustain and that will vary from person to person.

I don't think anyone is saying that low carb is a requirement of doing 5:2, I certainly didn't. All I said was that low-carb and 5:2 compliment each other. I don't think that's pressurising anyone.

I don't feel that low carb is something you commit to forever and never eat rice , potatos etc again. I don't see it as some sort of sugar detox either. I just feel that 5:2 helps me to sustain a low carb approach which I find helps me to maintain weight loss.If you do break the diet occasionally it's easy to get back on track again, that's true of 5:2 whether you eat low carb, low fat or just normally during non fast days.

This is interesting. Low-carb as a diet can be very unforgiving if you're trying to stay "in ketosis" - one slice of bread and you've blown it.

The problem that I can see here is that 5:2 normally demands that you're within a 500-600 calorie daily limit. Low-carb would not imho normally involve calorie counting and it would be easy to go over the calorie limit with (say)a large pork chop.

So if you're combining 5:2 with low-carb wouldn't you have to count both carbs and calories? That would be on a fast day and would imho be tough if not impossible.

Low-carbing on a feast day should be o.k. though, shouldn't it? I love my eggs!

[carorees]

If you use an app to track calories it also tells you carb content so it's pretty easy. If you avoid carbs on fast days and don't go overboard on protein or fat you can easily stay within the 500/600 cal allowance and you'll find the carbs are low anyway.

The fast itself will help with being in ketosis so by keeping low carb on a fast day it extends the period of ketosis.

If you also keep to a lowish carb diet on non-fast days there seems to be some indications from our questionnaire results that it helps with weightloss.

You don't have to be in ketosis for a lower carb intake to be helpful in terms of reducing glucose and insulin levels. By keeping insulin under control you get a host of health benefits!