The FastDay Forum

Hi I've recently spoke to a friend who is also doing 5:2 fast diet, she waits exactly. 24hrs and eats. So if she last ate at 8 pm the night before she will wait until 8 pm tonight and then eat normal again. Does anyone else do this or do you all wait a full 24 hrs day to next to eat again????

[carorees]

Hi jojo and welcome!

The waiting 24 hours and then eating normally is a form of intermittent fasting that was 'invented' by Brad Pilon several years ago. He says you don't have to be completely strict about the 24 hours (so 22-26 is fine) and that at the end of the fast you just carry on as normal.

On the forum, I think a large proportion of people have their 500/600 calories in one meal in the evening. Most people don't eat anything else after this meal until next day breakfast. Some people also aim to have around 24 hours of fasting before their 500/600 cal meal, others don't.

Any of these techniques will work for weight loss as long as at the end of the week you have eaten fewer calories than your body has used! With respect to the 'other benefits' of fasting, no-one knows what the 'magic number' of fasting hours might be. 24 hours is a convenient to use as it requires no mathematical ability to work out when you should break your fast!!!

Hope that helps!

The longer the fast, the greater the health benefits....although most of those benefits are unproven in humans. So if your main goal is just trying to lose weight, it probably doesn't matter if the calories are spread out or not.

I am not a 'nibbler'...this only makes me hungrier, so I have almost all my calories on fast days in one meal at the end of the day. Experiment a little and find out what works best for you.

Hi jojo
I usually go 24hrs or there about on main fast days x3 but I also do 2days like your friend, but I have a shed load of weight to lose and only doing this because I'm finding it VERY easy. I love my food to much to do it when I don't need to.Sue

Splitting the 500 cals just sets me up to continue eating. I have been most successful with pound loss when I fast to the 24 hour mark.
I do have 3 coffees through the day with 1%milk and splenda which I deduct from my 500. Drink lots of water too. I have better weight loss this way.

Yeah the 24 hour fast period as stated above does not compute in my mind, if they are not eating a "Fasting" size dinner. One of the reasons why we do this is to save the calories we would normally eat for the 3 meals, but if you are eating a normal size dinner and just pushing it back a few hours to get to the 24 hour mark, you are then adding the calories from that meal, so your net saved calories from fasting are going to be lower. You are in essence then only saving calories from 2 meals (breakfast and lunch on your fasting day. I usually fast to skip 3 meals, and sometimes even push to lunch the next day because one thing you also need to account for when calculating fasted state, is that it starts 6-7 hours after your last meal. When the body is still digesting, it is not considered to be in fast mode.

But again, I am in fat loss mode (about 2 lbs a week) and the above scenario may be for maintenence.