The FastDay Forum

I ask this because on my feast days now, I barely break 1000 calories most of the time and since I started this diet 3 weeks ago I've barely lost anything. My Fitness Pal says I need to eat 1500cals a day to lose weight and my TDEE is 2100 I think.

I've restarted my progress tracker this week due to having really unreliable scales and since Monday I've only lost .5lbs. I haven't remeasured since Monday but I don't think I've lost anything there either... I've even done lots of walking this week which is more exercise than I normally do

I was really hoping to see a marked difference this week but apparently accurate scales have their downside too... Any suggestions?

[janeg]

Seems to be the case HopefulHeart. The body wants to hang onto the fat reserves if there isn't enough coming in. The Lab section has stuff about it.
What seems to be helpful is mixing up the intake- having the 500cals on the 2 days (600 for male) and going up to or over the TDEE one day, another generous day and two slightly under days.
Also, you haven't been doing it for long and it can take a wee bit for your body to adapt. And if you are exercising more, that can hang onto or even increase the weight initially due to water retention.
Hope this helps and no doubt other folk will chip in with better answers and ways to mis it up.

To be perfectly honest I'm never very sure about the calorie thing. I'm not going down that line as it tends to start arguments!

One thing I have noticed though is that it often helps to just change your routine. If you have got into the habit of always grabbing the same old breakfast and sticking to pretty much the same selection of foods it can sometimes help if you just try adding a different variety. Don't know if theres any science to it but it works for me and its something that hubby used to find worked for his SW members.

With the 5:2 one of the things in the book is that the changes in the amount and type of food eaten over a week helps to fool your body into letting go of the fat rather than hanging into it. It wont cost anything to give it a shot.

Yes, in my case.

Varying intakes seems to work well.

Using the trendline, either in the progress tracker or Libra is much easier than going on one spot weight too. Now that I have a few months of measurements, I can see my weight yo-yo's through the week as lots of things affect each day's weight.

I don't count cals so I can't say about that but eating less doesn't always equate to weighing less and my weight comes off in lumps, then stabilises then more lumps...

HopefulHeart, what I love about 5:2 is being able to eat normally. To me your 1000 calories on a non-fasting day sounds awfully low. I use the TDEE in the Progress Tracker as my guide, and my current daily value is a bit under 1600. Some days I go over (even well over) and other days I go under but over the week I average around my TDEE. As you can see from my stats it's worked well for me so far. Of course I'm very fortunate not to have any health issues that might impact weight loss.

The best of luck to you.

The odd thing is I never try to restrict my calories on feast days, I think I'm just more conscious about how much I snack or at least used to. Yesterday I made the decision to eat to my TDEE (which is about 2100cals), I got to about 1600cals and I felt like a beached whale! Weighed myself this morning and I hadn't lost anything but I hadn't put anything on either which I was sure I would.

I think I do need to make an effort to eat more (which I never thought I'd say...) But I need to make sure it's more of the right stuff rather than junk. It doesn't help though that my toddler has suddenly discovered the joy of making cakes with mummy

2100 sounds perhaps a shade high - how tall are you ?

[carorees]

I agree with the others saying that mixing it up helps. I have certainly found that I've lost me weight after a heavy weekend where I've had a high calorie dinner, wine, nibbles etc, than when I've been "good" all week and weekend. So I tend to restrict to one treat on a weekday non-fast day, but not worry at all at weekend. I find that wine puts the calorie intake up quite lot . I don't think you should force yourself to eat though...that can't possibly be right! Just relax and the weight will come off.

The TDEE calculators only give rough guide as they can't account for variations in thyroid function, general activity beyond exercise (aka NEAT) and actual muscle mass as opposed to the assumptions made in the calculator.

Phil, 2100 does sound high doesn't it but all my details in the progress tracker are correct and that's what it's come up with, I'm only 5ft 1 and I've put down light activity (toddler, walking regularly to supermarket/town as I don't drive, exercise DVD). I never get anywhere near it on a regular day so even if it is high it's not something I aim to hit.

I think I will try to mix it up then, I always eat something different and I think if I aim to eat more some days and less other days hopefully that'll help.

Roll on next week to put some of these things into practice!