The FastDay Forum

Susan: Just the fast days, Sun & Tues, and the rest of the time just 'eating normally', except what does that mean? I make an effort to eat carbs on Fridays now to be loaded with fuel for parkrun but otherwise trying to avoid them. Also experimenting with coconut oil as an alternative fat to olive and as a replacement for some carbs. Really don't want to lose any more weight, might have to throw in a week of eating 3 meals a day to readjust!
16:8 every day would be too effective for me, I think - I don't want to lose any more muscles!

Swedey

I fully understand that point of view. But I tend to suggest that for most people their chance of successful weight loss is severely limited without daily weigh-ins. To me, by far the worst situation is weighing weekly where it's a lottery whether you weigh on a high or low weight day and there's high stress induced by the meaningless variations.

I'd make the point that daily weigh-ins and a trendline reduce stress resulting from thinking about TDEE's etc etc. So long as your eating patterns/habits are reasonably consistent, the trendline shows within a relatively short timeframe whether or not what you're doing is working or not ... if it's not working you have the opportunity to change things without wasting time continuing with a less than optimal strategy.

Ken

I would agree with your point - in an ideal world. My personal experience was that I was waking up at 5am to go and weigh myself, then again at 6, and again at 7......and I kept thinking about it all the time.

Not a healthy place to be, so I just wanted to break the cycle.

Hopefully, as I start weighing again tomorrow, I will be able to do it with the mindset that you describe in your post.

However, my point is that we are all different, and react in different ways, and not everyone can cope with doing things "the right way" (ie your way) the whole time. And I think we all need to be a little understanding of that, or those of us who can't conform to this ideal standard of thought and behaviour may feel inadequate, which doesn't help either

Speaking purely from personal experience here. Sorry if I haven't expressed it very well, I'm not having a good day.

Big hug.

Fair enoughsky!

[carorees]

I am thinking of changing the FAQ to reflect the fact that daily weighing can be helpful as long as you use a trendline to see what is happening. However, as many folk are perhaps reluctant to adopt this highly analytical approach, for them less frequent weighings are at least less stressful. It seems to be a question of what kind of personality you have...are you going to be stressed and become obsessed with daily weighings or are you able to ignore the increases while not getting too excited about the decreases?

Studies show that those who weigh daily lose a lot more weight than those who weigh at less frequent intervals. .

Unfortunately that is not the case for everyone. I used to weigh daily and psychologically it was a disaster for me. I am much better off leaving it a week or two. I think everyone needs to weigh to suits themselves individually. I am jealous of those who can weigh using apps and do it in such a scientific weigh, but I know it just would not work for me.

Hi:

In my opinion, the issue is not how often a person weighs, it is how they interpret the information. It is clear from reading the posts here that most people initially have no idea of how much their weight can vary from day to day. And I fear that lack of understanding can lead some to quit 5:2 'because it doesn't work'.

5:2 weight loss is very slow over time. Many on this forum can only reasonably expect a loss of .5 to .75 pounds a week. This is almost undetectable in any given week, much less day. But I read posts complaining of getting on the scales after a fasting day and not seeing any loss or (gasp) a gain.

The other side also leads to unhappiness. After a quick first weigh in they find they have lost 4 lbs. They constantly weigh in and after a month they are only down 4 lbs. So it the plan does not work!

I agree personality dictates how often someone may want to weigh themselves, but if they have a daily personality with no understanding of weight swings and slow weight loss, it can easily lead to dissatisfaction and not sticking with 5:2.

It is another question if FAQ can warn/educate people that want to weigh in daily about what they are likely to see over a one or two month period.

As I have a scale that only measures pounds, not grams or ounces, weighing daily is a waste of time. Monthly is fine for me.

Daily weighing and trend line works for me
If I didnt have excel (don't have iphone so no apts) I would use the old fashioned way of plotting on graph paper and drawing my own 'best fit' line

BTW, you don't need an app to see your trendline, you can use the forum's tracker.

[carorees]

BTW, you don't need an app to see your trendline, you can use the forum's tracker.

The tracker does not give a trendline...it just also joins the dots. A trendline is constructed using statistical analysis so as to ignore outliers and show the underlying trend.

It does now! It must be new as tonight is the first time I've seen it.

BTW, you don't need an app to see your trendline, you can use the forum's tracker.

The tracker does not give a trendline...it just also joins the dots. A trendline is constructed using statistical analysis so as to ignore outliers and show the underlying trend.

I don't understand a thing, LOL!

Do you mean that the trendline is a line that would go over the dots and join the first dot with the last one and just show the downwards trend? It's easy to imagine that, methinks.

[carorees]

Not necessarily the first and last dots...they might be outliers...it's more complicated than that! But luckily since the progress tracker now offers that capability we don't have to worry about how!

I just saw it, nice! Love the purple colour!

I weigh every morning after the loo, thats because I am a lifetime dieter you can't get out of the habit. Just recently I have been weighing once a month at the pharmacy on their Tanita scales to post results on the forum weigh in, but I have even managed to cock that up, I didn't realise until recently that I had shrunk 3/4 inch so my tracker and weigh ins are out.

Chris x