The FastDay Forum

Many people, including me, are very happy with their results from following 5:2. Unless you have a complicating medical issue, it is a fact that if you eat your TDEE or less on feast days, and your 500/600 or less on fast days, you will lose weight. You may not lose it fast, and your weight may not go down in a straight line, but you will lose weight, and continue to lose weight, until you reach your weight goal. I have no doubt I can reach my goal, but I also know that to do it using 5:2 I will have to remain alive and well for at least another year.

However, judging by the chat, it is clear that quite a few people are unhappy with the relatively slow and uneven pace of weight loss 5:2 provides them. If you are one of these people in a hurry, may I suggest you dial up your favorite weight loss diet and follow it until you lose the amount of weight you want in the presumably quicker time frame you need.

And then come back to 5:2 to keep your weight loss off for as long as you want.

We live is a world that overly-values quick answers and instant results. No one gets overweight overnight and a laxative-like pill to drain the fat while we sit not-so patiently on the loo doesn't exist.

What the idea of 5:2 offers - and that DrMM was truly wise enough to recognize - are the psychological advantages that all the other methodologies lack: simplicity, personal choice and total flexibility.

The 6:1 plan, represents an 11% calorie reduction over the same period of no-fasting, TDEE eating.

The 5:2 plan represents a 21% total calorie reduction.

The 4:3 plan is a 32% calorie reduction.

And ADF is a 38% calorie drop (adding just one additional day over the 4:3 plan).

5:2 strikes a rational balance and is a great place to start. If, for some reason, it turns out to be too much or too little, you can always change to one of the others.

Give it and yourself a chance to join the rest of us in the happy realizations that you'll be discovering in yourself along the way.

ADFnFuel thanks for you post.
I am one of these people that likes to see results straight away or i quit! ive been doing the 5:2 diet since the end of April and so far i have lost just over 1/2 stone which is good but not as good as i first expected. ive come to realise that losing 1LB a week is keeping me on the right track. for the first month or 2 i did 2pm-2pm fasts then since the start of June i did 36hr fasts, eatting 2 250cal meals but the last few weeks ive been doing 36hour fast with 1 meal at the end of the day which im really happy with. I have also started doing this 3 times a week which im finding works for me and keeps me losing weight every week which i wasnt always doing before. I still want to lose another 2 stone as im overweight so i feel the amount of fasting days im doing is right for me at the moment but the closer i get to my target weight then i can adapt appropriatly.
I did consider doing the ADF but looking at the percentages you posted shows that actually there isnt a huge difference.

I lost my baby weight quite quickly with my first four children, but it has taken 11 years and two sessions of dieting (weight watchers about 3 years ago) & 5:2ing for the last 3 months to get back to my before the 11 year old weight. I once remember being told not to stress about losing weight quickly as with baby weight, it took 9 months to grow that big so to expect it to take 9 months to lose the weight. If we used the time taken to gain our unwanted weight as a guide for how long it should take to lose it then maybe we wouldn't get so dissatisfied.

5 years ago I lost a stone in a month when my dad died. I then put that stone back on, plus more when I started eating eating properly again and the stress of arranging everything was gone. I would rather lose a pound a week than larger amounts as from experience, an extreme loss played havoc with my weight.

Thank you for the stats. It's good to see the percentage losses for the different ratios. X