The FastDay Forum

Sorry to be terribly new and naive.... But I thought the whole idea of 5:2 to was that it is infinitely sustainable forever..... This whole post is leaving me a bit bewildered. And worried. So people don't want to fast forever?
I don't think I mind the thought of fasting forever.... Or more like cutting back after days when I've eaten more.... But I cannot and will not count calories!!!!
But like i say.... I'm very very new here and know very little.....just thought i'd stick my oar in.....

I think the last thing in the world anyone here wants to do is discouraged new people. I certainly think intermittent fasting is more sustainable than any other diet I've tried. I think people are just being honest about the fact that some fast days are really hard... we dread them... they're difficult... but we keep at it.

I think the other thing is that the media is not honest about the last bit of losing weight being difficult and maintenance being difficult. Even scientists... there's hardly any studies done on maintenance. Again I don't want to discourage anyone. But for some of us this is proving difficult. Difficult, but manageable with intermittent fasting.

Don't get discouraged! Don't give up! But know that sometimes it will be hard...

Sorry to be terribly new and naive.... But I thought the whole idea of 5:2 to was that it is infinitely sustainable forever..... This whole post is leaving me a bit bewildered. And worried. So people don't want to fast forever?
...
I think the other thing is that the media is not honest about the last bit of losing weight being difficult and maintenance being difficult. Even scientists... there's hardly any studies done on maintenance. Again I don't want to discourage anyone. But for some of us this is proving difficult. Difficult, but manageable with intermittent fasting.

Don't get discouraged! Don't give up! But know that sometimes it will be hard...

Would I have even started if I knew how hard it would be? Probably not, if I'm honest. But now I'm there, having invested 2 years in in, I'm not going to throw it away.
The bit about the media is right. First bit of weight loss is not hard. The rest of it is your own choice ... and so is how we manage it. That's why there is no 'one size fits all' answer. @pudpud17 you might find it is infinitely sustainable for you, so don't despair.

I don't think that maintenance is ever easy, whatever way one loses the weight initially and heaven knows I've tried them all! However, the joy of 5:2, for me, is that I can, for example, go on holiday, eat and drink as much as I want and then lose the regained weight in two or three weeks by fasting. I am no longer afraid of missing a meal or feeling hungry and I no longer have to weigh every mouthful of food and record it in minute detail. I am lucky because I don't find fast days particularly hard and therefore don't dread them - they are something that I just do when necessary - part of my life now and accepted as quite normal by family and friends.
So, to @Pudpud17and any other newbies out there - don't be put off trying IF. It does work, for some better than others, but if you never give it a go, how will you know whether it's right for you?

Thank you all for these more encouraging posts! And I'd like to clarify that I wasn't in any way having a go at anyone !!
I certainly didn't come into this expecting some easy fix it all answer...or to find it easy all the time... I think anyone who is prone to putting on weight is always going to have to think about it and put some amount of effort into it... And I am most certainly in that camp!!!
I am most definitely going to keep with the programme because to me it feels like how I always managed my weight in my younger days... I.e by eating much less on some days than others! Just back then it didn't really have a name.... And so far (I know it's very early here!) it's working to reset the amount the eat on non fast days.ni'm eating less at the moment rather than more. I feel like I want to eat more because I've had a couple Of days with not much, but when it comes to it I'm full up quicker and consequently eat less.... I really hope that this continues for me.... At least for a while.

I do recognise that this is a very important topic that requuires airing and hopefully much more research!!

... Let's face it, if the headlines today said 'new discovery says you can eat all the carbs you want and be healthier and slimmer than before' most of us would think this was heaven!

You can! Www.drmcdougall.com. This is the diet I try to roughly follow on non-fasting days: complex carbs, low-fat protein with lots of veggies and fruit and minimal oil or fat or processed foods. Plus I add a couple of treats on the weekends like pizza and cake or ice cream.

I agree diet management is a permanent way of life. It is essential in this day and age with our sedentary lifestyles, ageing bodies and abundance of high fat and processed foods available at our fingertips. Our bodies were not designed/evolved for this. We used to expend most of our energy hunting and gathering food, which is why we naturally are attracted by high calorie food. To be healthy nowadays we have to regulate ourselves to no longer follow this instinct.

I haven't been on the forums for a while, as I said earlier, but I am finding this thread very interesting. I think I feel rather lucky to be maintaining my weight, but it does take some discipline. The trouble is that when you lose weight you need less food and there's no getting away from that fact: if you're smaller than you were you simply can't eat like you used to! It's best then, if you're eating less, to put better quality food inside you too.
I think I may have reset my set point by continually following 4:3 until I reached my goal weight. Like @carorees I maintain by having an eating window and also adding in a few fast days. I also cannot afford to get bigger as I gave away all my old larger clothes!! When things get a bit tight I know I have to be a bit stricter.
I am a lot happier being slim. It has had many benefits: apart from looking and feeling better I was able to reduce my blood pressure medication and my blood profile is very good now.
I would certainly be interested in any survey on the subject of prolonged fasting that might be generated by this thread and if you're just setting out on the 5:2 adventure my very best wishes to you.

When I started fasting 2 years ago I weighed 80kgs (12st 10lbs) and wore size 20 clothes. Post menopause things could only get worse; I'd never dieted before, but had gone from eating well (owned and ran a health food store) to eating British Normal whilst being vegetarian, like my OH.
I started eating fish about 5 years ago, having realised my ageing body required a better protein source, this now includes chicken.
My lowest weight reached via fasting was 69kgs; currently 72.5kgs, BMI 24.6, so much improved and attention to my daily morning weigh-in informs my subsequent diet for the day. 16:8 is second nature now. Clothes are comfortable at size 16 again.
Some days I want to nibble more than others, but it's cold winter and understandable, I'm hoping Spring will knock that on the head for 6 months.
My signature states my method and I hope to stick by it for years to come, and may they be many :0)
What a good and friendly and helpful and informative forum this is.
Thank you, one and all.

@Lizbean, I am in maintenance mode, and have been pretty much since the end of October when I regained a couple pounds after my conference and found it impossible to get them completely off by returning to my usual 2 times a week 435 calorie fasts. I realized that further weight loss would be impossible to maintain and that I better focus on maintaining what I have achieved. I have stopped getting on the scale except every now and then. No more logging. Though I do log and count my fast day food because 435 calories is so low that it is easy to eat another 100 or so without noticing if I don't count.

But what is getting to me is realizing that since my weight hasn't budged with 2 day a week fasting since the beginning of November, I will have to fast two days a week to maintain at this level that is a few pounds higher than I was at in September. I may very well do it, but I'm not happy about it because it is getting really really hard, and I am having such issues with hunger.

I'm hoping it will pass. I'm making some tweaks to how I control my blood sugar, because even though it is well within the bounds of normal, it is a bit closer to the upper bound of normal than I like. That might help. Perhaps when it isn't below freezing all the time and the ice is off the roads so I can get out and walk again I will feel better, too. This winter seems to have gone on for centuries.

We'll see. I'm not a quitter. But I do like to figure out what's going on when things change radically, and this sudden attack of hunger was something I had not dealt with before that really set me back.

Thanks @peebles grr, hunger pangs are the worst so my thoughts are with you and I understand you want to find the solution to eradicate them. I've been fortunate as I've not experienced prolonged periods that you are describing. My cals for fasting now say '335 to 500'. I have always opted for 500. It just does not make sense to me to go below 500, if I did I think it would upset what seems to me to be the happy balance of the weekly scales and my enjoyment of this WOL. So I guess I'm saying my choice has not stressed my body out, yet! Why are you focusing on 435 at this point in time and not 500? Those extra cals might make a difference. Perhaps in the winter we need to add an extra 100 cals or so to see it through?
What tweaks are you introducing to address blood sugar? It's clear to me from people's experiences that wherever we live in the world the change in season to autumn and then winter affects our lives, whether fasting or not. I am weighing daily and recording on a Friday as that's the only way to track if I'm within my wiggle room for maintaining during winter 123 to 127lbs. I can tell you are no quitter , me neither - we have accomplished so much in the last 12 months. Your winter is blooming tough, in comparison to ours - so when does it end? I too want to jump into a better mind set, walking and relaxing in Spring. Bring spring on, say I! Meanwhile let's get to the bottom of how to manage your hunger pangs through the members experiences. I hope that helps everyone.

@Lizbean,

I eat at 435 calories because is as close as I could get to 1/4 of my usual TDEE and still get enough protein to avoid burning muscle. The fasting books I read suggested eating at 25% of TDEE on fast days, but my TDEE is somewhere in the 1500s.

Much of my problem probably has to do with age. Over the course of every ten years our metabolism drops about 3%, so 17 years into weight control, I'm down another 5% or 6% from the already low maintenance level I was at at age 50. My activity level is actually a bit better now, as I had a major health catastrophe at age 50 and couldn't walk for a couple months. But I can't eat as much now without regaining as I could back then.

My body composition has changed dramatically, too. I assume some of this is age related also and possibly because I yoyoed early on, losing 20 lbs and regaining it and then losing a bit over 30. After that first 20 lb loss I had a lot less tummy fat than I do now. But of course, I wasn't post-menopausal. Menopause seems to have packed on quite a bit of tummy fat even as my weight stayed in the same range. At the same time, I used to have a butt. It's gone now. Pretty soon I'm going to have to carry around one of those little donut cushions because there is nothing left to sit on!

If I'm not hungry, fasting is a cinch.

The things I do to tweak my blood sugar wouldn't work for most people. I have an uncommon blood sugar disorder that sometimes responds to a supplement that does nothing for anyone else with blood sugar problems, save a tiny group of people with a particular mitochondrial issue. I have recommended it to quite a few people, none of whom have ever found it at all useful, so I don't mention it any more.

Other than that I just have to watch how much carb I'm eating. Fatty foods give me serious heartburn now, something that wasn't a problem when I was younger. But that makes it really tough to eat a more typical low carb diet. Since my carbs are higher than they used to be I try to keep my fat low, as fat and carbs together is a recipe for heart disease. But I may have to ratchet the carbs down a bit. I already eat a lot less than most people do. My idea of a lot of carbs is maybe 140 g a day.

Leanne we are not here to promote other programmes.

@Leanne - just had a look at Dr McDougall's programme - no meat, fish or poultry, no cheese, no eggs, no butter, no mayo, no chocolate, no coffee - I think that counts most of us forum members out, and as for the statement on one of the other pages
"What the World Needs Now is Carbohydrates – and Lots of Them" - you won't have to look far on this forum for science which flies in the face of that!

We are all different of course but I think you might find more support for this way of eating elsewhere

[carorees]

... Let's face it, if the headlines today said 'new discovery says you can eat all the carbs you want and be healthier and slimmer than before' most of us would think this was heaven!

You can!. This is the diet I try to roughly follow on non-fasting days: complex carbs, low-fat protein with lots of veggies and fruit and minimal oil or fat or processed foods. Plus I add a couple of treats on the weekends like pizza and cake or ice cream.

If you have significant insulin resistance like most overweight people (especially likely if you put weight on around the waist), even complex carbs will cause increased blood sugar and risk of heart disease and diabetes. Hopefully you are not one of those but it is still true that many people can't have as many carbs as they like. Also I suspect that when GMH said she'd like to eat as many carbs as she wants she was not talking about complex carbs but things like French bread, pizza, biscuits and so on!

Interesting. I found cutting carbs in winter on top of 5:2 a real challenge. It is summer here (NZ) and I am finding fasting easier again and i dont "need" my porridge for breakfast at the moment. Winter was hard, especially when I tried low carb with skipping breakfast. I know it works for a lot on this forum but I became ravenous in the afternoons, so back to no frills 5:2, and porridge on non fast days was the answer for me. Maybe it was all psychological, who knows....

Pudpud17, that's exactly why I started 5:2 - I ate a bit like this in my youth and I was very slim so figured a more structured version was the way to go. And it has been. Good luck!

[Tracieknits]

I think different people have different energy needs and different tolerances for carbs, and that's ok. The key is finding what works *for you* and being flexible enough to change your habits if they stop working.