The FastDay Forum

I have been unable to do 5:2 for several months due to surgery and medication. But I returned doing 16:8 about a month ago after going up to 11st 12lbs...since then I have fluctuated during the weeks but now 11.7lbs so feel rather pleased..I am having a very quiet weekend and plan to do a 5:2 to get me back on track...but very happy with 16.8 !! It's the way forward to break up the journey!!

Great news MM. Another one who has found the benefit of 16:8! Congrats on the weight loss over the last month too

Hi Missymoo,

That's really great news, I think it always helps to have a little bit of a shuffle around to surprise your system, let it know who's boss, a clue........it isn't you!

Ballerina x

Sorry, sorry - I'm sure that this question has probably be asked and answered hundreds of times already - but what exactly is 16:8? Is it every day or just two days a week? and is it a case of eating as on 'feast' days for eight hours a day? Again - sorry for the ignorance and laziness xx

Hi Pinchypops,
No problem with asking questions, if you go to the home page, scroll down to the bottom, look in the right hand box, 'Most Replied Topics' and you will see a thread '5:2 + 8 hour diet + 16/8' click on there and everything you never wanted to know will be revealed to you,

Good luck

Ballerina x

Great news missymoo well done on returning after your problems and easing yourself in slowly and the bonus of weight lost Sue

I have been doing 16:8 this week on the non-fast days to just help prolong the effects of fasting and to stop me scoffing too much. I have reluctantly largely sacrificed breakfast apart from weekends (well, yesterday it was a mid-morning brunch before I worked the afternoon), and due to being out in the evenings etc I have eaten earlier, so naturally ended up eating between, say 11 and 7 or 12 and 8. It has helped this week to stop the creep up of the poundage between fasts and hopefully should help me break the dreaded 'plateau' of losing & gaining the same 2-3lb each week (for the last century it feels like!) - I feel great!

I have always been one of those breakfast lovers who couldn't function without it and still, I don't like not having it (not least because it, ahem, gets my 'system' going in the morning) but I also recognise the fact that I don't actually need to eat as much as I have been doing in the past and am trying to stick to those two meals a day (no snacks), even if I eat more at those meals. I have realised that snacking does nothing for me as it just keeps me in 'eat' mode longer. Although obviously I still do it because I am human and I like food!

[carorees]

Sorry, sorry - I'm sure that this question has probably be asked and answered hundreds of times already - but what exactly is 16:8? Is it every day or just two days a week? and is it a case of eating as on 'feast' days for eight hours a day? Again - sorry for the ignorance and laziness xx

The more days you do it, the more effective it should be. 'They' (whoever they are) say that only 3 days a week is enough but I doubt that it would result in weight loss for most people unless they are being pretty careful on the other 4 days! I think that if you do 3 days of 16:8 and 2 fast days or 7 days of 16:8 you should get good weightloss but even then if you take the 8-hour feeding window to mean 'stuff as much in as you can' then, again, there won't be much weightloss! For me, 16:8 every day only works if I don't have wine, desserts, cake etc on all those days, so I need to combine 16:8 with at least some days of no booze and treats.

That is Great News!

Does anyone know if the 16:8 approach leads to the same kinds of health benefits observed for 5:2?

I'm finding 16:8 very helpful in keeping me on track
Before when I was just 5:2ing I was overeating on feast days, particularly with bad junk foods.
However as caroees says, you still can do a lot of damage in an 8 hour eating window if you eat the wrong foods.
But I find eating like this is making it much easier for me to eat well. I suffer less cravings and am overall making much better food choices.
Another major positive is my energy levels are soaring. This is almost as good as the weight loss.
At weekends I loosen the reigns a bit. I still love cooking, baking and enjoying meals with friends and family and this WOE totally supports that.
I think 16:8 is the perfect accompaniment to 5:2 and it seems more and more people are discovering that for themselves

Yes I have used it throughout the week but more relaxed approach at the weekends...I have had the odd glass of wine during the week though!!

Well done MissyMoo for getting back to losing weight. I am also 16:8ing three days, fasting on two & relaxing a bit at the weekend but overall trying to keep within my TDEE when averaged over the week.
I have been 16:8ing on my recent two week holiday & although I put on 1-2 lbs I'm sure I would have put on more weight without 16:8ing each day & only managing one fast day.

[carorees]

Does anyone know if the 16:8 approach leads to the same kinds of health benefits observed for 5:2?

No-one knows how much fasting is needed to give the proposed health benefits of reduced risks of cancer and Alzheimers. This is because a) almost all the research on fasting has been done on rats/mice for whom 8 hours without food is like several days for us and 24 hours without food is like a couple of weeks for us, b)fasting has only recently caught the attention of science and c) the studies in humans have only been for a max of around 8 weeks of ADF and, of course to detect a benefit in cancer risk or Alzheimers we need very long term studies (decades). So we are not likely to know for a long, long time whether fasting will actually bring these improvements and if it does what kind of fasting is needed.

We do know from studies on Ramadan fasting (12-16 hours during the hours of daylight every day for a month) that, as long as you don't break your fast with a massive feast every night, there are certainly improvements in cholesterol etc. However, the health benefits of weightloss are so big and as most people who show these changes during Ramadan also lose weight you can't easily tell what has come from simply losing weight and what from fasting. The suspicion is that the fasting is helping because the amount of weight lost is fairly modest in these studies.

I think that when you are deciding which IF routine to follow you have to choose the one that works best for you in terms of controlling body weight and letting you live your life.

Thanks Caroline. I keep intending to change regime and then get my bloods and other metrics retested so that I can figure out the least invasive method that still leads to the same benefits. However, I'm fairly confident that 5:2 has led to my observed reductions in several health risk markers and I don't find it invasive at all. I tried full fasting and ADF just prior to the Horizon programme and they were a bit more restrictive in terms of work and functions etc.
The result of this is that I never try anything else now.... I suppose if it's not a struggle and I'm packing in enough nutrition into the low cal days, I probably shouldn't wonder about changing!