The FastDay Forum

This continues to be an interesting thread and I feel like we've all been talking about this in various guises for quite a while. I haven't put on weight but I haven't lost any more for a year. I think I've said before that I've probably reached the weight that my body is happy to be, and it would certainly worry me if I started to put on weight. I am, like Deb, in the BMI of 26 point something and I am going to accept that. I am going to continue to fast twice a week and my focus on non fasting days is to eat to my hunger and to eat non processed home cooked food, with as much variety as possible and a healthy amount of vegetables and fruit. I am not going to restrict on non fasting days because I don't want to be on a diet - except twice a week. I don't think fasting makes us fat that's for sure. I think deprivation might make us fat because deprivation sets up a need for rewards and rebellion and the whole eating issue becomes fraught. I am a lot happier now I have stopped weighing my self. My clothes tell me the story and why rub my nose in the lack of weight loss? It's ok. I am a little bit overweight. But I am not obese as I was when I first started 5:2 nearly 2 years ago. I think the issue of people's dieting history is very interesting. Does it make serial dieting make it more difficult to lose and maintain?

Hi @peebles, I don't know what else to say apart from best wishes and good luck, and do keep us posted on your experiences and thoughts.

@GMH, I agree with your comment re the "hunger" monster. I am still trying to work out how to stop myself eating when I don't need to (which can be for reasons such as boredom, the pleasure of the taste of the food, blood sugar levels, sugar craving, etc). Definitely the mind is part of the problem and needs to be part of the solution, I just need to work out how!!

I do eat LOTS of veggies. I have a huge salad, mostly low cal veggies, for lunch all year around, and lots of veggies for dinner too. Both meals include a good source of protein. And I am including more fats in my diet to try to help with feeling full (which it does a bit, but not as much as I would like!!) But I still feel the want of something sweet... Which fruit doesn't always satisfy.

I know I have mentioned in other threads about how we ate when younger when we didn't have any weight issues. It wasn't that we didn't have quite a few carbs, we did - cereal, bread, potatoes, desserts, every day - but on the whole, apart from cereal and bread, we had almost no processed foods, everything was home-made, and we had very few snacks.

It does seem to be the added sugar in processed foods that is the real culprit with weight issues. I understand this is the focus of a new film "That Sugar Film" http://www.thatsugarfilm.com/synopsis/
I am looking forward to seeing it, having seen the trailer - also, I happen to have met Damon, the director and "star", as he lives locally (his partner, Zoe, is known to some Aussies for her role in the TV show "Winners and Losers").

I will create a thread about this film at some stage - I was going to wait until I had seen it...

NB I wrote this before I saw all the more recent posts, but will leave it as this as it is long enough!

@Sassy1 I'm having a chuckle about 'when we were young and didn't have a weight problem'. I thought I had a weight problem from when I was 14! I dieted like my mother (my sister never did, just me). I was about 60 to 64kg!!! Or less! So I have spent a huge part of my life thinking I was fat. Even now I don't think I'm that small, but people keep commenting on how skinny I am. I was the smallest of my life, 2 months ago. As for the eating, well we have to take control of our own destiny. Let's have it tomorrow is one I like. The wet fish is an old favourite, enough is enough! But as for doing all the right things and still not losing weight, I have no answer for that.

I thought I had a weight problem when I was a teen and weighed 115 lbs, but mostly because my mom and aunt and grandmother were so huge and I lived in terror of ending up like them. As it turned out, I inherited my metabolism from the other side of the family who are thin but have a busted blood sugar-control gene. The only time I gained weight was when I ate a lot of carbs. Even then, the weight came right off when I stopped eating a high carb organic brown rice- and veggie-based diet and went back to eating what most people considered to be a less healthy, but more meaty and cheesy diet.

But when I remember the way that in my early 30s I could shovel in the pizza or ribs at dinner and follow a restaurant dinner with a fudge-topped ice cream cake while weighing no more than 120 lbs I could weep. That changed after having my kids, but the real battle started in my late 40s with those hormonal changes.

@Sassy1 I'm having a chuckle about 'when we were young and didn't have a weight problem'. I thought I had a weight problem from when I was 14! I dieted like my mother (my sister never did, just me). I was about 60 to 64kg!!! Or less! So I have spent a huge part of my life thinking I was fat.

This all rings true for me. I was the "fat girl" in an all girl English grammar school, teased, called names, you name it. Now I look at the few photos there are of me in those days and, especially compared to the kids today, I wasn't fat at all !!!! BUT, I went on to diet for what seems like the rest of my life, became anorexic in my early 20's . . over that now, but the story goes on and on.

5:2 has, indeed, changed my life a LOT but there are still many of the problems with maintaining, diet fatigue, etc. I just keep reading with interest and realizing there are so many of us in this TOGETHER, thank goodness !!

One more thing, there was a post the other day asking how much you can "go over" without blowing a fast day. I don't think you can ever simply "blow it." This is a way of eating that we have to live with for the rest of our lives, make it manageable and sustainable for us - so, whatever we can do to think about what we are eating, eat mindfully, do the best we can - that is all we can ask of ourselves !!!

[carieoates]

Loving reading everyone's posts about "when they were young" I was very much into fitness, because that's what I did. Straight to aerobics after work, home and a bowl of pasta with cheese grated on it.
I was about 11 St I hardly ever weighed myself but was a standard size 12.
I was a bridal dress model and used to fling up and down the catwalk in flouncy dresses at the weekends,
Anyway, the weight went on after having kids as I was home more, eating through boredham and not getting the exercise my body was accustomed too. Then there was the wine which I discovered as you couldn't easily go out anymore but had friends over.
I'm not at the weight I last recorded pre children 11 St 5 or 7 can't really remember, it was almost 19 yrs ago now. Happy to say that "I'm taking ownership of my body again now", you may have seen me quote that before and I'm proud to say it's mine all mine. I used to think that anything I can do now to get back to that weight is important, but it's not.
I've got older, a wee bit saggyer, wiser and have two children to show for it, ive also settled into my new skin which I actaully like.
Sorry to go on, should have saved this for my "reaching goal " speech.
I will go now.

[wildmissus]

@Peebles, can you really not fit an eating window into your lifestyle? I never thought I could but I'm giving it some serious thought now as I think it might be a way of eating well every day. I have a lot of 'symptoms' of a famine reaction so hopefully I can re-feed on healthy food every day then if and when it feels right I could go back to 5:2 or 4:3.

On the matter of childhoods I was a skinny rake. I now have two skinny teenage girls, the oldest is very thin but eats very healthily. the youngest is very fussy with a passion for junk food. Anyway, one of the reasons I was so skinny was genetics - my father is skinny and the other was that food was used against us kids. My mother would save treats for my father and us kids would drool watching him eat cake! So as soon as I left home at the age of 18 all of a sudden I could eat what I wanted and blimey I did! I had two caesarean sections and lost any muscle connection in my lower stomach which makes me look like I am six months pregnant or it I certainly did when I was 30lbs heavier.

And I thought I had a "wacky" childhood ! @wildmissus - I had the opposite problem - I was an only child and usually given just about anything I wanted !!! Not necessarily a good thing !!!