The FastDay Forum

It's time for my next fast. Not overly looking forward to it, but hopefully the knowledge that if I can stick to it, I don't have another fast scheduled til Tuesday.

Exercise class today fills up the morning, especially with the coffee and chat afterwards. Then I will be in the kitchen preparing food to take away with us on hols - I hope that being busy, even though it involves food, will still stop me eating. Not eating saves me quite a bit of time too, as lunch can take an hour to prepare then eat. I may have some chicken broth that I prepared for fast days, if the coffees aren't enough to get me through to dinner (chicken and veg, with some fruit to follow).

Good luck and best wishes to all, especially fellow fasters.

It's now early afternoon, and two pots of food are in the thermal cooker. I am just finishing my second black coffee for the day, then will get on to the "dog veg". Our dogs have a lot of veg with their meals. This was suggested by the vet, to help with their weight control. Normally I just cook extra each night, but when we are away, son at home does not do any cooking, so I prepare a batch and freeze, and he thaws as required.

I am also cooking and freezing some meals for him, so that he doesn't just live on Maccas and Subway while we are away.... Nothing I can do or say will convince him to try to cook meals for himself. I guess that will have to wait until he moves out of home... When he was younger, we did try to get him involved with cooking meals, but with no long term success. Now aged 24 years, it is impossible to influence him in any way!!

I have had a small piece of chicken as "lunch". We have an excellent science program "Catalyst" on TV, and last week the program was about the best forms of exercise. Interval training certainly scored highly. Diet was also examined, and apparently research has shown the importance of having protein after exercise, not all immediately but in smaller portions over the following 24 hours. Exercise does damage muscles, and the protein is needed, over that 24 hours, to rebuild them. So I have decided that if I exercise reasonably vigorously on a fast day, then I will have protein after the exercise and then spaced through the next 24 hours.

Catalyst this week was about IBS and FODMAPs. I know a bit about this, as I have tried the FODMAP Diet. An interesting point was that everyone's gut bacteria are different, and this influences what foods contribute to our individual wellbeing, and which don't. (I think someone did start a discussion thread with a relevant link on this issue at some stage??) This is also relevant to what ways of eating will work and what don't, for an individual. Some people are better off eating several small meals a day and fasting may not be for them.

Any comments from anyone?

Congrats on your good fast day @Sassy1

I was with you today and did pretty well. It was day I had to work noon until 8pm which sort of messes with my fast day. I had a boiled egg at 11:30, then a smallish rushed dinner at 4:30. When I got home at 8:30 I was hungry! I had some yogurt and fruit, and then snuck in a small bowl of muesli. I don't think I was too much over on the day.

I saw the Catalyst program, and thought it was really interesting. The discussions now about our biome or gut health are fascinating, and especially how our moods/stress can effect our gut, and how our gut and what we feed it can effect our mood and mental health.

After having a healthy tum for my whole life and always being a glass 3/4 full positive type person, about 4 years ago my gut stopped working well. Looking back at it I think work stress played a big part, and then it became a bit self perpetuating as I worried about why my gut wasn't working well which added to the stress. My glass was feeling half empty,

Changing where I worked made a huge difference, and I also started adding in more fermented food such as kimchi and sauerkraut, apple cider vinegar daily, flax seed, etc. Michael Mosley has done a few interesting documentaries on this type of food and I read his new book Clever Guts whicn is very informative.. I also changed to mostly soy milk at the beginning of this year. I don't absolutely avoid dairy, still have cheese and its in food when I eat out, but I find that if I have say 2 normal milk cappuccinos in a day my digestion process will start to slow down.

My system is humming along these days which is great! And giving my system a little break with 5:2 also helps keeps me feeling good.

Merry

I'm in for my "pseudo" fast today. I will have my banana and peanut butter in the afternoon and then a healthy dinner tonight, for a total of about 800 calories.

I hope I can do ok. I ended up going out last night to see a friend's band play. It didn't go too late, but still I'm very tired! Also right after work I have an eye doctor appointment, so dinner will be later than usual. But I will hopefully be busy enough with work that it'll be fine. Luckily they called me yesterday to say there was a cancellation so I could move my appt. up half an hour. But there is also a McDonald's right near the eye doctor, so hopefully I won't give in to that!

Glad you both already did well with your fast days!

I'm fasting today, second one of the week. Nothing so far and a home-made, beef casserole to look forward to for dinner this evening. My careful eating this week, having got back into it, has resulted in a reduction in weight, down from 156 pounds to 151 pounds since Sunday. That's the temporary 'water weight' gone so now the remaining four pounds will be rather more of a slog!

Keep smiling and keep busy my fellow fasters! Onwards and downwards!