Hi All:
I am just back from four plus months of travel. For the first month, I followed 5:2, and lost my usual four pounds. After that, I decided I could not do it any longer (just a personal thing, not that it can't be done).
I therefore knew I had a problem, because in the past I had packed on pounds as a result of my eating and drinking in restaurants for almost every meal (rarely drinking at breakfast, though). What to do?
I thought about what 5:2 had taught me. The main lesson, I decided, was that I could skip one, two or three meals a day, be hungry, but not die.
In analyzing my travel schedule, I decided I rarely had to eat breakfast, more often than not did not have luncheon appointments, but pretty much always had to (and wanted to) eat dinner. So I decided to skip all of the breakfasts and lunches I could, and eat dinner every night.
Dinner was pretty much always at a different time, but the general eating window came to about three hours each day. So in this tent's popular parlance, I was doing 21:3.
I followed '21:3' for a little over 3 months. I gained four pounds (the same four pounds I had lost the first month following 5:2) . My net gain for the entire four plus months was therefore 0. Not bad, I think, especially as the time frame included U.S. Thanksgiving and the Christmas/New Year holidays.
What did I learn? Well, I learned that I could reduce my weight gain by cutting out breakfast and lunch. I learned that eating in only a three hour window each day did not automatically cause me to lose weight - in fact, I gained doing that. I learned that if I walked at lunch, I was less hungry. As many people on this site have learned, skipping breakfast is easy.
So, whatever works given your situation. For mine, 21:3 caused modest weight gain and an overall successful travel period. I'm now back on 5:2 and losing my pound a week - until I travel again.
Good Luck All!
