The FastDay Forum

Hello!

I know we just ended our "Labor Day" challenge, but Halloween is exactly 8 weeks away from today, which seemed like a good time to start a new one!

Let me know if you want to participate and what your goal is. It doesn't have to be to lose a certain number of pounds, but as I mentioned on the other challenge, you should have a SMART goal - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. (if you google SMART goals you'll find a lot of information about that.)

I will post all of our goals, but you'll need to keep track of if you've met them or not. I am a teacher and just started back at both of my jobs, so I won't be able to keep up as much as I did before. But, I think the challenge is just a great place for people to be able to check in each week with how they are doing and any struggles they may have.

I'm looking forward to a good challenge!

I'm in!

I'd like to drop 10 pounds in that time (starting with today's weight of 165.2 -- I'm still at an average loss of 4.5lb per week at this point so I feel like this is totally possible while also being aware that weight loss will slow at some point), but since I don't necessarily have control over the scales, my goal is to just keep on keeping on with the following action goals:

-Do AT LEAST 5:2 each week (with some additional 4:3 weeks when possible)
-Keep within 50 cals of my TDEE on non-fasting days (my app re-calculates this every time my weight changes)
-Keep within 10 cals of 25% TDEE on fasting days

I don't have any big events or parties between now and Halloween, so that should make this much easier! Good luck everyone!

[Tracieknits]

I'm going to hope for 8 pounds down in 8 weeks. I'm going to stick with low carb because (1) I'm not constantly hungry and thinking about when I can eat again, (2) my husband is having a better time on this plan and (3) it is, after all, what my doctor recommended. He was hoping I'd lose 10 pounds in the year and I've already lost 7 since my last appointment with him June 26.

I have a new scale and my husband and I are planning on joining the YMCA. Maybe even tomorrow! We'll see. I was so stinkin' busy today I'm just sitting down now to the computer. and I have to go cook dinner too

I will join in too please.
I am not good on the imperial measurements so I am going to stick with Metric.
I am 113kg at the moment. I would love to be 110kg in 8 weeks time.
So think that is about 6 Pounds.
I am also back at the gym and building more muscle (strengthening not pure size) so this will add a little bit of weight. So I will also use waist measurement as a goal too. I am not sure what I am now but I have a rope that I use to measure progress.

My aim will be to do 5:2. And really try hard to maintain the fast when I get home from work. As I can go all day fine, but when I get home I tend to give into temptation.

Hello,
Yes! I'm in! Thanks for setting up this challenge.
I had some good weight loss this summer, but being at work is a different story! Much more challenging for me. I know some people do better when they're busy, but stress makes me want cookies.
So my Halloween goal is to avoid sugar and flour. I want to eat low carb and do some shorter fasts, maybe 16 or 20 hours without food. I'm hoping to lose 8 lbs in the 8 weeks. Right now I'm bouncing around 170, 168, 173 lbs. So I hope to be bouncing around 160 by Halloween! We'll see, I've NEVER been able to stay below 170, even in my 5:2 heyday. But worth a shot, right?
Anyway, good luck to all!

I'm in.
Today I weighed 98.7kg. My goal is 95kg by Halloween. That's 8.157 lbs. nothing like a round number to aim for. Going to get back to exercising three days minimum per week as well as my usual Mon/Thu fasts.
Tonight I get to see Michael Mosley live in concert. Sad indictment of my life that I'm going out to watch a show about health instead of seeing a band.
I'll report back if anyone is interested.

I would like to participate, please, as it will help me get rid of my post holiday weight! My aim is to get back to my target of 147 pounds by Halloween. I started this week, on Tuesday, at 158 pounds but, after one fast and some sensible eating, yesterday I weighed in at 153 pounds, so I will take that as my starting point for this challenge. This gives me six pounds to lose by the end of the Challenge, which I am hoping will be do-able!

Thanks for taking the lead in another Challenge, @cblasz. You're very good to do so as you must be very busy starting off a new term at your two teaching jobs. I used to teach and, although I have been retired for thirteen years now, I can remember just how time consuming it is if you want to do your best for your students.

Welcome, too, to our fellow challengers and good luck!. Hopefully we will pick up a few more people along the way and get this forum buzzing! I have been doing 5:2 since January 2013 and, although my weight has fluctuated during that time, I have never returned to my original starting weight. Having spent the forty-odd years previous to that as a calorie-counting, yo-yo dieter you can imagine how pleased I am to have discovered this Way Of Life (WOL)!

I am off to read some of the post that I have missed whilst I have been away so, cheerio for now and Onwards and Downwards! (with our weight that is!)

@StowgateResident - you are right it is a lot of work at the beginning of the year!! But I just want people to at least have a place to check in each week!

Thanks to everyone who has joined so far! It seems like we have a good group here with some good goals. I did not fair too well in the last 2 challenges, but for me the summer is harder with the time off and less structure. I do believe that had I not even tried then I would've gained weight. I am happy to still weight a little less than I did last year. But, now that I'm back to work and back to my schedule, I'm really ready to do this! I was good last week and trying to be reasonable this weekend.

I'm going to go with a modest goal to lose 4 lbs. by Halloween. That's 1/2 pound a week, which seems reasonable! I plan to continue my eating windows (at least during the week), no sweets during the week and only occasionally on the weekend. I've been getting up early to take a 15-20 minute walk before work and then get another one in at work (in addition to the many steps I get just by doing my job!) and finally keeping my carbs under 100g during the week.

I'm headed out for a walk with a friend and then to donate blood (anything to get the scale to go down )

@Fat_Teacher - that's cool that you went to see Michael Mosley, Not as cool as the amazing U2 show I went to this summer (at age 47), but still cool! I'd love to hear about it!

[Tracieknits]

I agree, I bet Dr. Mosley was pretty interesting!!

Well I had a slip up this week. I had a fundraiser for a political candidate whose campaign I'm assisting with (just a County Supervisor position, not a big deal). BUUUT the fundraiser was pretty cool because she is actually friends with The Beekman Boys (TV show, cookbooks, etc https://beekman1802.com/) They published a new cookbook on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, my friend had a big dinner at a local B&B (The Mansion, a cool old mansion), with them as special guests, the cookbook as a giveaway and most of the food being prepared was right out of the new cookbook. I fell off the wagon hard when I saw pizza with fresh figs and brie cheese. It ended with me eating an entire slice of "boozy cake with grand marinier". There were also carbs in between. I was up 3 pounds the next morning! oops. They're almost all gone again. So I'll call it a blip.

Tracie - that is called a special occasion and living life!!

My official weigh-in yesterday showed my weight at 151 pounds - a loss of two pounds since I joined the Challenge and only four pounds away from my goal of 147 pounds. I hope that fellow Challengers are on track and doing well at the start of this week.
My best wishes go to those of you with friends and families who are caught up in the hurricanes and hope that your news is good.
@Tracieknits, the whole point of this Way of Life is that we can eat cake, drink wine, enjoy cheese and anything else we want without feeling any guilt. The important thing is to just enjoy the moment and extract as much pleasure as you can!

Great job @StowgateResident!

I'm happy to report that I am down .8 lbs this morning, a little more than the 1/2 pound I was hoping for! I'll be very happy if I can keep it up!

I'm also happy to report that my family stayed safe and sound throughout the storm. Hopefully their houses fared as well. I guess we'll find out later today.

Have a great week everyone!

Hi All! Looks like there's already some progress for everyone! So excited for you guys!

I dropped to 163.4 lbs yesterday from the 165.2 where I started this challenge on 9/5 (yay! new record! I haven't been that in years! That would be 10 pounds lost in 3 weeks on 5:2!), but am back up to 164.6 today. Now that I've been doing this for a few weeks, I can see a pattern in my weight loss now, so I'm rather unconcerned about the jump back up, as about every 5 days there's a dip down and back up before it drops again. Yet another thing I'm loving about 5:2/4:3 is that I don't have to be unhappy when weighing myself, or even when it goes back up to a higher weight. So long as I stick to the program, I know that it will continue to go down. So lovely to not have to worry about that! Because of this, I get the fun of learning about my own weight loss patterns without the added stress that might usually come with weighing daily, or even weekly. I love that I get to have FUN losing weight!

Also, thank you all for being a part of this challenge. It really helps me to have somewhere to post my results and to see others' efforts and progress. Thank you!

I had been debating whether to join the challenge, particularly as I didn't really have a new challenge... But it is now only 6 weeks until our next holiday, which fits with the challenge timeline, and also fits with the timeframe for the FODMAP diet (which I have been intending to do for ages) exclusion period (though hopefully it won't take that long for things to settle, if I can stick with it).

So I think my challenge can be to stick to the FODMAP diet in that period, and hope that can help limit the evening snacking as well. Nothing to do with fasting I know... BUT if I can manage to eat according to hunger within the FODMAP diet, then I will plan to have some light days on a regular basis. (And I am aiming for a light day today and tomorrow - see fasting today thread.)

My overall goal is to stop the slow weight gain that I feel is happening.

Best wishes and good luck to all!