The FastDay Forum

Hello!

My name is Rich, I am 5'11" and 45 years old, and 254.5 lbs as of Aug 28th.

I have tried a few diets, and I have been as high as 305 lbs in 2010, to 229 lbs in 2011. This was my first realization I had let my body run out of control with over eating and too much soda.

I let my guard down and my weight has crept up to the 250-260 lbs range since then. But I have been meaning to clamp down and grow a pair and use my will power to deny my indulgences and get to a normal BMI, and here I go!

36 Hour Fasting, Every Other Day
I have done this before, and it takes some nerve, but the results seem to be the most consistent for me.

In short, it goes like so:

7am Day One - Eat normally, 2500 calories of worth while food, stop eating at 7pm
36 Hours of Fasting Follows
7am Day Three - Repeat 2500 calories of worth while food, stop eating at 7pm

Factors I am aware of for my own limits:
I am easy to hydrate.
I kick up the liquids on the fast to compensate the missing liquid from foods.
I have a desk job, so daily activity is light - but I walk my dog each morning for 30mins - at around 250 calories used at 250 lbs (2.1 miles)
I have great willpower when I set my mind to a task.

So, here I am! I wanted a place to document this, rather than JUST an excel spreadsheet - where I can get feedback (good and bad) on this journey.

I hope to keep this up as much as possible, until I get out of being overweight, but we shall see! I promise to come each day here and report!

Since I started this 3 days ago, this is my second fast day. I weigh myself at 6am.

28-Aug 254.6 lbs Fast Day
29-Aug 252.6 lbs Food Day
30-Aug 250.5 lbs Fast Day

31-Aug 248.9 Food Day

Welcome aboard, Res71, all fasting methods well represented on this forum, I have found everyone very warm friendly and helpful since I started in 2013. Like many here I mix it up a bit, sometimes "eat stop eat" as in Brad Pilon, sometimes a 6 hour eating window, but mostly 5:2. I am in maintenance, but even so there is a spectrum within that and I don't want to drift upwards, which is so easy to do! I am fasting today, so I started yesterday as I don't like to go to bed hungry. I had a Quorn fillet sliced thinly and stir fired in coconut oil with shredded cabbage broccoli, onions, garlic, tomatoes, turmeric, cumin, soy sauce and the juice of a lime. Water during the evening. This morning a modified "bulletproof coffee", very strong filter coffee with a teaspoon of ghee and one of coconut oil. Water all morning. Raw courgette green pepper celery lettuce and tomato with seasoning for (so called) lunch. Water with lemon and lime juice and zest all afternoon. Breaking my fast at 6:30pm with a full English veggie breakfast, which will be highly calorific - so great to be able to indulge! I did try a proper calorie counting diet once to support a friend who was trying to lose weight back in the 1980s - what a nightmare! I take my hat off to anybody who has the will power to lose weight in the conventional way and then, crucially, keep it off, I much prefer this as it's more a way of life to prevent later diabetes, dementia etc than simply a weight loss plan. Good luck on your journey.

Hello and welcome to the forum. Sound like a good plan and you're already off to a great start. Good idea to keep a diary here, I have done the same for the past 3 years (on and off ). It's really helpful to look over it and see what worked and what didn't. Good luck as you continue.

It's great to see the enthusiasm and I wish you well. However, I would like to point out just a couple of things...

One of the purported benefits of "traditional 5.2" (eating 500/600 calories daily twice a week, "normal" other days--in other words, to TDEE, not a "dieting" level) is to NOT put one into "starvation mode"--you know, when you suddenly become ravenously hungry and want to eat everything in sight. Sigh...while nothing is yet "scientifically" proven (whatever that means!), this nearly universal result of long-term and/or Draconian caloric restriction argues for a physiological cause, rather than just mental (which is still important, of course).

It seems to me that your program is likely to create this effect, as it involves Draconian restriction. I've been 5.2ing for over 2 years, have not missed one fast day... and while I'm not at my ideal weight (see other posts for more about that, sigh), I've never maintained this much of a weight loss (over 30 lbs) for so long before. And I have not had a famine reaction... though of course some fast days are harder than others. Before 5.2, I had given up on losing weight--really. I was fed up with the yo-yo/roller coaster and even told my doc if she berated me about it, I was outta there.

All this said, we all respect your choices and how you want to fast/diet. Just a little food for thought. And in case you'd like to read more about "plain vanilla 5.2," here's a pdf I put together for a friend...

5-2 et al.pdf

5.2 Basics

(590.6 KiB) Downloaded 90 times

Great job!! I've read about your method, and that is supposed to have great health benefits.
I've done juice fasts, and the master cleanse in the past, and felt great afterwards. However, I always gain the weight back. 36 hours is probably much easier than several days.
I recently started the 5-2 with a few 16 hour fasts. It's working for me, although it's slow weight loss. I'm not in a rush to loose, so that's ok. At this point in my life, I don't think I would be able to manage the 36 hour fast, but if you can handle it, go for it!