The FastDay Forum

Hiya

I'm into my third week and really struggling with fast days whilst its been cold, and not into soups or stews. Please help.

I've lost 9lbs so far and feel great still have 4st to lose but will do it this year.

I've been reading through other threads and I also suffer with a bad upset stomach if I eat something sweet or fatty, so I tend now to automatically avoid these foods as much as possible.. lol

[carorees]

Welcome to the forum, Mazz

Sorry to hear you are struggling on fast days. What are the problems you are having please?

Hello Caroline
With the first couple of weeks I was drinking a lot of water and sticking to 500 calories on my fast days... Now for some reason I'm struggling with drinking water and I've gone Jacinto drinking coffee with skimmed milk, but even this is beginning to give me headaches. I ideally need some other suggestions on fluid intake and some winter warmers meals around 500 calories but which are not soups or stews please.

Mazz x

[carorees]

Hi Mazz

I'll deal with the easy question first...look in the recipe section for some good under 500 calorie meals!

Headaches are very common in the early days of fasting. There seems to be a few possible reasons for them. Not drinking enough is one, but you say that you are drinking plenty. There is speculation that if you are drinking a lot (and weeing a lot of course) you might be losing too much salt. Some people find that having a cup of Marmite/Bovril/Oxo, vegetable stock or Miso soup helps with this (not too many or you get very thirsty). Another cause of headaches is low blood sugar. When you first start fasting your body may be resistant to switching into fat burning to supply your energy needs, this results in low blood sugar. As you continue with the regimen, your body gets much slicker at switching into fat burning and so the headaches stop.

If you are still getting headaches despite drinking enough and having a salty drink, we need to ask why your body is not switching into fat burning. It could be that spreading your calories over the day is preventing the switch, or it could be that having a lot of high carb/sugar foods on feed days (or on fast days) is not helping.

So, a plan of action could be: first, try a salty drink occasionally, if that doesn't help, avoid high carb or sugary foods on fast days, if you are still having problems avoid high carb or sugary foods/drinks (including fruit juice) in the last meal before your fast day (helps to kick start the fat burning mode).

And, take a couple of paracetamol to deal with the headache until you get used to the regimen. You don't want to be taking paracetamol every fast day though so you may need to reevaluate if you are still getting headaches in a few weeks' time.

Hope that helps!

Thankyou will give that a try x