Just thought I'd drop by and say hello. I am in the first week of the 5:2 diet, having completed my first fast. Fast days are planned as 5:2, Mondays and Thursdays, eating 500 calories (or fewer, if the fancy takes me) in one early-evening meal. I was going to do 4:3 in the first week, but I don't think I'll bother, because on balance I would rather establish a firm pattern from the outset.
This isn't my first attempt at the fasting diet. After watching the Horizon programme in August, my husband and I thought we would try it for one day a week to see how we got on. (Both of us were attracted by the health benefits, and I want to lose weight as well, although my slim husband doesn't need to.) But he found it "depressing" not to have a proper lunch while at work, so he stopped - and I stopped with him, because he kept trying to fast when I did, even though he was clearly unhappy about it, and I hadn't the heart to persevere when he was so miserable. So this time, I fast alone.
Nor is this the first time I have attempted to lose a lot of weight. After the usual intermittent dieting history of an overweight adult female, this time two years ago, I was in the throes of a high protein diet, on which I lost five stone over the course of seven months. A year and a half ago, I was slim (or slimmish) for the summer holidays! But alas, I like food and wine, and I couldn't make myself stick to the maintenance programme. Over the course of a difficult year with a number of family disasters of varying intensity, I threw caution to the wind and regained most of the weight I had lost. So here I am again, not quite back at square one, but not far off it.
I am interested not just in the weight loss aspects of the 5:2 diet but also in the health benefits, in particular the supposed anti-inflammatory effect. I have a form of inflammatory arthritis, which improved considerably on the mega-diet I followed a couple of years ago. And fasting is often sugggested in standard mainstream publications as a means of temporarily controlling inflammation in arthritis, at least for some people. It's worth a try, at any rate.
I'm glad I stumbled across this forum. It's a pleasure to meet you all.
This isn't my first attempt at the fasting diet. After watching the Horizon programme in August, my husband and I thought we would try it for one day a week to see how we got on. (Both of us were attracted by the health benefits, and I want to lose weight as well, although my slim husband doesn't need to.) But he found it "depressing" not to have a proper lunch while at work, so he stopped - and I stopped with him, because he kept trying to fast when I did, even though he was clearly unhappy about it, and I hadn't the heart to persevere when he was so miserable. So this time, I fast alone.
Nor is this the first time I have attempted to lose a lot of weight. After the usual intermittent dieting history of an overweight adult female, this time two years ago, I was in the throes of a high protein diet, on which I lost five stone over the course of seven months. A year and a half ago, I was slim (or slimmish) for the summer holidays! But alas, I like food and wine, and I couldn't make myself stick to the maintenance programme. Over the course of a difficult year with a number of family disasters of varying intensity, I threw caution to the wind and regained most of the weight I had lost. So here I am again, not quite back at square one, but not far off it.
I am interested not just in the weight loss aspects of the 5:2 diet but also in the health benefits, in particular the supposed anti-inflammatory effect. I have a form of inflammatory arthritis, which improved considerably on the mega-diet I followed a couple of years ago. And fasting is often sugggested in standard mainstream publications as a means of temporarily controlling inflammation in arthritis, at least for some people. It's worth a try, at any rate.
I'm glad I stumbled across this forum. It's a pleasure to meet you all.
