The FastDay Forum

After reading some of the literature and studies (mice grazing vs intermittent fasting) I was astounded to learn that what I thought was healthy grazing may have contributed to some of my weight gain over the last number of years. I bought into the low fat, eating every 3 hours etc, etc.

Now I'm wondering if grazing is ok even my on feast days?

I'll see how it goes but I wasn't planning on counting calories on my feast days but I've been reading the boards and some indicate that you should eat your TDEE on those days....do people still get good results without doing this?

I had my first fast day yesterday so I'm eating regularly today but realize I have lots of "good" snack foods but only soup for lunch and wondering if I should be having a larger lunch with protein etc.

I guess my question comes down to, does it matter what and how you eat on your feast days.

Very happy to have found this forum
Bree

Hi Bree,

I'm sure there are lots of opinions on this, and there's some very interesting science behind the explanations for why snacking/grazing (on a regular basis) may not be a great idea. But another interesting point is that "calorie cycling" (I.e. keeping your body guessing) can be a great weightless strategy so maybe you could snack/graze a couple of days a week, do your fast on two days, and stick with three square meals on the other days. It might work for you, but you'll simply have to try it out and see if you're getting the results you're looking for.

Even though a lot of the hype about 5:2 and other Intermittent Fasting methods focuses on "you can eat what you like/ not count calories on non-fast days", as you've noticed the important detal is that you need to eat "normally" - and "normal" is actually defined by your TDEE (not by whatever you may have eaten on a normal day in the past, or what's normal for someone else).

So I think it's a good idea to at least start off your first few weeks keeping a track of calories on your non-fast days. A rough estimate within the nearest 100 will do, it doesn't have to be obsessive. The point is to aim to consume your TDEE *ON AVERAGE* over the five non-fast days. Some days can be higher, some lower. Some days could be 'grazing', some not.

After a few weeks of keeping an eye on your calorie intake, it should hopefully start to come quite naturally. I'm in my third week and am still mentally totting up running-totals as I go along each non-fast day, to make sure I'm comfortably within my TDEE of about 2200kcal. Many days I'm at least a few hundred calories under, but I make up for it at the weekend with wine and desserts. Very little hassle and so far it's yielded 2lbs loss per week.

[carorees]

Hi there Bree, sorry to be so long in responding to your question!

Um, I think the consensus is that grazing should be largely avoided on all days if possible (but that doesn't mean you can't have a treat or two).

Many people are having great weight loss without any calorie counting on feed days. Some people have kept a rough count in order to get a feel for what eating to TDEE is like and have since stopped counting. I do count but no weighing or time consuming stuff. I use the fatsecret calorie counter app which allows one to input things like "a stick of celery" "a cup of chopped broccoli" "a cup of cooked penne" and I do it by eye. Of course it is inaccurate but it gives a rough guide. I am sure it is not necessary for me and I treat it more like a food diary to keep my awareness up rather than expecting the counts to be realistic. Only if you run into problems is calorie counting necessary and then only so as to work out what is going on. I'd actually say the opposite to gamedamsel and suggest you give the diet 6 weeks without calorie counting and see how you go.

I think soup for lunch is excellent. It is packed with vegetables usually and low in protein. We are generally trying to keep protein levels fairly low...to not much more than our bodies' requirements as the theory is that this will reduce cancer risk (by reducing IGF1, mTOR activity and hence reduce cellular proliferation and survival while promoting autophagy and apoptosis etc etc). It is only a theory and if you are exercising hard you will need more protein and, well, there is a big debate in the nerdy stuff section on protein if you want to get into the science!

Does it matter what you eat on feed days? Probably if you want to treat your body as a temple etc then yes. Unfortunately, we don't exactly know yet what the perfect diet is! We think it probably involves trying to mimic how our ancestors lived so that is diet and exercise and stress etc etc (google paleo diet for info). However, how much benefit would such a prescriptive lifestyle give once we have lost the excess weight and incorporated fasting into our lives? Losing the excess weight and keeping it off will bring the biggest health improvements. I think that learning about how sugars, carbs, fats, proteins, fibre, alcohol etc affect the body is really interesting and worth keeping at the back of one's mind without stressing about it. You've got to find a balance where you can still enjoy life while improving your health don't you think?

By the way Bree, it's better not to call them 'feast days', it just gets hopes up in the wrong way

'Feed days' is the usual term round here, and some people like 'repair days'.

Hi Bree,

After a few weeks of keeping an eye on your calorie intake, it should hopefully start to come quite naturally. I'm in my third week and am still mentally totting up running-totals as I go along each non-fast day, to make sure I'm comfortably within my TDEE of about 2200kcal. Many days I'm at least a few hundred calories under, but I make up for it at the weekend with wine and desserts. Very little hassle and so far it's yielded 2lbs loss per week.

It's hard to get my head around eating 2000 calories quilt free! I might have to actually research foods that will increase my calorie intake......crazy! I love the idea of including rich good foods like avocados in my diet again. Eliminating the grazing might be more difficult so I like your idea of 2 days a week. I think it's more habit then hunger because fasting yesterday I realized that hunger comes and goes and wasn't so bad. I guess I just got used to never feeling hungry.

Thanks for your great suggestions

Hi Caroline

Very interesting stuff about protein. Previously whenever trying to lose weight and logged my calories/nutrients I've always been short on the recommended protein and always figured I'd been gaining weight because I ate too many carbs and not enough protein.

I find all this fascinating!

I do have a fairly big food catalog in "My Fitness Pal" so will take your advice and see how things go and then use it if I'm struggling.. I think my mindset will be better about doing it because I won't be "dieting"

Bree

By the way Bree, it's better not to call them 'feast days', it just gets hopes up in the wrong way

'Feed days' is the usual term round here, and some people like 'repair days'.

Good suggestion.....thank you! It's not like I'm feasting anyway.....just eating without guilt!

On my feast days, I eat when I'm hungry. I try to stick to mostly healthy foods, but I do slip in the occasional pizza and pint of beer. On my fast days, I am strict. No grazing on fast days...not even to put milk in my tea, and I only eat around 300 to 400 calories.

I just wanted to add that not the ancestors of everybody ate the same way. It depends on where we live and were we come from. In fact, it is rather interesting to see the differences in eating depending on the region.