The FastDay Forum

Hi Everyone

I have been on the fast diet since the 23rd of March and have been lurking on here since just before. It has been really helpful in getting me started and keeping me motivated I was already losing weight using a fitbit and restricting my calories since the 20th of Feb, but decided for the additional health benefits to change to 5:2

I lost 10 pounds before I started 5:2 and sice have lost another 2. I started at 10 stone 3 and am now at 9:7 This week after one day of fasting I am up 2 pounds but I think that is because of the time of the month.

My questions are really to do with the amount I eat on my non fast days. I find the fast days very easy (maybe because I am used to fasting at Ramadan) but find the eating days difficult.

Either I binge and then feel awful and sick, or I have trouble getting even close to the amount of calories I need according to how many I have burned on the fitbit.

I tend to walk for an hour each morning before my daughter wakes up and my average calorie burn on the fitbit is around 2000 calories a day. I have looked at a few TDEE calculators and some seem to correspond, but some say I need to eat quite a lot less. Is the fitbit more accurate because its actually on me?

So today is a non fast day. I'm not really that hungry. I had a good breakfast and lunch with some fruit and nuts in between I plan to eat homemade curry, rice and salad for supper this evening but that will be around 1,135 calories in total.

What do I do? should I ignore my feeling full and just eat more to get to my calorie burn, or just wait to maybe make it up later in the week.

Thanks in adcance for any advice you can offer.

Rachel

you didn't say your height or age, but 1700-1800 seems a possible TDEE based on a few guesses. Your calorie restriction and rate of weight loss should give you a clue too - 500 cals a day is about 1 lb/week.

If you're trying to lose weight I would never ignore feeling full or eat up to a magic number wherever it comes from.

How much input does the fitbit have about your personal stats, fitness etc ? Be interesting to know what it says if you leave it in a drawer for 24h.

Welcome, Umleila. Nice to see a fellow 5:2'er from KSA. My husband, kids and I moved to Jeddah from the US about 8 months ago.

I agree with PhilT, if you're not hungry, don't eat. Since starting 5:2 about a month ago, I do notice a decrease in my appetite on non fast days. I don't count calories but I just try to eat when I know I'm actually, almost tummy-rumbling hungry. That has worked so far for me, at least.

Thanks for the replies so far PhiIT I will be 42 in a couple of weeks and my height is 5"2. I think if I left the fitbit in the drawer it would just have my bmr for the day. The fitbit knows how many steps I do, and on that basis and my bmr works out my calories. I can add other workouts, which I do occaisionally, but I don't.

Hi Zahra. My husband and I have been here for nearly ten years. We are originally from the UK.

The reason I was worried about not eating near to my TDEE is beacuse I have seen others say they have stopped losing weight and the advice was to eat pretty close to it. I think I would be forcing myself to eat when I wasn't hungry in that case.

I was wondering what it thought your BMR was

I was wondering what it thought your BMR was

This is what it says on the website.

http://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/ ... es-burned- 

quote "The estimate is based on your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) which we calculate using the height, weight, age, and gender information you provide during sign up." 

Does that seem enought to get accurate information?

I am going away on Wednesday, the start of the Saudi weekend, for a couple of days and I might put the fitbit out of commision then and report back to you

Hi umleila

I think that you may be wrong about your calorie counting. You said you had a good breakfast and lunch and fruits and nuts in between and planning on rice and curry.i believe this will be much more than 1135 cals in total, unless your portions are extremely small.

[carorees]

Your bmr depends not only on your height age and weighty but also how muscular you are, what your thyroid function is, how warm you are, how much brown adipose tissue you have etc etc. the fitbit can only guess these. If you are not hungry don't eat! I find that some weeks I'm hungrier than others so just go with how you feel and I expect you'll eat more some weeks than others. As long as you continue to lose weight (if that's what you want), then it's all fine.

Thanks Einatb. I weighed all my portions and looked on mfp andnalso the fitbit's own food tracker. In fact, i couldn't even finish those portions. I think they are ok because most of them are from raw ingredients. For my homemade curry, I put all the sperate ingredients into the recipe analyser on caloriecount.com and get the nutritional information from a specific serving size, so I think it was pretty accurate.

Thanks Carorees. I think I will stick to what I've been doing. After the last fast, my eighth, I felt less like bingeing and really felt less hungry for the first time. I will rethink, as you said, if/when I stop losing weight.

One more question i can't work out why my stats are not appearing next to my username when I post. Can you please point me in the right direction?

Well, I didn't take the fitbit off for the whole day ( I would feel lost without it now!) when I was away just when I was at the beach, so I did considerably less steps that day.

I usually do around 15,000 with a calorie burn of 2000+ and on that day I walked just over 5000 and it said I had burned only 1593. So does that seem accurate?

I've lost another pound this week after staying static for two. Still having trouble not bingeing on non fast days, but I'd say overall I'm eating smaller portions and less often.

I usually do around 15,000 with a calorie burn of 2000+ and on that day I walked just over 5000 and it said I had burned only 1593. So does that seem accurate?

It's possible. My heart rate monitor suggests that walking around town burns about 150 cals/hour of which I would have burned 75 cals/hour anyway. If I walked at 2.5 miles per hour with 2100 steps per hour that would equate to 177 extra calories in your day so your 1593 is possible yes.