The FastDay Forum

Hi everyone

Just joined the forum. Been on the 5/2 since January and lost a couple of pounds but nothing sensational. On my fast days I'm having a small breakfast and then supper. Quick question, is it okay to nibble on something like celery throughout the day if you still stick by your 500 cals or are you supposed to fast completely between meals ?

Hi

I have been snacking on celery throughout the day if I feel like eating something but have used up my calories!

Celery wont add to your daily calories as the human body cant process the calories that celery contains!

Hope that helps maybe someone else will know more!

Hi Hangar12 and welcome to the forum! Answers to everything here (well, everything 5:2 related anyway...)

The short answer to your q is no it's not cheating and you can nibble away as long as it doesn't take you over your 500 cals. Which it isn't likely to: googling for a second suggests there are 3 cals per medium celery stalk...

[carorees]

Are you sure about not being able to process celery calories? I thought that was an urban myth! But there are so few calories in there it doesn't matter if it's true or not!

As far as im aware we can't process the majority of the calories that are in celery! we process about 6 in a full stick but we burn approx the same amount eating it so it shouldn't add to your daily calorie count and if it does its very little!

From the documentary one of the health benefits of IF was that the body switches from growth mode to repair mode after about 18 hours of fasting. I do wonder if snacking throughout the day would affect this.

[carorees]

As far as im aware we can't process the majority of the calories that are in celery! we process about 6 in a full stick but we burn approx the same amount eating it so it shouldn't add to your daily calorie count and if it does its very little!

As the total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) calculation takes account of calories burned digesting food, you cannot eat the celery and not count the calories it provides when calculating whether you are within your TDEE. However, in practice the accuracy of both TDEE and one's ability to know how many calories have actually been consumed, together with the low number of calories in celery means that it doesn't really matter!

[carorees]

From the documentary one of the health benefits of IF was that the body switches from growth mode to repair mode after about 18 hours of fasting. I do wonder if snacking throughout the day would affect this.

Yes, most of us here think that snacking is detrimental to the other health benefits from IF than simple weight loss.