The FastDay Forum

Thank you Moogie for setting up this site - I'd still be bumbling around trying to lose weight without it. (Didn't manage to lose much, just got bigger previously.)
Thank you Carorees for all your informative posts.
Thank you Mods for your sterling work.
Thank you fellow posters for your help, support and entertaining posts.
Here's to onwards and downwards, or to keeping on an even keel, in 2014

Hi - I have been on the 5 2 for 15 months now and finally hit my target goals. From 22% body fat to 10% body fat.

I didn't focus just on weight, but more on body fat as I am planning a triathlon. On the BBC they talked about many other benefits of the diet. Not sure if it is worth carrying on for other reasons.
I posted my weight chart on my new blog here: http://www.triwithme.org/blog/5-2-diet

[carorees]

Hi @triwithme and welcome to the forum!

Well done on your weight loss and reaching target!

May I ask why you don't think it's worth carrying on with? It is highly likely you'll regain the weight you lost if you stop fasting completely and you'll also lose the benefits with respect to your reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease. Three experts were discussing the benefits of intermittent fasting on the Diane Rehms radio show today and they all agreed that fasting needed to be a lifetime thing. However, it doesn't have to be 5:2, there are other ways that might suit you better!

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking of having the restricted 600 calories but then adding the calories lost from exercise. On a 1 hour bike ride I may burn 1000 calories and do not want the weight loss to become to extreme. Do you think this approach is good?
I'm going to get myself one of these counters once they come out to help with the calorie loss: http://www.triwithme.org/blog/garmin-vivofit

[carorees]

Hi @Tri with me

Um, I think that the idea of adding on your calories burned would only 'work'in terms of fasting benefits if you have long enough with no food on your fast days rather than spread out the approx 1600 cals over the day. If you were to fast for 24 hours (no cals) once or twice a week and at the end of the fast eat whatever you want (this is a IF method created by Brad Pilon, called eat stop eat), you would get the health benefits of fasting but be able to adjust your calorie intake to prevent weight loss/gain. If you don't want to fast for 24 hours on fast days, you could do a 600 cal fast once a week or every two weeks (6:1 or 13:1). Or you could try the "leangains" method of fasting every (or most) days for 16 hours and eating whatever you like in an 8 hour window (we call this 16:8). All of these should give health benefits without weight gain. The key is to understand that long periods without food (at least 12 hours) are what creates the benefit of insulin and a switch to fat burning, and then work out how best to incorporate this into your life to enable your to keep your calorie intake right and to fit in with your natural tendencies (I like skipping breakfast so 16:8 works for me; Dr Mosley can't manage without breakfast so 6:1 but skipping lunch works for him). Experiment and see what works for you!

What great results. I am in my first week of fasting and already I am feeling much better

Good thing for you. Congratulations for a job well done. you lose weight in that span of time.

I've been 'away', selling house, buying new one and moving but popped in to see whether anyone was still chatting. The brilliant news for me is that I only put on 1kg in the whole three months of not fasting as well as usual, because of the stress of moving house at over 70. And I've now taken it off again. In fact, I also stopped trying to lose for a while last UK summer, when we were over there, to see if I could keep the weight off. I've lost weight before, you see, lost it faster, put it on fast afterwards. Ravenous hunger does that to you.

I've slowly lost 14kg (about 30 pounds) over 18 months, with 'pauses' to let my body get used to the new size. I wanted to see whether a 'step' attitude to dieting would stop my body racing to put weight on. It seems to have done that, I'm glad to say, and my arthritis has been consistently less painful since I've been on the diet. Also, the ravening hunger that made other diets so painful is rarely present.

So I'll keep on now towards the goal I didn't think I'd achieve, with a slow loss planned of another 3-5kg and then another pause.

It isn't losing weight - it's also keeping it off that's important.

Good luck and good willpower to us all.

Anna