The FastDay Forum

Funnily enough, she tells me that despite hardly any weight loss, she has lost 3 inches off her belly. Now she tells me!

3 inches is HUGE. Please do me a favour and tell her, from one person who has dieted for 20+ yers to another, that is fantastic and she should feel very proud of herself.

insx - I hope all the replies has given some help and support to your wife. If you can literally 'eat what you want' and stay the size you are I can imagine it must be absolute hell for her . I really hope she gives 5:2 another chance, but you know, if she prefers to have more discipline on a daily basis then maybe it's not for her and SW is a better route. I truly believe that different diets work for different people. What I would say though is that SW is also a bit economical with the truth. It too implies you can 'eat as much as you like' albeit the 'right' foods. This works to an extent to begin with when you've got a few stone to shift, but for it to continue to work, there is a need to cut down portion sizes (my SW leader told us this) and cut the snacking in between meals - and that's the more difficult bit. Good luck to you both anyway.

Insx,

I am very sorry that your wife is having such struggles. I have lived my whole life with weight issues and my heart goes out to her. I will not try to 'convince' you or her that this lifestyle is the 'right' one for everyone.

What I will say is that in my searching and re-searching for answers, I found this article helpful:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show ... not-losing

It is from a different forum, but it very clearly and concisely explains what I had done to my body and my metabolism over years and years of trying to lose weight. It was such a joyous *relief* to me to know there was an answer - and a way for me to help my body get back to normal! For me, I have encorporated the 5:2 way of eating into my restoration of health, but that does not mean it would work for everyone.

But that article was a real eye-opener for me. It helped me realise that I wasn't imagining things, I wasn't truly over-eating, and I wasn't a hopeless glutton, destined to be fat and unhappy and unhealthy for the rest of my life! What a liberation!!

Best wishes for you and your wife as she finds her way on this journey.

3 inches lost is significant. I haven't lost a lot of weight but I don't have a huge amount to lose, however I can definitely see shrinkage and that for me is even more important. It feels like it's working from the inside out. It's helped me to re-set a lot of my thinking about when I eat and how much too, no other diet plan, weight loss programme has ever done this.

I am on Week 8 and I had always planned to give it until this point to see if I wanted to continue and I do because the alternative is a return to mindless eating and snacking which is probably what gets most people to a point where they feel they need to lose weight.

With regard to the 'eat what you like' thing, I know it's a bit of a semantic point but it's one that Brad Pilon also mentions. The phrase is 'eat what you like' not 'eat as much as you like'. It's a small difference but a crucial one that means if you fancy a bar of chocolate then have one. It doesn't mean have five bars of chocolate. So it's about not restricting the types of foods you eat but eating them sensibly, along with a balanced diet generally and stopping when your full (something I've found myself much more aware of since doing 5:2).

I'm loving this thread! Sorry for the length of this reply but there's been so many interesting points made by people here, I just had to reply to them:

What you cannot do is come off a dieting regime and eat normally on 5 days and fast on 2.

I completely agree, and I feel your pain. I too have found that if I don't calorie count on non-fast days I gain weight. This is certainly the hardest, most restrictive WOE I've ever tried. Been doing 5:2 for 2 months now, and I only lose weight if I restrict my eating on non-fast days too. I am so pleased to have found this thread as I thought there was something wrong with me.

For those of us with weight to lose (most of us here then) surely 'eating normally' is eating above one's TDEE, hence why we become overweight in the first place! Thus if we ate normally on non-fast days it would cancel out the fasts. As someone said:

I get the idea of normal eating between fasting but for anyone trying to lose weight, surely 'normal eating' is what has got us here in the first place?

And as someone else said:

Most of us overeat, which is why we're on here in the first place. So eating normally to us is overeating to someone else.

And then Bob said:

I do agree the "eat what you like for 5 days" is a lie. If like me you "like" to eat chips, clotted cream, and Trifle, whilst quoffing pint after pint of Cider, you arn't going to loose weight by just restricting yourself 2 days a week.

Hear! Hear!

eat pizza every day

Hah! If only!! That's what the media would have us believe!

I have found that the occasional feast seems to boost weightloss.

Biologically, how would this work better than no-feast?

The thing I like more about 5:2 is that I am getting used to the feeling of my stomach being smaller.

Now this I actually agree with. It is a very real, tangible reward of 5:2. The only proper tangible reward I can find so far (besides of course, saving money on fast days).

I was oblivious to the hype

How did you manage that?

It seems that if you were previously dieting or constantly gaining weight you have lost touch with what is normal for your body

I think there is some truth in this, particularly for me. I've been on a diet/binge cycle since I was about 12 (I'm now 30!) How can I learn to understand what's normal for me?

I accept that what Dr M has written is open to misinterpretation.

Which is exactly what he wants, of course. He's raking it in. Despite not even inventing this diet! Bah.

I think Michael had been guilty of making an erroneous extrapolation from the ADF studies to 5:2.

Excellent point. Perhaps ADF is the way to go for people (like myself) who NEED (god dammit) to eat copious amounts of pizza, burgers and cake.

Hi Pip, I'm not sure how much of what you wrote is to invite serious answers or just to let off steam! A few points I will try answer:

• Biologically, how would [the occasional feast to boost weightloss] work better than no-feast?

  No one sensible is suggesting that eating more calories per se will lose more weight. The suggestion is that eating more on one day and less on another might be more effective for weight loss than eating the same amount overall but balanced between the two days. And the biological explanation would be that the average metabolic rate (i.e. calories burned) is higher if you feast/famine. It is an interesting observation; I don't know whether it is true but we are all learning here and so everyone's experience is helpful.

• How can I learn to understand what's normal for me?

  If you are struggling with 'normality', start by working out your TDEE using a calorie calculator and consume that on your feed days (on average) and 25% of that on fast days.

• I've been on a diet/binge cycle since I was about 12

  A history of diet and binge is probably not the best starting point for 5:2, at any rate what seems comparatively effortless for some is probably going to be a struggle for you. That means - as you have found - you have to count calories, probably what you hoped to escape with 5:2!

• [Dr Mosley]'s raking it in. Despite not even inventing this diet!

  He certainly didn't invent intermittent fasting nor even 5:2 fasting, but he did come up with the very simple formulation of it that most of us here are following - with success. I take my hat off to him - or I would if only I could find the right smiley:

<<For those of us with weight to lose (most of us here then) surely 'eating normally' is eating above one's TDEE, hence why we become overweight in the first place! Thus if we ate normally on non-fast days it would cancel out the fasts.>>
Not necessarily. I ate below my TDEE (with very few of exceptions, such as holidays) for years. I didn't know it but I did. And I thought I was eating normally too!!! Normally and healthy too!

<<Biologically, how would this work better than no-feast?>>
Apparently, it does. Giving your metabolism a spark to work better and harder than most days and then relax is proven to help weight-loss. I might not completely understand it but I like it and as long as it is working I won't question it just for the sake of the argument!!!

<<Excellent point. Perhaps ADF is the way to go for people (like myself) who NEED (god dammit) to eat copious amounts of pizza, burgers and cake.>>
Nobody NEEDS to do that. You WANT it, you LIKE it, you DO it but you don't need it. Neither physically nor emotionally.
I can eat 8 slices of pizza easily and then scoff a pound of ice cream. I will enjoy it for sure but there is no way to convince me that I actually need to do that!!!

Oh, one more thing:
I don't have the book yet nor I'm on the forums for quite long. I haven't read anything that this DrM wrote, all I have is an email from the wife of my friend who does 5:2 and the results of googling on the first couple of days when she told me about it.
Yet, not a single moment I understood that on the 5 days I could eat whatever I wanted in zillion quantities. It was pretty clear (and logical) that I could just eat everything in sensible quantities, end of story.
IMO, some people WANT to misinterpret what they are supposed to eat on the 5 days, either because they want to question this method (I'm sure Weight Watchers will be very keen to do that, LOL) or because they want to do 5:2 but in their own terms.

[Betsysgr8]

I have found that after just a few fasts that I physically CAN'T eat as much as I want or what I used to eat at any given meal. I'm very grateful to now have a 'normal' size meal and have it be too much for my tummy to handle.

I have found that after just a few fasts that I physically CAN'T eat as much as I want or what I used to eat at any given meal. I'm very grateful to now have a 'normal' size meal and have it be too much for my tummy to handle.

Same here. As my mum says "my stomach closed down".

TML13 (and anyone else), I didn't read the book until many months after starting 5:2 (and after joining here). But I did watch the Horizon programme. You certainly don't need to, but it's entertaining as well as informative. There are some links (hopefully still working) near the end of the Short Answers FAQ.

My internet connection is so slow that I canny watch any video. This will be fixed soon (I hope) and it is in my plans to watch the videos.

I am not calorie counting on any of my five normal days. I did find it took a few weeks for me to click into eating when I was hungry rather than panic eating because I knew a fast day was coming. We had a lot of take outs and binge eating in the first few weeks as we tested the sustainability of this way of eating. I had a few weeks of no loss but now I have relaxed into it I feel much more relaxed and as a result am eating less.

Maybe the fact your wife came straight from another diet might have messed with her system a bit but that doesn't explain your lack of loss. We try and think of the health benefits more than the weight loss on weeks we haven't lost and as long as this time next year I'm a little bit lighter and still happy with this way of eating then as far as I'm concerned its a success. It has taken me a long time to stop regarding weight loss as a race, obviously I would like it all gone straightaway but that's not going to happen and if it takes 3 years but fits into my life and I am happy then that's fine.

I've read the whole of this thread - it's a very good one!

The overwhelming message seems to be that this way of eating teaches you to eat a Normal amount of calories.

Today for me that equates to:-

A good sized bowl of porridge with a ton of berries on it for breakfast.
A Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich with Mayo for Lunch.
A good sized bowl of Chilli and Rice for tea with a couple of slices of Garlic Bread.
This all adds up to under 2000 calories.

There's also room for a snack while I'm watching telly tonight.

That's not moderate dieting that's Normal eating. I wouldn't be able to eat like this if I was calorie restricted to 1300 cals or less every day. And I would be miserable.

The price to pay for this normality is fasting. I fast 3 days a week (I'm doing 4:3) I'm averaging a 3lb a week loss. It works, you just have to be sensible about feed days.