The FastDay Forum

I have been losing weight but so slowly. Last Fast, Monday, I decided to use the My Fitness Pal app which has been talked about on the forum to check that my fast day was below 500calories. To my great disappointment I found that it was over 700. The biggest problem was breakfast. I was using a recipe for yogurt and meusli in the 5:2 Fast Diet recipe book. Page 42. It said this meal was 223 calories per serve. I had measured out the serve exactly but substituted a persimmon from our tree instead of cherries and strawberries. Also I didn't put in the ground almonds and coconut flakes in the meusli. Well, apparently persimmons are very high in calories. The whole breakfast was over 400 calories. So I don't know who to trust.

Today I have decided to give breakfast a miss, which I feel very nervous about. I am taking an orange to work and sachets of miso soup. I am drinking coffee now. This going without breakfast is whole new territory and scary!

Tonight's tea is ocean trout with broccolini, tofu and a sauce made from oyster sauce, hoisin, soy, black Chinese vinegar and chilli. IT's from the June issue of Delicious Magazine, Jill Duplex's Fab 4. She says it's 453 calories, but can I believe her?

Here goes!

Hi I did breakfast on 1st fast day only, then all future fast days I skip it + also lunch for me its easier this way + save my Cal's for evening meal and that's a full 24ish fast, I'm convinced that this is why its working for me, but never thought I'd be able to give up breakfast + .lunch
Make sure you keep up liquids + Good Luck Sue

I haven't had a breakfast since I started. I find on a fast day that as soon as I start eating I get hungry. If I don't eat the hunger pangs are minimal. So I avoid breakfast every day and miss out on lunch as well on fast days.

The hype about it being the 'most important meal of the day'. Was/is just that, hype, made up by the cereal industry. If it was the most important meal of the day you would think any decent nutritionist would make sure it was balanced, not loaded to the rafters with carbohydrates, with milk, even more carbs and sugar, just in case the first few hundred calories of carbs wasn't enough.

I had breakfast and lunch at first then decided to try having nothing except water and perhaps a cup of tea until my evening meal.i find this much easier ,I don't feel that hungry and I have a nice size evening meal .i too was nervous skipping breakfast and lunch but I'm sure you will be fine.

Me too - avoiding breakfast generally. On fast days if I'm getting desperate I have a miso early afternoon or a low cal celery home made soup. The hungry switch or appetite switch surely ramps up for me too if I start to eat.
Even if I have the evening fast meal - I'm like "ok now what else can I eat now."?
So I have to work at consciously resisting that urge.
Hopefully I'll get over it one day.

Hi Sallyo, I'm with sue and julieathome on this one,once I start eating I'm just hungry all the time.I've gone from 3 small meals to just a main evening meal drinking just flavoured water in the day. I use my fitness pal to and find it very accurate but now only use it on fasting day as I found on feast days I wasn't eating enough and would eat just any old thing despite not being hungry to increase my cal count- i used it everyday for a week and its the only week doing this WOE that I have put weight on!!
Maybe try to have your first meal later and later on a fast day and see how it goes! One thing I have learned from this forum is that we are all different and you just need to do what works for you!

Hi Sallyo,
All the best for today, hope it's not too tough for you.
I also don't eat till evening, - if I get too hungry around 3pm I'll have some strawberries or melon- I seem to find the salty things make me feel sick.
I have about 350 -400cals for dinner and then a hot choc later. (the No Sugar hot choc is yum, I have it with no added sugar almond milk and water)
If I do feel peckish later I chew some gum!

I have my best results if I do a strict 24 hour fast. Drink lots of water tea coffee and pray, keep busy. After you have done it a few times it gets easier. When I split the cals throughout the day I end up wanting more if I still to just dinner I am satisfied. Gum is handy and I have found mint tea helpful.

I keep going as long as I can on fluids saving calories for my tea, I find this easier, but I started by just pushing it an hour further on each fasting day, I plan which days to fast carefully so Im generally working with nothing special planned

Hi, I thought I'd add in my two cents as what I've been doing has been working for me (although everyone's different!)

On fast days I have 'breakfast' at lunch time - I want until 12pm before I eat half a cup of scotch oats cooked in water with half a cup of frozen berries or half a pear. This usually clocks in at about 110 calories (I use the MyFitnessPal app).

The oats fill me up and the berries add a delicious sweetness. This usually keeps me going until dinner although if not I'll have a low-calorie salad or a carrot - you can pretty much eat as much undressed mesculin/raw vegetables as you like without the calories going up toooo much!

By the time dinner comes around, my hunger pangs are usually gone, and I'll just use whatever calories I have left to eat veggies/lean meat.

The key for me on fast days is keeping ingredients as simple as possible - condiments add up!

On non-fast days I eat the same thing for breakfast, but will often put this off until 11 or 12 if I'm not hungry. (I guess my own version of the 16:8).

Monday-Thursday I also try to eat salads for lunch and minimise the amount of sweets I eat (I have a huge sweet tooth).

Come Friday afternoon, anything's game!

I find this easy to stick to and like to think of my fast days as my 'healthy days' where I make good food choices and avoid any treats. This helps trick my mind into thinking I'm still eating plenty of food!

Hope this helps...

P.s., I also find it hard to skip breakfast - it does go against everything my mother taught me! But so far it seems to be working for me and I actually feel more alert in the morning if I wait a bit longer to eat. It's all about listening to your body and eating when you feel you need to, not just because it's 9am or 12.30pm or 6pm!

Thanks for all the encouragament everyone. It is now lunch time at work and I am doing ok. I am wondering whether to have a miso soup sachet, or a cup of tea? I admit it is easier than I thought it would be. I think I will opt for a cup of tea and go until 3pm. See how I fee then, when school ends, and if necessary have a miso soup then.

I know that lots of people on the forum miss breakfast, but the idea horrified me. I never thought I could!

I keep going as long as I can on fluids saving calories for my tea, I find this easier, but I started by just pushing it an hour further on each fasting day, I plan which days to fast carefully so Im generally working with nothing special planned

I do exactly this. When I first started fasting I used to have a light lunch (150cal or so) at around 12.30pm (no breakfast). Then I pushed it back to 1pm, 1.30, 2.30... today it's now 4.40pm and I've had nothing but fluids, nor have I wanted anything more. It just gets easier and easier.

I've found it easier to miss breakfast and not eat until evening. Never skipped breakfast in my life , except for when I was suffering with morning sickness when pregnant!

I think I'm going to try missing breakfast next week on my fast days to see if it starts my weight on the downward trend again. Fingers crossed. Thanks for all the info shared on this topic. Really helpful.