The FastDay Forum

I started this diet on Sunday 17th April Start weight 92.6 Kilo
I am doing Alternate Days at the moment abt 2000/500 calories
Fast days so far, Monday and Wednesday and as of this morning I am 90.0K so thats 2.6 Kilo so far this week, but realise that the total lost following feed days will not be so much.
I am 48 and peri-menopausal and although no matter what yo-yo weight I have been I have always had a real hour glass figure, this has completely disappeared, so now I walk around looking 9 months pregnant but also have lovely rolls of fat over the back and sides of my bra to finish the look!!

I am doing 1/1 days as I need to loose as much as possible before May 1st when I go on holiday with family and friends. Its not just to look OK, but more the fact that I cannot afford to buy new clothes just for a weeks holiday when I have a wardrobe full of summer clothes that I cannot fit into. At the moment I am limited to one dress at a real push, so hopefully I will be able to fit into some more, otherwise I will be wearing velvet trousers and other winter clothes on the beach!!

[janeg]

Hello Romany
Welcome to the board and well done on your success so far.
There are quite a few people with the same details as yourself and you can use the progress tracker to see how they are doing.
Hopefully the hourglass will return and the velvet trousers won't get tongomon holiday with you!

[carorees]

Hi Romany

I'm sure you will be able to wear some of those summer clothes!

Are you in the UK? With the weather we're having at the moment you'll be needing the velvet trousers for the British summer!

This way of eating really works , despite having no kitchen at moment and eating out far more than usual , still managing to lose each week , only a pound - but finally under 10stone . Happy to go slowly knowing that can still have social life ! 10 lb off since New Year , painlessly and a few more to go , not too many cos at my age risk looking more wrinkly ! !!

Thank you for the welcome, it is appreciated.
I am trying to do this on my own at the moment. I am not telling my friends, unless they notice or its a fast day that I can't change.
Also my OH is probably totally fed up of all the yo-yo dieting and although he can see I am eating differently to him, our evening meal is not majorly different (except carbs), so he probably thinks its another fad.
He is very fit and healthy and has stayed the same slim weight for the last 20 years that we have been together! Because of this he does not understand why people overeat, diet, gain weight, etc, he even does not understand why you go to the gym to lose weight!
Every time I have lost weight, I managed to gain it back over the following year. but adding a few pounds every time. The last time I was 92K 2010 I did the Dukan diet and went from 92Kilo to 79, but could not get down any further even though I carried on dieting for months, then I tried to stabilise and struggled with that and then the beginning of this year I was back to 92 Kilo's, I managed to stabilise this but just could not lose anything.
My biggest problem with diets is that they work, but if I stop and then start again they will never work the 2nd time as my body adapts and then that is it!!
This time HAS to be my last. I know now that this will have to be me for the rest of my life. What ever I lose I will have to be happy with. And then I will have to stick with this for ever, otherwise that will be that and I will just get bigger and bigger with no diets ever working!
Today I am 89.7 kilo which is the first time being out on the 90's in months, so I am happy about that. I am now off to the gym for my 2nd session this week

Just a quick update as I have been away for too long, I have been up and down in weight and on and off the 5:2/ADF for the last year, but I will find the time to update my post fully and let you know where I am and the plans for the future.

Welcome back Romany

Hi Romany,welcome back! Look forward to reading your update! X

Welcome back and am also looking forward to your update,

Ballerina x

Welcome back @Romany05 Look forward to your update, and if you've been up & down you're in good company, stay forum focused for motivation to carry you onwards, so many of us seem to have a mid journey crisis for whatever reason, we can all help eachother trough this difficult patch so that it does'nt become the same as any old diet out there, we know this WOL is different and so works. good luck

It's been a bad year as my mother has been seriously ill, but hopefully she is now on the road to recovery and I can try and get back to losing weight. (and my own life)
I did manage to hit my first holiday target of 85Kilo ladt year and roughly stay within a kilo of that weight. Then this year, when my mother was at her worst, there was a 6 week period when I was permanently on the go, no sleep and hardly eating and surviving on the occasional glass of lucozade, that I managed to put on 6 kilo!
This is not normal and even my mother, when she started to recover, asked how much weight I had lost as I had been working so hard to look after, could not believe that I had gained so much.

Moral of the story - Stress!
I had always said that I can look at food and put on weight. The only explanation is that my body was so stressed out (which is understandable as I was near breaking point) that anything that I ate was stored as fat straight away. The telling sign of this is that I now have new fatty area's on my body that I did not really have last year????.

I never realised that stress could impact my weight so drastically, but trying to be analytical, I have looked back at my major weight fluctuations and I can really see a pattern of extra stressful periods of time.
Moving forward this will be something that I will have to be very aware of.
My next update will be more about my actual weight and fast days!

[Debs]

Hi there, like you I am peri-menopausal and suffer from stress, in my case work related. I am sorry to hear about yours, it sounds like it has been a rough time for you. My weight bounces around without really dropping and I wonder of there is any sciencey/nerdy stuff around stress causing you to hold onto fat. Maybe it is a very primeval thing of our bodies being worried that we may not get food. I keep meaning to look at meditation as an option, but keep forgetting! @Carorees, any ideas?

[carorees]

Yes indeed, there is plenty of evidence about stress and weight gain. I have written about it in troubleshooting section of the main site: Should I fast when I'm stressed out?

Hello @Debs

I have always meant to develop a meditation habit, and now that I have found a WOE I like enough to do for the rest of my life and have got myself into the do some exercise every day habit, I am starting to do 10 minutes of breathing meditation every day. I have downloaded a "music" track which is just silence and every five minutes a Tibetan chime goes off softly so I know when the 10 minutes is up - it goes on for longer, maybe one day I will too. There are plenty of guided meditations or tutorials on the web, but having grasped the basics would rather not have people telling me what to do while I am doing it!

I have taken it up as I believe people who have done it regularly for a while have lower blood pressure among other things, so another string to my bow to add to diet and exercise.

Well I am finally getting back into the pattern of 4:3/ADF. Last year I did ADF and that suited me very well. This year, because I started while my mother was recovering, it was easier to do 4:3 and I chose to do Mon/Wed/Fri, this gave me free weekends, which made things less complicated.
I managed to lose 7 kilo since the end of March, with a lot of hard work both mentally and physically. When I returned home I did ADFand managed to lose another kilo and then went on a 2 week holiday.
The holiday was pure getting to know my husband again, relaxing, reading, wine and dinning. It was just what we both needed.
I also decided to do 5:2 and have a fast day on the 2 travel days and I also managed to fit in 2 kind of fast days - I did not eat all day, I only had one evening meal, I stayed away from carbs and had fish/veg, but with the oil/butter/olives it would have been over 500cal, especially as I still had half a bottle of wine! But I was on holiday!
As I managed to relax and recharge the batteries so much and I only had deserts/icecreams 7-8 times, Even with all the wine and olives, I managed to lose 1.5 kilo(3lbs) ( I would not say I was particularly active either)
This goes to prove to me that the more relaxed I am the easier it is to lose weight.....its just a pity that I have not won the lottery so I can't go on a world cruise as I would come back positively skinny! hahaha...... But I do seriously need to find a better way of coping with stress (my mothers illness) and not let it effect me to such an extent that my health and wellbeing suffers as this does not help anyone, especially my mother.
Since being back I did ADF and have managed to lose another 1.5 kilo so a total of 11kilo since the end of March. I am very happy with that (although I always want to lose more!)
Yesterday I also went to the gym- the first time in almost a year- and it was not as bad as I thought even though it was a fast day.

My plan -my hope would probably be a better term - will be to continue with fasting on a 4:3 basis Mon/Wed/Fri as this allows the weekend free with my husband, Monday to repair any week-end excesses, Friday to prepare for the excesses and help the saturday weigh-in! and Wednesday just so I can eat a little more normally on feast days.
I am also aiming to go to the gym 3-4 times a week and starting out at an hour a time but building up to 2 hours (I don't have membership for classes but will have to look into that as I would make things more interesting)
I also need to get back to cutting out all processed carbs, In the scheme of things potatoes, bread, pasta etc have been drastically reduced, but now I am home its often easier to have a small piece of italian bread or rice with a meal as I am doing that for my husband, I really need to get back to cutting that out and sticking to protein, vegetables and salad. I have also been 'rewarding' myself with 40/50g 72% chocolate at night and I don't want to fall back into that pattern. With that as an aim I will stick with one evening meal on a fast day and a fruit tea for my night "snack" and then on feast days I need to try to get back into having set meals and not picking/grazing throughout the day and night. This will also make me more aware of what and how much I am eating.

I started out at 92kilo in March, I am now 81 Kilo
My first real target is 79kilo and then originally I wanted to get to 75Kilo. If that is realistic and IF the gym goes well, I might aim for 70 kilo as that would be 11 stone and for my age and height (5'7"/170cm) it would be a better weight BUT I do not want to look scrawny and saggy (well any more than I do now!) as I already feel that I look older than I am (Oh the joys of years of yo-yo dieting!)