The FastDay Forum

I thought it would be good idea to report in once a week with (hopefully) progress.
I started on 28th of December with ADF and weighed in at 12.13.02, waist measurement was 41". I am only 5ft 2" tal,l so not good! I really would love to get down to under 10 stone but I will be happy with whatever I can achieve. I know it is slow but I am used to that.
I did have a good first week and lost 4.8 lbs and half an inch off my waist so I was happy but I am well aware that now things will slow down. My usual weight loss is about a pound a week, which is fine.

On a non fast day today so need to be extra careful as that is when I tend to be tempted!
Back next week,
SilverSlimmer

Congratulations, @SilverSlimmer, on making such a positive start to the new year Keep checking in on here and it will help to keep you motivated. Some of us have been around for a long time but we love to know what everyone is up to!

Congratulations fellow member of the silver gang! The 1/2 inch loss around the waist is a big deal! I think that this is what surprised and pleased me the most about the fasting protocol; it changed my midsection back to the shape that it used to be! I had kind of lost hope that this could happen. Keep it up.

Thanks for the encouragement! The older you get the harder it is to shed the pounds. Not doing as well this week as our social life revolves around meeting friends for lunch!! I am hoping for a couple of good days before weigh in.
Cheers,
Silverslimmer

No worries! It truly is a journey and not a race. Just keep working at fitting your fasts into your life. As you get more comfortable, the control???? you develop on fast days kind of extends to nonfast days, and it becomes easier to navigate social life without going hog wild.
I think this is the best system ever for taking weight and inches off and maintaining one's new normal.
Have a great day!

End of week 2, I weighed in a day early as I like to weigh in after a fasting day. I was down another 1.8 lbs giving a total of 6.6 after 13 days so I am really happy. Yesterday was the first day I wasn't feeling hungry on a fast day. I fast from about 10-15 p.m. until 6-30 p.m. the next day when I have a light dinner, usually fish and chicken with vegetables. I am usually clock watching from about 4 o'clock but yesterday I was OK so that is a good sign. Haven't measured myself yet!

Hope everyone else has had a good week.
Silverslimmer

Aargh, I have just done a long post and the forum just swallowed it! I am seriously cross. It has taken me an age to get on here this morning anyway so I guess there are some glitches around.

Can't be bothered to write it all again so the bad news is I put on 1.2 lbs last week mainly because I was fighting a cold and just needed to eat! No excuses. Planning to be back on track this week.

Not writing more in case it disappears again. Life is too short.
Silverslimmer

@SilverSlimmer, congratulations on your loss so far - apart from the loss of your post, that is!
If I have written a long post I always highlight it and 'copy' before pressing 'Submit' - that way even if the forum swallows it you can always 'paste' your post back in and try again! The disappearing seems to happen if your internet is particularly slow (mine is because I live out in the middle of nowhere) or if you try to move onto a new thread before giving the site time to 'digest' it! Hope this helps!

@StowgateResident
Oh, I shall have to do that! I actually asked to preview the post and even though I was logged in it asked me to log in again and by the time I had done that it had disappeared!! I had neither the time nor the heart to start again and I realise I sounded pretty mardy.
I don't think Lincolnshire knows the meaning of fast - be it broadband or anything else! I am in the far North of the county.
My only compensation was that my waist measurement had gone down for the third week running, from 41" to 38.5" so that is good news as my waist worries me! LOL!
Fingers crossed for this week.
SilverSlimmer

Hi Silverslimmer
I have tried this before and it's okay except I found it really difficult to work out what I can eat or drink on the fast days so ended up giving up.!! Anyhow I have now worked out a fail safe system for me and that is not eating hardly anything on my fasting days.
I drink tea and coffee, the one off hot bovril drink and sometimes an apple or banana. therefor I can keep to my 500 calories. I have done this for a month so far but don't have any scales!! I do have a couple of choc. biscuits on my not fasting days though, otherwise I just went normally 5 days a week. Node if this is correct or not!
Good luck.

@teaaddict
I guess it is good to go with what works for you. Main thing is being able to keep it up for quite a long time. I actually find the fast days easier than the others. Then I have to be really careful not to pack in too many calories.

I need my scales for feedback. Last time I did this in 2013, when I lost 2 1/2 stone, I weighed in every day but this time I am trying to keep to just once a week. It is also good when you realise clothes are not quite as tight, but I am not quite at that stage yet! (Even better when someone notices you have lost weight!)
I am on a fast day today so looking forward to a piece of chicken with vegatables in about an hour!
Keep up the good work.

Silverslimmer

Very disappointed, as with the exception of one day when I ate lunch out, I have been very careful and all I have done is lose the 1.2 lbs I put on last week so no real progress in two weeks. I don't know how you manage to lose on the 5:2 as I struggle with ADF. I do wonder if it is worth all the deprivation. I am going to give it another week and see how I fare but I do have another lunch out! If I hadn't done it successfully before I would be really concerned.

SilverSlimmer

SilverSlimmer, I feel your pain with the long post disappearing. What I said was that you shouldn't get too discouraged, be patient, trust your body and the plan. It is not a fast weight loss for most people, especially those of us with "silver" hair. But, it is a solid loss. Trust that it will work. Obviously it is because you have already lost 3 or 4??? inches on your waist, and many scientists feel that is a bigger indicator of belly fat and health than bmi. . And in my experience, quick off means quick regaining of weight lost, and often more weight regained!. So some things to think about:
* Are you getting enough hydration?
* Are you eating enough protein?
* Try to get close to your estimated calorie expenditure on nonfast days.
* Get plenty of sleep--it is vital!
* Realize that hormonal shifts also affect water retention and weight. So just enjoy the process.
I lost sporadically rather than quickly, but it worked and it has stuck! One of these days, someone who hasn't seen you on a daily basis will either be astonished or fail to recognize you or both! It's really fun!

@Silverslimmer, you need a good talking to! Why are you disappointed to have only lost the 1.2 pounds that you gained last week? If you hadn't lost them then you may have gained that much and then where would you be! I think that means that you have lost nearly half a stone in four weeks? Lots of people would kill for that!
You know what this WOL is like and that it has ups and downs and we have to just ride the roller coaster! Having said all that, I know that it is disappointing when you get on the scales, having been 'good', and then you don't get the expected reward of a loss. I feel your pain!
You mentioned 'deprivation' in your post and that is quite concerning. Are you doing ADF in an attempt to lose your weight quickly or as a way of controlling your eating on non-fasting days or maybe a bit of both? Have you considered doing 4:3 or even 5:2, settling in for the long haul and accepting a loss of half a pound or less per week but without feeling deprived?
When I started on my 5:2 weight loss 'journey' I decided that the only way that I could make it work for me was to not give up any of the foods that I love, just learn to eat them in moderation (apart from holidays, during which anything goes!) I have done 'straight' 5:2 for three years now and rarely feel deprived because I won't let myself be!
Sorry if this post is coming on a bit strong (and long!) but I hate to see people feeling low about how they are doing. Good luck on your fast today!

Silverslimmer wrote: Very disappointed, as with the exception of one day when I ate lunch out, I have been very careful and all I have done is lose the 1.2 lbs I put on last week so no real progress in two weeks. I don't know how you manage to lose on the 5:2 as I struggle with ADF. I do wonder if it is worth all the deprivation. I am going to give it another week and see how I fare but I do have another lunch out! If I hadn't done it successfully before I would be really concerned.

OK. Would you consider a slight change in perspective?

I've something over 2 1/2 years of every-morning and every-evening weight measurements. From these I can categorically state that our actual daily weight is very much like a cork on an ocean wave. As when sitting on a beach, what you see depends on when and where you look. Highs are obvious - Whoa! look at the crest on that one! (I hear grumbling at the weight scale.) Lows are sometimes missed or hard to see because they are often hiding behind the previous wave. (We're still mad at yesterday's cork, so we didn't even look today.)

High tide occurs after the evening meal which makes sense. Low tide always appears after getting up in the morning which also makes sense because we'd had nothing since the previous evening. Notably curious here, are that the lowest tides are often recorded mid-morning if - after getting up, you got busy and managed to skip both breakfast and liquids. So in all this, where's that flippin cork that we are so curious about? It has to be somewhere between the wave peaks and hollows, right?

My point? Wave induced ups and downs of 3-4 pounds (2k) every day is very normal. Individually these measures mean nothing if that wave doesn't also rise up high enough to travel up the beach soaking one's towel, pushing sand into sensitive places and tickling one's butt (arse) with the cork.

Earlier, you may have wondered where the weight goes overnight? Some of it goes with respiration - moisture and carbon dioxide from breathing; it's why canvas walls in pup tents get so wet overnight. The rest is the result of digestion - bodily processes that reveal a hidden value in those middle night (grumble...) gotta get-up-n-P trips! Weight trends that measure average cork height - are the only thing that can tell us a real, believable story.

So can we control the tide and with it, the height of the cork? To a great extent, yes.

How, you might ask?

Do you keep a daily food log? If you do, you can revisit that unexpected high tide and see that it might have been caused by an especially carby meal or two the day before. In order to be digested, carbohydrates require a consider amount of water, so you'll also learn that this storm will keep the tides higher than normal for the next few days.


Lastly, while accurate in their description of feelings, the words disappointed, struggle and deprivation along with an implied time constraint, can quickly and easily lead to self-defeat. Definitely a slippery and uncomfortable, sand-in-the-crotch, kind of slope.

Please consider substituting curiosity with a sense of adventure and a gleeful willingness to experiment as new sources of personal delight leading to a different towel on a different beach without the damned cork.