The FastDay Forum

I rarely fast now, but I do a lot of exercise and have moreorless maintained give or take a kg. 5:2 taught me what hunger was, but as I run 50kms a week now I need "fuel" and I prefer to watch what I eat and monitor my weight rather than fast.
I try and eat carbs early in the day (to replenish the glycogen consumed during the night), and more protein in the evening for muscle repair during the night. I don't eat too much processed/high fat food, like crisps and fast food. I weigh myself every day to monitor my weight and body fat, which is currently 14%.

@Sassy1, I am fasting today and still holding out hope that the situation will improve. It may have been some sort of water retention thing, in the fat tissue, as there was definitely more of it than I am used to seeing, and I don't think there is any physiological way that I could have suddenly grown that much more body fat over 2 weeks.

I wonder if the change in the weather here is having an impact, too. It's in the 40s F here--7C --and we keep our house at 16.5 C at night, so perhaps something about sleeping cold is affecting how my body is working. The conference was in Florida where it was quite warm and very humid.

Who knows? Could be a temperature thing - so many factors! But hope it settles soon. I will see later today how the loss of the 3kg I gained is going... It has been going down but it still 1.5kg more than it was before then weekend.

I am really starting to think that fasting may be doing something interesting to our ability to store glycogen. My earlier reearch into glycogen storage had turned up the very interesting fact that some people were able to store a lot more of it than others--as much as 10 lbs compared to the 2 or 3 lbs that the textbooks state we carry. ...

There is no data about the impact on how the ability to store glycogen changes on a 5:2 style fasting diet, though....I am starting to wonder if this diet expands our ability to store it.

If so, that would make sense. ..startling holiday weight gains do seem to be a striking phenomenon of this otherwise wonderful diet.

On the US boards, some people picked up 7-10lbs over Thanksgiving. What's fascinating is that some of those have dropped 7lbs+ of that in 2-3 days; others are dropping 1.5-2lbs a day but it's being more obstinate in others. There must be all sorts of salt/fluid shifts in the people who are dropping very rapidly and I wonder about glycogen storage capacity for the remainder. That said, one of the current 'rapid droppers' (who is also maintaining weight loss of >120lbs) is someone who picked up >12lbs iirc when she was off-rotations for a family vacation last year, and, unlike her usual rapid loss experiences, it took her more than a month to shed that.

The lack of predictability and the uncertainties around this are irritating and intriguing.

I am maintaining for nearly a year now and never stopped fasting 2 times a week except when once I was sick and another time when the heat here was broken. The only difference with when I was losing weight is that now those fasts are more around 800 cals. My weight is still the same, with 2 kgs I gain and lose from time to time and that may be because I am still fasting and may be because I always try to keep my days as balanced as possible. If I have a big meal, the others will be very light or even not at all.

I still keep my fasts because I love the sense of peace they give me. This year has been pretty rocky and there's something really reassuring to have one thing in your life you can count on.