5:2 Diet Thread! Number 8, fast away fast away fast away all!

[GreenEggsAndNichts]

The continuing thread for those of us following either the 5:2 diet or the alternate-day fasting diet. Both are two versions of Intermittent Fasting, which you can read more about here.

The 5:2 diet was featured on Horizon in August 2012, and essentially requires you to fast for 2 non-consecutive days per week. The other 5 days, you can eat what you like. Alternate-day fasting is just how it sounds; you fast every other day. By "fasting", we mean that we keep our calorie consumption very low, around 500 calories on average, on those days.

I know a number of people lurk on this thread, as this is currently quite popular. Please just jump in and post if you're new- we won't bite. Well, maybe on a fast day. You'll find a lot of support here.

Here is a list of links to get you started with this way of eating. Please let us know if you find a new article or some other information online:

First things first, here are links to some of our previous threads: most recent one before that another one etc!

Another thread which breadandwine has started is a good resource for some of the links and tips that get lost in these big threads. In addition to sharing links, we try to condense some of our top tips for fasting there. Keep in mind, we all do this differently, so these are just tips, not rules.

frenchfancy has a recipe thread over here, please post any low-calorie recipes there so they don't get lost in these bigger threads!

Here is the link to the BBC article regarding Michael Mosley's findings, which was featured on Horizon.

Here is where I would link to the aforementioned Horizon programme, but it appears as if the BBC have finally noticed it on YouTube and have taken it down. Here is a link to the programme's page on iPlayer, which features a couple of clips, and might have updates eventually. Let us know if you find another site hosting it.

A blog post here gives some of the scientific explanation for why this way of eating helps you to not only lose weight, but improve your all-around health.

A Telegraph article which comments on the diet and gives a brief overview.

A study discussed here gives commentary specifically addressing the effect of this diet on obese people (both men and women), with regard to both health and weight loss. ("After 8 weeks of treatment, participants had an average 12.5 lbs reduction in body weight and a 4 cm decrease in waist circumference. Total fat mass declined by about 12 lbs while lean body mass remained relatively constant.) it also mentions "Plasma adiponectin, a protein hormone that is elevated in obesity and associated with heart disease, dropped by 30%. As did LDL cholesterol (25%) and triglycerides (32%).")

Important link if you are currently your ideal BMI: this appears to suggest the benefits for women at a lower BMI might not be seeing the same health benefits that are found on men at their ideal BMI.

And for those already fasting, here is a link to 100 snacks under 100 calories. We tend to favour lots of hot drinks during the day (count your milk if you use it!)

Another food link, here is a link to the BBC Good Food site, with a list of low-calorie soups.

We mentioned BMR and TDEE often. Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) quantifies the number of calories you burn in a day. This measure is best estimated by scaling your Basal Metabolic Rate to your level of activity. TDEE is critical in tailoring your nutrition plan to desired fitness goals. Here is a link to a calculator to help you figure out how many calories you should be eating in a day. (This is a new calculator to previous threads, this one seems to give me approximately the same results the last one did, but without the virus warnings on my browser!)

A BIG THANK YOU to all who have been contributing, btw. Most of us are learning this way of eating as we go along. All of the links above have been posted by others in our previous threads, and they've been very helpful. Sorry if I haven't given credit where it's due, but it was just enough of a job getting all the links re-copied and back into one post.

Come join us, and tell us about your experiences with this diet!

MustTidy, I am a confirmed breakfast eater (I like porridge too!) and would have sworn I couldn't possibly miss breakfast... turns out I can, quite easily, on a fast day, though I still enjoy it on eating days. On fast days I just have a mug of tea for breakfast, and then herbal teas or black coffee all day, with maybe a mug of Bovril around lunchtime. I'd say just try not eating breakfast on your fast days - you may be surprised. We've all found different things work so it's worth trying a few different things even if they sound unlikely, to see what works for you. Good luck!

Thanks guys for all the encouraging & inspirational posts about your successes on this WOL!

MT I started off by reducing cals to 500 but had 3 small meals a day. i.e. egg white omelette for breakfast, Lunch was a bowl of home made veggie soup and then a small salad with ham for dinner. Over time I tried no breakfast and then this last week I've managed fast days with just black coffee and Miso late afternoon. yesterday was a fast day and I managed to go for a run before dinner and felt no ill effects. Just give missing your brekkie a try, you may surprise yourself. It does get easier honest

Great post bordercollielover.

Full of energy and enthusiasm for life and not a care in the world regarding food or weight Exactly how I feel.

Mt If someone had said to me before starting on this WOE that I could survive on not eating breakfast I would have laughed in their face. I now go 24hours on fast days. & that's with me being on so much medication that I literally rattle when I walk! So yes you can do it.

Sorry meant to reply to absolute also. I've lost (almost) 3 stone on this WOE, I have another 3 to go but I now know its doable!

musttidy no. Maybe I was the first couple of fast days, as I recall they were particularly tough. Now, though, I don't feel any different on a fast day from any other day. In fact, I prefer a fast day to be on a day when I'm doing a lot of stuff, as I don't have 'down time' where I might be inclined to think about snacks or whatever.

I actually have a mental state on fast days where, because I know it's a fast day, I just know I can't have anything until the evening. And it works. I baked biscuits earlier today (fast day) and didn't feel tempted at all. That might have been a different situation back in August when I first started! I think I wanted to eat my arm by the end of my first fast day...

Totally with you all on the breakfast thing! I never thought I could do without it - I would be a gibbering wreck without calories first thing in the morning. Then I gave it a go on fasting days and found hey I could make it to work without cornflakes and I wasn't anymore hungry without it. I think I used to have breakfast, then panic when I became hungry an hour later and feel bad because I shouldn't be hungry because I had eaten! Cue spiral of beating myself up about lack of willpower etc.
now, on fasting days, when I have hunger pangs, I just think 'well no wonder, you haven't eaten' so I don't feel bad about feeling hungry, and the pangs go away (yeah for black coffee or earl grey tea).
However I like toast and cereal so I enjoy brekkie on feeding days!
Mix it up everyone and see what works for you!

Thanks all. I really feel that this is something I might like to try. I have 2 more questions (sorry!)

1. I exercise 3 times a week, 2 Zumba classes and a run. In your experience is it better to fast on exercise days or not?
2. What happens when you get to goal weight? Just stop fasting at all and if you put weight on go back to it?

Marking my place as I too am interested in this diet having read Mimi Spencer's article in the Times a few months ago about it. I notice the book about the diet she co-wrote with Michael Mosley is selling by the truckload on Amazon at the moment.

Will read this thread tomorrow. I am sceptical about whether it's possible to maintain fasting but then I am an overweight glutton

hi musttidy - lots of people do exercise on fast days - I would say get used to fasting for a week or so and then give it a try - see what works for you. I absolutely have more energy on fast days, there's a sort of high you get after a while. I'm trying to incorporate the High Intensity Training (HIT) exercise regime into fast days - or a modified form of it - as I fast on days when I work in one particular building where there are a few floors between my office and other colleagues that I need to talk to - instead of ringing down I now go down the stairs to talk to people and am about to try sprinting back up again (eek!) rather than using the lift.

For me it's been a case of getting used to fasting and then stretching myself bit by bit so that I always manage to achieve a 500 cal fast day but things like "not eating for 16 hrs" have been introduced gradually.

southeast I think maintenance will be very easy (she says with a second glass of red by her side ) as once you get into the habit of fasting it will be easy to slip a day in when needed. I'm assuming that I will be able to maintain on 5:2 as i needed to go to 4:3 for losing once I got to a low-ish BMI. If I maintain weight on 5:2 that will be with a reasonably generous 'allowance' for the 5 normal eating days (I will use it for bread and wine!)

Hi All,

I'm new here. I was really glad to find your forum. I've been doing this since the beginning of September but until now haven't found any forums I can get on for support. I'm in China at the moment so the Facebook forum isn't an option for me!

I've tried so many different diets, and until now the only one I had any real success with was calorie counting, which I've been able to use to keep my weight at a sensible level for the last decade, but I haven't been able to get back down to my ideal weight of 9st4 (I'm 5'3.5") since I was 21 (I'm now 32). 9st4 has become a thing of legend for me, like unicorns and gold at the end of rainbows! Every time I've started calorie counting I've got down as far as just under 10st and hit a plateau and given up. I've not minded too much though because I seem to wear weight well and I've always been able to keep my weight around 10st7 (a little overweight but not too bad).

However, 2 years ago I lost my job and got ill. I put on sooo much weight. Last summer I weighed myself and was horrified to discover I was 12st6.4! I just didn't have the energy to throw myself into calorie counting and I had just won a scholarship to study Chinese in China for six months. I knew calorie counting simply wouldn't be an option but I also knew that the food out here is soo good and was worried I'd come home as wide as I am tall!

About a week before I was about to fly out to China a friend told me he'd seen Dr Mosley's program on the BBC and had been doing ADMF since. I have to admit that my first reaction was that it was either a) a load of rubbish b) unhealthy or c) too difficult to stick to. But I always like to do a bit of research before dismissing things completely and what I saw looked interesting. I really didn't think I could lose much weight doing ADMF but I thought it could be a good way to avoid putting on even more weight while in China, so I planned to do ADMF for 6 months and then do calorie counting when I got to Britain. As I didn't think I'd lose any weight I didn't weight myself for a month, but then I notice my clothes were looser. So I went out to buy a cheap set of bathroom scales and was delighted to see I'd dropped about 9lbs! (I'm not sure exactly what I've lost, the scales were the cheapest set I could find and only weigh in kilos so I have to convert to stone to get an idea of how I'm doing! I also only weigh myself once a fortnight because the smallest increment on my scales is 1kg.)

I'm so happy I decided to give ADMF a go. I hit a plateau in December, but instead of giving up I just switched from alternate day fasting to 4:3 to give myself a 'weekend off' to look forward to each week. That's a first for me! I went on my very first diet when I was 16 (which was a mistake, I wasn't even overweight at the time), but this is the first time I've ever been able to stick to a diet through a plateau. The weight has started to come off again now and at my last weigh day I was down to around 11st. It's weigh day again tomorrow so I'll see how this last fortnight has been.

Completed my second fast day yesterday-trying a 4:3 for a week or 2 to kickstart weight loss. Must admit l struggled late on last night and managed to resist my DH's tempting offer of a dry cracker at bedtime. Woke up this morning and l am not at all hungry-in fact feel a bit sick at the thought of food.
Is this normal??

Hi, I'm new here too & morbidly obese (no joke). I haven't started yet, but I've started cutting back on calories & will do my first "fast" w/c 14/1 I think... can't face going back to work AND just eating 500cals for one of the days (will do other day on a Saturday I think). I've struggled w/ my weight all of my life. My mum took me to a dietician even before I started school. I was on and off all sorts of faddy diets all through childhood and teenage years (the egg diet, the banana & milk diet, the fruit diet...) but sort of relaxed a bit after I finished uni, got a job and started living w/my partner in 1997 - BMI was around 28.9- overweight but not obese- yet. I steadily put on weight until I reached my all-time high of 17st in Jan 2002. I went on the Rosemary Conley diet (just using book at home, never been to any weight loss classes). For the first time, something sort of 'clicked' inside me and suddenly I didn't find it that difficult. It took me about 18 months to lose 7st, and my all-time low was 9st 5lbs (BMI 22.5 but for me I looked a bit gaunt around my face & chest... went down to bra cup size AA!!!) I'm now 39 and on 2/1/13 was 17st (I'm 5ft 4ins so that's a BMI of 40.9 - so from reading some of this thread I think I may be the heaviest person here). I put this down to having depression for the last 6 years, also losing my job and starting a new, very stressful job. My weight has yo-yo'd over the last 11 yrs due to attempts at dieting but I just haven't had the willpower to stick to anything. I very often binge-eat but haven't purged since I was a teenager. I am vegetarian. I only saw the Horizon prog the other day after hearing the bit on You & Yours I think (or some other Radio 4 prog, not sure) & found the prog here (subtitles in Slovak, so you can learn a bit of another language at the same time! ;-)) vimeo.com/50912488
Also found the programme here: www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer-hd_shortfilms#.UOk9aORFVCD but I'm hoping they're not taken down like it was on YouTube...
I'm planning to do the 5:2 diet, and on non-fast days to cut calorie intake to around 1500 although I think I had less than that yesterday. My trouble is that I tend to overdo it, (not eat enough) then get really fed up and binge on 4 or 5 Mars bars etc...
Anyway, wish me luck!!
Joey xx

Good luck Joey! The great thing about this is there is no need to deprive yourself on non fast days. Can I gently suggest that 1500 on non fast days might be a smidge too low? You shouldn't let your weekly deficit go under 7000 cals. Can you find out your TDEE and work it out? I suspect you should be aiming for around 1800 on regular days, if you create too big a deficit you may end up slowing down your metabolism.

I should add that I was diagnosed with depression around the time I reached my all-time lowest weight. I also had started giving blood but then that had to stop as I didn't have enough haemoglobin plus not enough platelets either... connection or coincidence??

Welcome to all the new starters. :)

I had my 3rd fast day yesterday, I hadn't meant to I had just planned to start eating later in the day but can you believe I actually got distracted and before I knew it it's time for tea. So I fasted Tue, Thur and Sat - I never would have thought that possible even a week ago so it's all looking good.

My plan this week is a Monday and Thursday fast with an optional Saturday if I feel like it. My weight is just at the cusp between overweight and obese so there is a bit of motivation to nudge it down enough to 'just' be overweight but I know this is more about the long term so I have to keep it fun and sustainable.

This is a funny WOE, it sounds much harder than it actually is but then I have always been an all or nothing kind of woman.

Thank you so much ErikNorseman! 1800 sounds better, you are right, I really don't want to slow my metabolism! Will be able to have nice big bowl of porridge to break the fast! & lots of fruit!

:) and for me, I'm crap at 'dieting' longer term (ie reducing calories every day) because I feel deprived and I get bored. Knowing you can eat normally (not bingeing, just normal) 4-5 days a week is magic. I also know that if I accidentally overeat or drink too much wine etc I'm still in calorie deficit for the week.

Hi OddBoots, well done to you! I think I'm similar in being "all or nothing", at least that's what my partner tells me! I'm hoping that this WOE will suit my personality...

Cheers ErikNorseman, same for me I think, I just find it so difficult to have "a little of something", I either eat a packet of biscuits or none at all... I know that my eating habits are unhealthy but I've tried for years to eat "normally" and have failed miserably...

Have started taking L - Glutamine & chromium for sugar cravings (helps with alcohol cravings too) because even though on this diet you can still eat normally on your feed days, the amount of sugar I can happily consume without restriction would never be considered normal or healthy. It doesn't work for everyone but for those of us with a sugar obsession it's worth a shot.
Have planned a low carb day, managed to resist cakes yesterday despite the whole family ordering goodies at the coffee shop....and stayed away from chocolate despite dh devouring a Terry's Choc orange.

Hi joeysdreamgarden thanks for those links to the Horizon program. My mum started ADMF the same time I did but she couldn't get on with eating so little every other day as she has a physically demanding job. She hasn't seen the Horizon program yet so she didn't realise 5:2 was an option until I mentioned it to her today. I'll send her the links, hopefully it'll help her to see the program too.

I wish you success with your weight loss. I put my weight on due to illness too. I've really found this WOE fits in to my life so much better than daily calorie counting. You've probably already read posts saying this on the site, but if you find the fasting days hard to start with, try to keep going with it for a couple of weeks. For some reason the fast days get much easier after then.

Hi Joey, I am sure you have come to the right place here and will be amazed at the results you get.
Don't beat yourself up about past dieting and unhealthy eating. Have a look at the Getting Stronger website and the link on the right hand side to Obesity starts in the Brain for a really helpful insight into what may have gone wrong for you in the past. I was Obese too, am now "only" Overweight and believe some form of intermittent Fasting will be an easy solution for you. Good luck

I know on a non fasting day you can eat what you like but not binge but roughly how many calories? Because I am used to calorie counting I could do with an idea of how much - I would usually stick to 1300 ish but obviously not with the fasting so do I eat, say, 1600? Is the whole slowing down metabolism if you eat too little (overall) true?
TIA