IF, 4:3, 5:2 - Maintaining a healthy weight - Chapter 2

[Breadandwine]

This thread is for those who have been practicing IF (Intermittent Fasting) for quite a while and are now at or nearing their target healthy weight. It's also for anyone who is doing it for the health benefits alone.

How do we experience fasts and balance a stable food intake while having little or no weight to lose?

How do we ensure that this WOL keeps us at the healthy weight long term rather than revert to yoyo games?

Several of us have been stable at our goal weight for a few months, now, and others are joining all the time. Obviously, the more the merrier!

Here is the current main thread for posters practicing IF to lose weight.

There are two other associated threads:
This one, which is an absolute goldmine of Tips and Links on how to practice IF, and the research behind it.

And here is a treasure trove of 5:2 recipes, mostly low calorie for fasting days, but there are also recipes for when you want to treat yourself. And, now we're maintaining, we'll need more of these!

Some great stuff on here today - welcome, posy you're in the right place!

Sorry I forgot to acknowledge your re-entry, Piebald! Nice to see you!

I realise that I need to eat just a little more to maintain a weight of about 54 kilos, BMI of 18, however, as a coeliac, pasta and bread are not options, and I don't eat a lot of carbs anyway.
Not the biggest problem in the world, I realise, but is anyone else dealing with this? Tip or BreadandWine?

Nett - if I was going to be flippant, I'd say the answer to your problem is chips! But seriously, I found it easy to keep going and continue losing weight, so it is a concern.

Apart from the obvious - nuts, seeds, don't spare the olive oil, etc - have a look at socca - a gluten free wrap, faina/farinata, which can be made into chips, or chunks - all made with gram, or chickpea flour.

Here's a link to the socca recipe on my blog - with further links to the faina recipe.

And here's some info on gluten free generally.

If you look around my blog I've got recipes for gluten free chocolate cake, parkin, pancakes, all sorts.

Cheers, B&W

Breadandwine many thanks for your response, the socca recipe looks great, I'll give it a go, and yes, whenever I come across gluten free chips I always indulge!!

Im so relieved to see im not the only one who has had a break and not the only one who has found it difficult to pick it back up again. Its weird because i found it so easy before and i didn't struggle with 4.3 but now just trying to get started on 5.2 seems so difficult. Yesterday i was motivated but told nobody at work , i ate nothing all morning and felt secretly happy that was at last going to fast again. However it was a really nice day outside and the rest of the department were having a bad day inside , so much so someone just went out and bought everyone a Mc flurry ice cream. It was delicious and i enjoyed it but maybe today i can do better. Im doing a slightly longer than normal gym session this morning and that is probably not a good idea as if i exercise at the start of a fast day it does make me hungry whereas if i fast the morning after i feel great. Thanks for allowing me to pop my head up again after so long. I wonder if its been hard because i no longer felt a part of something ? maybe it was you guys all along that made it so easy .........

nettnett Sorry for a silly question, but aren't all chips gluten free? Surely they are just fried potatoes. We don't eat them often here, but I did get the fryer out last night and we had chips and burgers which were delicious. We don't have any takeaways anywhere near here, so we have to make them for ourselves.

I'm having a few days off, so I'm only doing 6:1 this week. it will be interesting to see what that does to my weight, though I am below my target so I can have a small bounce. I might do some more wardrobe sorting this afternoon. I got a top of e-bay yesterday, size 12 and it is too big I'm into size 10 trousers, but with my boobs I thought that would never be possible in tops. I really don't want to lose any more weight. I have some nice dresses and skirts that fit me, my BMI is 23.5 which I think is right as I am big boned (my fingers don't even come close to touching round my wrist). Can anyone remember which site it was that gave ideal weight in reference to build? I'm sure it was posted in one of the very early threads.

First first day since reaching goal for me (well, it was only two days ago!) I last fasted on Saturday and as today is one of my normal fast days I wanted to stick with it. I feel like I need a fast, how weird is that?

I've been doing some wardrobe sorting too french - it's a good feeling but I am also aware how much money I have wasted buying stuff that doesn't fit me any more! Hopefully my cast-offs will be someone else's bargain and enjoyed for years to come.

postmanpat I'm still fasting twice a week, even though I've reached goal weight - it's such a habit now and I enjoy my two days so much that I can't bring myself to drop down to 6:1. I'm still losing though so if I start losing too much I will continue doing 5:2 (which includes a zero calorie 36 hour fast) but not limit myself to 500 cals in the evening.

I did some wardrobe sorting too and to be honest it was a bit depressing because so many of my really lovely clothes (including several designer pieces) are simply too baggy. Yes, I can try and get them altered, but in the meantime I don't have that many nice clothes to wear now. I am not a natural shopper (hate shopping in fact) even though I love nice clothes. It's always my DH who drags me out and he is on a mission to drag me out again soon. Such an strange and nonsensical thing to get depressed about isn't it?!?!

hi nettnett please don't apologise, this is the place to talk about all kinds of maintaining around fasting, and not for me to hijack with my personal stuff, just this lovely crowd of peeps have been so supportive, and I can't help but share, the ups and the downs! hopefully soon to be lots more ups!

anyway as to gluten free and higher calorie, i made a hugh fearnely whittingstall chilli cheese cornbread recipe at the weekend, it was delicious and super easy, you can see it here: chilli cheese cornbread

and I also made a lovely cranberry nutty/oaty/seedy muesli bar with just a heated up can of condensed milk and then mix in the dry ingredients, whatever you have in your cupboard and then bake for a bit, I think I did it for an hour on a medium temp. Kids and adults loved both.

but as an update, yesterdays fast was very successful, and stuck exactly to 500cals, this morning i had dropped the gained 4 pounds on the scales from the previous day, and today I am fasting again, I am planning 3 straight days fasting, and so far so good, still splitting the cals into lunch and supper, but with a 16 hour window of no food.

all this talk of frame size made me check and as suspected but never acknowledged i am a small frame size (wrist and elbow measurements confirmed) which means I should be 120-133 pounds eeekkkkkk! 9.5 stone! never ever ever been that size, apart from as a child, but maybe it's about time I actually set a target to aim for and stop telling myself it's ok to be a size 12 (as we all know todays size 12 is the 1960's size 16! i'm going to keep eating salads and start running again this Friday, so we shall see what happens. I'd love to get to middle of healthy bmi by mid august, that'll be a year of this WOE.

I can sympathize mumof your weight gain after weekends ...well done for shifting it with one days fast..way to go... I too suffer from the same problem as you well I am assuming its the same in that at the weekend I pile on anywhere between 4 - 6 pounds and whilst I know I have been naughty I need to control the over eating when the weekend hits, but find it really difficult when the wine nibbles hit then I am furious with myself for giving in. Whats your down fall and see if we can help encourage each other to stay on the not too naughty path?. I only really do 5:2 but have put on a tremendous amount after the long weekend that I am doing a 3 day fast back to back also. I do find fasting quite easy but when I break the seal....the problems begin..I really need help and advice if any one can help with this one please.

As a coeliac sufferer I loved your links..thankyou and will try out at the weekend.

Good luck to all fasting today

I just accept that weekends (which for me start Friday morning ) will always be indulgent days where I always go well over my TDEE. Therefore I never weigh after a weekend and I use the week to fast and eat under my TDEE. Come Friday mornng it's weigh in day and bam here's the wonderful indulgent weekend again! No guilt, no weigh-day blues, just acceptance that this is how it works for me.

Thankyou BsshBossh I know its something I have to accept but boy am I finding that bit difficult..even though I cant really understand why as its all part of this woe..fluctuating weight in the week. So do you Bssh have 3 days of normalish eating then 4 days Mon-Thurs evening either fasting or eating under your TDEE. I think I also need to get shifting and do some exercise too...full of excuses me..but he good weather is coming and all I need is a kick up teh backside Thanks for your help Bssh.

frenchfancy chips cannot be guaranteed as gluten free as they may have been in a fryer/oil with battered or breadcrumbed products. It's not the product itself, it's the cross contamination (I'm a coeliac as is my DM and most probably DD1).
bshh your fasting habits sound a little like mine, it's all for the sake of a jolly weekend

I had a v indulgent Monday when I normally fast, and can't really do any other day, so I'm having to try and have a few 16:8 low cal days to make up for the weekend .

This is how it's been working for me:

Monday - 45 mins weights at gym, eat under TDEE
Tuesday - 45 mins cardio at gym, fast then eat 500 cal dinner
Wednesday - 45 mins cardio, eat under TDEE
Thursday - 45 mins cardio, zero calorie fast (no food at all)
Friday - 45 mins weights, eat above TDEE
Saturday - no exercise, eat above TDEE
Sunday - no exercise, eat above TDEE

This regime has tended to result in average 1lb loss a week.

Obviously now in maintenance so will need to review again if I keep losing too much weight. But the indulgent eating Friday-Sunday will not change cause that's when we socialise, go out, etc, and it all revolves around food.

frenchfancy This is the site I've used to estimate weight for frame/height: www.divine.ca/en/ideal-weight-calculator/c_317/

Obviously on weeks when I can't exercise as much I eat at the appropriate lower TDEE (not that I calorie count nowadays, just go by instinct). But the weekly pattern will be the same.

Thanks for that link FastFeeder. I'm large framed according to that (confirmed long ago by my GP) and am at the bottom end of my ideal weight bracket. Hurrah! Although I will still go by how I feel/look at the end of the day.

Make home made chips ....
fun, messy, you know what's in them.

Had planned to fast today but lunchtime my tummy was so loud the client was giving me funny looks so I picked up the small faflel and hummus wrap at SAinsburys - 500 effing calories!
Ah well, soup for supper and then I'll be at 800 for the day.
Time to go for a swim to work some of it off.

Thanks fastfeeder Though according to that site my starting weight of 80kg was the top end of ideal and I am now seriously underweight (66 kg vs bottom ideal of 74kg).

I found another site www.superskinnyme.com/ideal_weight_calculator.html which puts me as ideal with 6lb to go before being underweight. Hard to think of myself as anything like underweight

3 bags of clothes sorted from the wardrobe. I'm not keeping anything that is too big, except for a couple of tops for painting in.

frenchfancy
I like this page
www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html
because it shows that people of similar heights but different builds and ages look like at the same weight.

My BMI is 20.8, I look like a lardy at BMI of 23 and would like to be at 20 by the end of term. But as I sit here I can grab several inches rather than pinch an inch!

Thankyou Bssh that really does help and has really made me reconsider how I am organising my fasts and weigh in day in particular. I do need to fit in some exercise as I feel maintaining will be much much easier. Thanks again

My pleasure shiney. I have to admit that the exercise isn't strictly necessary. I lost loads of weight last year doing zero exercise. But doing exercise means a) I can eat more (well, my TDEE goes up), b) I feel terrific with loads more energy c.f. last year and c) I'm building muscle which helps with bone density (I'm over 40 now) and resting metabolism.

I think all of these weight calculators need to be taken with a pinch of salt because people's sizes and shapes vary so much. According to the BMI charts I was always classified as underweight as a young woman, even though I ate like a horse.

By the time I got to my 40s that had all changed and although I was still well within the normal range for my height (BMI 22.5) and people probably wouldn't have thought I was overweight I was feeling uncomfortably wide around the middle and generally not very healthy. Thanks to 5:2 I'm back to being borderline underweight (BMI 18.8) and feel like I've got my old body and energy levels back. I'm back to being 'bien dans ma peau' and it feels fantastic!

Thats another thing Bssh I know I need to build up my bone density as I have osteopenia (caused by coeliac disease probably) so I need the pounding exercises. I also need to have more energy as with 4 kids life is busy and more energy would be very welcome. Increasing my TDEE would be fantastic too...also over 40. Right its glaringly obvious. Need to work out what to start with....thanks again Bssh, had a bit of a wake up call, so cheers for taking the time to help

BodyPump is your friend for that one! and wonderfully addictive

And shiney if you can't get to the gym, I've heard good things about The Shred (YouTube or DVD). I do free weights at the gym so haven't tried Shred or BodyPump but people rave about both.

My quick tuppence while we're on the subject - work out what kind of exercise you enjoy first. I've always hated the gym, running and those aerobic class things but love swimming, which I haven't done much of since a teenager, cycling, rediscovered when I started commuting by bike, and yoga, which I started getting into during pregnancy.

When I started this WOE last September I made a concerted effort to do those 3 things regularly so alongside currently training for a 545mile bike ride in 3 weeks I now actually crave yoga and swimming each week! Never thought that would happen and I know I stick with them because I enjoyed them in the first place.

Oh and inow Shred 3-4x a week too because it's quick and you see results very quickly!