The 5:2 Thread Number 23: Summer's really here - time to melt off those extra pounds!

[BetsyBell]

The continuing thread for those of us following either the 5:2 diet or the alternate-day fasting diet.

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, or approximately your TDEE (see explanation below). 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 for a woman, 600 for a man, on those days.

You'll find on these threads we use a number of acronyms. If you're new to the threads, or Mumsnet in general, they might not make much sense.

WOE/WOL = Way Of Eating/Way Of Life. We use this term instead of "diet" as many of us see this as something to do in the long term.

MFP = My Fitness Pal, a website many use for keeping track of the number of calories they're eating.

TDEE = Total Daily Energy Expenditure, 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.

ADF = Alternate-day Fasting, as it says on the tin, fasting every other day rather than 5:2.

NFD = Non fast day

NSV = Non scale victory

Michael Mosley has a website to accompany his new book on the subject. Please go check them out, as he's the whole reason most of us are here!

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- 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:

All our previous threads can be found by browsing back through the fasting section of the site.

Another thread which breadandwine has started is a good resource for some of the tips and links 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. This might be a good place to catch up with us if you're feeling a bit lost!

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

If you've been at this a while and are moving on to maintaining your goal weight, there is a thread here to discuss that.

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

There's a link to the aforementioned Horizon programme here.

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 by Dr Mosley himself, very informative if you're just starting. (I highly recommend this for an 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%).")

Something to consider 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.

A BIG THANK YOU to all who have been contributing. 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.

A HUGE THANK YOU to Greeneggsandnicht for putting together all this info and resources into one concise OP text, much appreciated by so many 5:2ers!

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

angelabbie Wow! In only 5 weeks - what a result!

Eagle HairyP - The website is far more pleasant than the actual shop! I do have to scour through their cheap trainers every few weeks for DS1 who wears them out in record time though. When the soles are full of holes even a quick delivery time is too long! It's hell though.

NFD here, I've yet to eat but the coffee is brewing and there's some strawberries and melon with my name on, maybe a peach too if they're ripe, I'll have them with a bit of yogurt and a muesli sprinkle.

My over-indulgent weekend (booze and snack fest with friends on Friday, huge family meal on Sunday) means that one fast day wasn't quite enough to undo all the damage but I'm still firmly in the 9s . And I was having a good look at myself in the mirror this morning in my undies and I was happy with what I saw (in an admittedly quite dark room!) :)

Thanks BETSYBELL I was shocked when I took the second pic yesterday and compared, I had no idea I looked so different. Will do another one in a few weeks time.

Off to check out the website now!!

Eagle you are so right. The shop is like going to Hell in a handcart!

Angel I can see it now. Wow! That's impressive after 5 weeks. Hope I can do the same. Good idea to take a photo to compare.

Great idea to take photos angelabbie, I'm regretting avoiding cameras like the plague now!

thanks hairy try and take a pic its worth it.

My hubby is a photographer, I am not allowed to be camera shy!

Has anyone been doing 5:2 for a while and lost really well initially (2 lb per week) but then sort of got stuck at the same weight? (10lb loss.) I've not been doing 16:8 on the NFDs so maybe that would help. Admittedly i have sometimes skipped a fast day, but even when i have done it both days i have made no progress. Is it just that i am eating too much on the NFDs? On the Fds i eat a menu based on what is in the book, so i dont think that is the problem.

morning all NFD and I have broken my plan to do 16:8 as I went to bed with sore throat and woke up feeling definitely off colour, so decided breakfast was needed, but I weighed in first after yesterdays first fast of the week and was 10 12, which is 2 pounds less than last week and 4 pounds less than the week before, and back to my old maintaining weight, although now the new plan is to lose more, so will stick here on the main board for all the encouragement for a while yet.

so 6 pounds in 3 weeks of strict 5:2, with relatively careful eating (within tdee) on other days, feels pretty damn good!

enjoy your days, i think a lot of tuesday fasters out there?

Second fast day today. so hot I don't feel like eating much anyway.
No breakfast, lots of water. Lunch a couple of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon - we have our own hens so the eggs are delicious.
Dinner roast vegetable salad. Couple of tangerines.
Decided not to weigh myself until Friday, which will be after three fast days.
Good luck to all others fasting today, we can do it!

Lilac, I posted on another thread yesterday saying exactly the same thing. I've lost 8lbs in 7 weeks but about 6lbs of that was in my first 2 weeks and very little since. I think I eat too much on my NFDs, I used an app to add my daily calories last week and on average was eating 2000/day so no wonder I don't lose weight. I have to get down to a 1500 average per day which means 500 on 2 fast days then 2200 on the other days. Then I'll lose 1lb per week. It is soul destroying especially when the diet says you can eat what you like on the NFDs. I think in reality you have to monitor what you eat on the NFDs especially if you're used to over -eating which most of us are, otherwise we wouldn't be overweight in the first place.
My Dad has been very successful on the 5:2 diet and swears by drinking loads of water. He didnt do anything complicated on his NFDs and I like the simplicity of the 5:2 regime so don't want to get into complicated stuff on my NFDs.
Maybe download MyFitnessPal and monitor your calories over the week and see how much over your TDEE it is?

lilac I am an old timer, I started last august after teh programme aired, I lost 12 pounds in 12 weeks in the beginning...started at 2 pounds a week, then slowed to 1 or none, and then it just bobbed up and down, but I took 3 weeks off at christmas and gained back and had to lose again, then another 2 weeks off fasting at easter, same thing happened, but also the 12 pounds loss was enough to put me in normal bmi (which is where I thought I was happy) so I moved to maintainers and kept teh 12 pounds off for quite a while, but then recently started struggling with finishinga fast day, sabotaging and then suddenly i had gained 6 pounds back, so sent myself back over here, have now lost the 6 pounds gained (in 5 fasts) and am reducing my target. I do think that once I got in the swing of things with fasting and lost the initial weight I got very complacent on NFD's and in all honesty was probably regularly going well over my tdee, too much alcohol and snacking.

you could try adding a 3rd day fast to tip the balance, or do 16:8 therefore skipping breakfasts or just spend a couple of weeks trackig what you are using up calorie wise on NFD's? it's good to know why, although plateau's are just a fact of life I think. don't worry, you'll work it out and find a way through it!

Some nice photos here of post-pregnancy bodies - made me feel better! www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23276432

lilac I've been doing this 6 months and the weight loss stalled for a good 6 - 8 weeks between May and July, I ploughed on regardless and then the weight started dropping off again.

I find you need to eat less most days (just below your tdee on nfds) but bump up a bit (go over your tdee a bit) 1 or 2 days a week (ie the weekend).

Plateaus are also known as maintenance of course! Not much help if you still want to lose weight but I find it comforting knowing I've got a strategy for not putting weight back on. Which I do, very easily.

Thanks mumof and Goofy I haven't been counting my cals on NFDs and i'm pretty sure i eat too much. Initially this didn't matter, but i guess your body learns to adapt. Do you need an iphone for MyFitnessPal? I may try doing 16:8 on the NFDs.

Betsy Thanks, I agree that it is better than putting weight on, which i would probably be doing if not doing 5:2. What is tdee?

Ahh- just looked up and seen what tdee is!

Betsy you do realise you just made me buy another new bikini for my holidays

Glad I've got some fellow fasters today, hope you all have a good day

God my office is a sauna today, I could lose weight today just by sitting here and doing nothing, I may have to take regular trips down to the cellar to cool off.

Just seen MFP is a website as well as an app, so i should be able to use it

Hello everybody! Anyone miss me?

For those of you who don't know me this is a little about me:

Started fasting 4 September 2012, the day after my plane landed in China. I heard about this WoE a couple of weeks before flying out from a friend who saw the horizon documentary. I was highly suspicious but did a bit of research and satisfied myself it wasn't dangerous. Due to a stressful couple of years my weight had crept up to 12st6.4lb, which at 5'3.5" pushed me just into the obese category. I knew I loved the food in China and didn't want not to fit into the plane seat on the way home. I didn't believe I'd lose weight on this WoE but thought it'd at least stop me gaining any more, but after 4 weeks I noticed my clothes were much looser.

I started out on ADF but switched to 4:3 after a few months so that I could have regular fast days: less confusing for my friends and better for my social life. I hadn't heard of 5:2 when I started, only ADF, as I hadn't seen the documentary, but I've decided to stick to 4:3 because I like the freedom to just eat whatever I want on my non-fast days without worrying about destroying my calorie deficit for the week.

So far I've lost 27lbs. It would have been more, but I moved house three weeks ago and the stress of the move made it too hard for me to fast for four weeks and I gained 8lbs through stress eating during that time. Boo! But I'm back to fasting again and really pleased to find my body has remembered the drill and my first 4 fasts back have been really easy, and I've lost 4.5lbs of that house move weight already!

I found MN in January when I hit a plateau and I was trying to find other fasters to see if they'd managed to push through a plateau on this WoE or if that was going to be the end of my weight loss (I pushed through and kept losing when the plateau broke). I was a regular contributor on threads 8 to 16 but by thread 16 I was back in the UK so I haven't been around for a while due to looking for work, getting used to my new job and moving house. Hopefully I'll be able to pop in again to these threads, if not as prolifically as when I was in China. Lovely to see so many new names on here and some familiar ones too still going!

Ezzza.

woo hoo ezza good to see you back, and brilliant to hear of your ongoing losses, you've overtaken me, brilliant, I worry a bit that those who disappear give up, so really good to hear that you've continued and doing so well. check out the maintainers thread too, where some of the other old timers are maintainers

Ezzza! I've missed you and think about you often! Are you all sorted jobwise and housewise now?

Hi mocnk, yup, monitoring the maintainer's thread but would feel a bit of a fraud to join in yet as I still have 18lbs left to lose. Been keeping up the fasting even when not posting on MN though (the 4 weeks of house move excepted).

If anyone is interested I've just updated my profile to put a graph showing my weight loss progress since i started on 4 September last year.

Hi BVB, yup, finally have a job now so that's a relief and one less reason to pester Messrs Green and Black. We're in the new house now and have given back the keys to the old place but we don't have a fully installed kitchen yet. We're managing with a microwave, a steamer and a George Foreman grill!

lilac I have a blackberry and use calorie counter by fatsecret, but yes you can use mfp online too.

nurseEzza YES you have been missed!!! I hate it when people just disappear, you wonder if they're ok, even though we don't even know each other.

angel, I actually said out loud to nobody, (except the dog) "good lord what a difference!". In just 5 weeks, have you been shredding?

Notastired, glad you're feeling perkier. Yes forget TOTM week. Did you manage ok with your ds yesterday? He sounds cute and was probably thrilled to have mummy around for a bonus day. My name is inspired by the peplum of flab round my middle which measured 41 inches when I started, it now measures 38. Nice.

mttum aww, poor you. Hope you can get to a dentist soon.

angelabbie that is an amazing change in just 5 weeks. You must be so pleased. I wish I'd taken a proper photo of myself when I was 210lbs as the change in my body shape is so dramatic (currently 143lbs).

BetsyBell yey for still being in the 9s and liking how you look in underwear - the latter is always my litmus test.

LilacPeony I would log a week or two of NFDs entirely and thoroughly in MyFitnessPal to get a trueish picture of how much you are eating. At the end of the day weightloss is all about calories in vs calories out. Also double check your TDEE - is it accurateish or have you over-estimated your activity level?

By the way, I think I hold the world record (if the world = this thread!) for stall duration. 4 months! But I kept on doing what I should be doing and after 4 months I dropped 2lbs. Since then, I've been losing consistently, give or take a few weeks or so of stalling (which I now don't worry about as 3 weeks is nothing compared to 4 months!).

mumofcrazynamedkids hurrah for the weightloss!

NurseEzzzaChapel welcome back!

It's a 16:8/no snacking NFD for me today. Gotta be cautious about my NFDs this week because I definitely overdid the sugar over the weekend. I love intermittent fasting so much - so many different ways of doing it to suit, yet the basic principle no food for minimum 16 hours remains the same. (Although I keep reading different minimum fasting duration recommendations).

Phew! Have finally caught up with thread and after both phone and laptop dying on me (taken 1/2 an hour to get back to writing this having lost 1 post already with stoopid updates installing etc etc)...

So, having slipped a couple of weeks ago, had a 1000 cal day and one fd last week (was supposed to be two 1000 cal days and a fd but hey ho!) and am fasting again today. Am at home which will be interesting ( bah to DH for buying snickers multipack and leaving them in plain sight in the fridge!). Also will have to do 2nd fd at home tomorrow as well as I have 2 work pub lunches planned for thurs and fri and I know I don't have the willpower to resist the delicious chicken satay wrap and chips they do in our local

betsy thanks for the post-preggers pictures link - that's basically my tummy in the close-up shot (although mine's a bit rounder and more muffin-toppy). It's an interesting thought to get more pics out there, I guess few DHs or DPs have much idea about that side of pregnancy (or any side for that matter - if they're like mine)

Nice to see lots of new names, stick with it, it does work. I've lost an average of 1.3 lbs a week (10 lbs now with both ups and downs) so am happy with that, especially as I've still managed to loose over the last 2 weeks despite going off-piste. Good luck today fellow fasters, have written enough for now! :)