The 5:2 thread number 25- One year on from Dr Mosley's Horizon ep!

[GreenEggsAndNichts]

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 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 through our very own 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.

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

MissS Bread is a funny one - best to avoid if it makes you feel bad. I have periods where I avoid it completely but these days, with the fasting, I find my body can cope with it better. You might find it ok after a few months on this WOE!

I have been known to suggest my kids should go and play with the traffic...

Are yours quite young? It does get easier, mostly

brambles I have a nice way of making lower calorie roast potatoes. peel and cut as usual. put in a roasting tin with 300-500ml stock (depends how big your roasting tin is) and pastry brush on a TSP of oil (or for lower a few squirts of spray oil). cook for 15mins and repeat with oil brushing/spraying, then cook for however long they need depending on size. they taste really good and obviously aren't laden with fat.

misss since starting 52 I've switched to Danish bread. lower calories and far lighter. I find normal bread so heavy now. also, please email sure you have a nice day of feeding today if you've done two fasts in a row.

Well yesterday's fast turned into an unprecedented disaster! Lasted all day and had 500 cals of nice dinner. Then had bath. All well and good. Until the evening munchies kicked in...... crisps, mini cheddars and two, yes two mini magnums! AARGH!
In my defence its TOTM tomorrow which usually does result in one completely mad binge day so I'm putting it down to that.
Tomorrow will be a proper, decent fast. Honest

Ooh, and welcome back itsaboat sounds like a lovely holiday and am very impressed iwth your running whilst away!
We're hoping to go camping next week so my only exercise will be endless trips back and forth to the washing up area of the campsite grin

MissS it's good to see you still have your sense of humour - that's what will carry you through!

I forgot BreadandWine was a man

That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me on these threads!

(I enjoyed the snog, BTW! )

That quote about the kitchen being off-limits isn't mine, BTW, I found it on a blog some time ago. The actual quote is:

"The kitchen is now CLOSED!"

To be announced in a loud voice, after the evening meal.

Morning all, hope everyone is well. Haven't been here for a bit. I decided to do no snacking and16:8 and have lost about 4 pounds.

Have learnt that what you eat the night before a fast makes it easier/harder for the fast day.

So who's fasting with me today? Southeast?
Prawn stirfry for me tonight. Yum yum

Thanks Dotty. Those evening munchies are a killer, that's what kept doing me in last week when I had a couple of failed fasts.

FD today. Just followed a shred with egg salad - so tasty. Another example of my body's retuned desire for food. I had boiled two eggs BUT when I had peeled the first I thought to myself, "that looks like enough, I'll pop the second egg in the fridge for tomorrow." Just about to have a fruit salad and then on with my very boring afternoon of planning lessons

May I propose a new acronym LSV: LifeStyle Victory for those moments when you notice changes to your attitude to food or yourself? When you make the healthy choice automatically without wrestling with yourself, or if you wrestle your foodmonster and win. I realise these all may be covered implicitly by NSV but I have been thinking of that more as sizes and measurements rather than changes to your lifestyle. I don't know about everyone else, obviously.

Particularly useful for pre-goal maintainers who, though not currently losing weight or size, are still improving their health and adapting to a new WOE.

BetsyBell - they are 8, 10 and 12 and it is the oldest who is driving me mad. I am in agony having twisted my back this morning but I am close to breakdown with him. Have no help and just feel like crying tbh as I just can't cope any more.

and for BreadandWine. Your comment about enjoying the snog is literally the first and only thing to make me smile today.

Thanks Eagle rider. Will try that.
Also back to lesson planning. Sigh

Morning folks. Unremarkable FD here. Quiet day at work and for lunch had an usually unhealthy one - a custard cream, bag of popcorn, and a coffee - all 220 cals. Couldn't be arsed to walk to M&S for a salad. Skipping the gym after five visits in a row and burying myself in the library after work then home for a feta cheese and sweetcorn salad. May roast some butternut squash to add with it if I've the cals left.

MissUnicorn I wondered what happened to you. Well done on your four pounds loss. Question - what sauce do you add to your stirfrys, if any? I struggle to find a low cal one or come up with my own.

Hello all, belatedly marking my place.

Down to a sliver below 11 and a half stone from 12.3. Another symbolic line crossed. Fast days also getting easier. By the end of three days of eating normally I want to fast.

Last fast day I didn't do my boring supermarket soup and ready meal - made a stir fry with tonnes of fresh veg, chicken, brown rice (feeeel the b-vits and folic acid!) and felt so much better for it.

So funny, the lesson I'm planning is on dietary deficiency and I had just completed researching folic acid when I brought myself on here for a skive!

So booooooored...

And I have the FD shivers even wearing two layers of everything.

3 hours til tea.

Right, just finished watching The Men Who Made Us Thin and found it rather irritating. I agree with you EagleRiderDirk, the program seemed to come from the perspective that diets don't work because people don't keep the weight off. Your man there's criteria for whether a diet worked or not was whether most people kept the weight off in the long term.

Am I crazy to believe that if you want to lose weight and keep it off you first have to adopt a weight loss plan, whether that be a diet or some other strategy, and then when you reach your goal weight you have to adopt a permanent healthy eating approach so that you keep the weight off? A diet gets you to goal, it's up to you to maintain that loss, surely? The sensible diets (and other ways of eating like this one) will hopefully have taught you a few things which will help you develop and adopt a maintenance plan.

Of course it is not easy to lose weight, of course it is not easy to keep the weight off, of course there are other factors in our busy stressful lives that cause us to go off track, but does that necessarily mean that all diets don't work, or does it mean that we have to try to find ways to overcome the other difficulties if we're to achieve a healthy happy body?

While I'm not a defender of the diet industry (I've always preferred to go it alone instead of paying for a plan I could work out myself for a fraction of the cost), I can't see how we can say that "diets fail" if we do lose weight on them, just because we go on to put the weight back on again if we go back to eating the way that made us fat in the first place!

Perhaps he is right after all and I am the thicky. I've been giving it some thought and I've come to the following conclusions:

Exercise doesn't work: 5 years ago I went to the gym regularly for three months, got fit and shapely, stopped going and yet now I'm just as unfit as I ever was.

Cleaning doesn?t work: I mopped the floor in February and yet there are tumbleweed style balls of cat fur in the corners now.

Bathing doesn't work: I had a shower last month and yet now I'm stinky.

Been thinking about variations on the theme of "The kitchen is now CLOSED!"

No reason why that can't be applied after any meal - and you could perhaps blu-tak a large sign saying that on the kitchen door.

(Not so easy when there are kids around, I realise! )

the lesson I'm planning is on dietary deficiency

Hellsbellsandbucketsofblood (perhaps my dad's favourite saying!)

I always count my lucky stars that I teach breadmaking - perhaps the direct opposite of dietary deficiency!

About feeling cold - be warmed by the thought that it's a sign that your body is benefitting from the FD.

(Hope that's not cold comfort! )

Hi Ezzza

Hope you're well!

The big difference between IF and the 5:2 WOL and other diets is that fasting takes account of the way we've developed over millenia.

It is a fact of life that we humans are programmed to eat when there is food around. In times gone by that would have been balanced by periods of scarcity of food. Now, when we have cupboards and fridges full of the stuff, all the time, it's no wonder we get fat.

So of course you're right when you say,

when you reach your goal weight you have to adopt a permanent healthy eating approach so that you keep the weight off

• but if you don't take account of our famine and feast history (which IF does), keeping the weight off is that much harder.

Hahaha ezzza - I was thinking just the same thing about gyms. All that money I spent and they never kept me fit in the long run once I stopped going.

Hi BreadandWine,

if you don't take account of our famine and feast history (which IF does), keeping the weight off is that much harder

Too true, I've been having trouble making downward progress on the scales since I came back to Britain, much easier in China due to the differing food cultures.

My little rant there was not about the facts presented in the program. It is true that most people who go on a diet either don't reach goal or having reached goal go back to their old ways and put the weight back on again. I was one of them and it was so hard to get out of that cycle in this modern western world. I didn't like the program partly because of the conclusion drawn from that fact: diets don't work, when people put the weight back on it's not the fault of the people at all it's all the fault of the diet. I worry that conclusion could lead many to feel that they can't do anything about their weight so they may as well not bother trying.

Lesson planned and resources created :)

Now time for mexican chicken for me and (if he deigns to descend from the pit of gloom that is his bedroom) chicken and pepper wraps for ds.

Tomorrow's lesson-planning session is on obesity and anorexia. Possibly.

I loved the last bit of your post NurseE reminded me of a joke a friend and me shared. Saying I was going to return a fitness DVD cause it didn't work, what do I mean it didn't work - well do I look skinny? What do you mean did I follow it, I bought the bloody thing didn't I, is that not enough?!?!?
I hope that makes sense, we thought we were hilarious!

MissS Oh, raging 12 year old preteen hormones then... I'm not looking forward to that. Can he be sent off to go and play at friend's houses? Sorry, probably not helpful.

Swimming on a FD is a silly thing. I won't do that again.
Just had my meal and still feel a bit hungry. I'll have some tea in a bit.

Southeast, I just use Soy sauce, however I stirfry in Coconut oil so it has a hint of flavour. Not coconut, just a nice flavour.

Hello from Lanzarote!!

wifi here is a bit cr*p but it is free. I've done my first gym visit, no aircon, thought we were going to pass out! Still managed an hour of cardio though. One of the staff told us our first two days have been hotter than normal, but we are used to Dubai in August so it doesn't feel too bad!

I'm making many sensible choices from the buffet but the veggie options are limited so I usually head for the salad bar.

Well done on your fasts and NSVs everybody. Hello to couchpotato from another veggie teacher!