I want to start 5:2 but I am scared of the fasting day <idiot>

[SpotsDotsandFlowers]

I've been overweight my entire adult life to varying degrees. My weight has crept up and up over the last few years and I'm now the heaviest I've ever been (including post dc )

I've done weight watchers successfully in the past but trying it again has failed. I've tried just calorie counting and lost 10lbs or so and then reverted back to overeating.

So 5:2 sounds like something I could sustain as it is short bursts of what my screwed up food brain thinks of as 'deprivation'.

However, the thought of the fasting day is quite frightening! I know a lot of this will be down to my excessive food consumption but being hungry leaves me shaky, sweaty and extremely grumpy. Will it be like that every fast day?
Also, I don't eat fish/seafood, pulses or beans and lots of the recipes seem to be based around those. I do love veg though. Can anyone reassure me?

You won't know till you try it.

There's no set recipes or forbidden foods, you dont HAVE to eat fish. Pick whatever you like to get up to 500 calories. If you want to graze on vegetables all day to get into the way of fasting, then that's fine.

Give it one day.

It gets easier, the more you do, but it can be tough at first.

If you are someone who gets very hungry I would suggest you try and get a couple of eggs in to your 500 calories allowance as they are high protein and will sustain you for a long time.

Try high protein and vegetables but no carbs ... carbs don't really have a place in a 500 calorie day. Lean chicken, lean ham, lean cold roast beef, yogurt all provide protein but not too many calories.

When I am hungry I find a large bowl of soup (check cals obviously) or a tasty home made vegetable curry satisfy me an awful lot more than a salad.

Don't be scared. Ease you way into it if you like, there is no reason you couldn't do a couple of weeks with your fast days at 800 rather than 500 just to get used to it.

Another way to ease your self in is to lengthen the time you go without food, so at first you might want to eat 3 small meals, then gradually push your breakfast out towards lunch etc.

I am a grazer and was scared of having to go without food when I started. I eased myself into it by preparing a 100cal 'graze box' with celery, cucumber, radishes and a snack pot low of fat hummus. I grazed on this during the day and still had 400cal for my dinner. On my third fast day I only ate about half of it and on my fifth it was left untouched.

Just take things slow and experiment. You don't have to start with a full 24h fast. I hardly ever do one anyway.

I like the idea of a graze box. Makes it less scary. Yesterday I gave up at 21 hours as was struggling so much Reckon of I'd allowed myself a banana/tiny snack I might have made it. i did have a successful 24 hour fast two days previously though and felt brilliant the following day I had not wanted to graze at all thinking any food breaks the fast so the body doesn't get the chance to do the spring cleaning the horizon prog spoke of...what do you think?

Well I am on my second fast day which I am finding much easier than the first. However I do cheat as I split my 500 calories between breakfast and dinner which I know is a bit rubbish (but if I go without breakfast I feel really horrid).

Hopefully I can work my way up to not eating until dinner. Also I have porridge for breakfast , which I know is very carby, but it keeps me full up for quite a while. I am getting used to feeling hungry already. No weight lost yet despite exercising every day, but I'm hoping it will happen eventually.

It's very tough to plunge straight away into "no food At All for 24 hours"

I started with 3 meals plus snacks. Then after a week or 2 I dropped the snacks. Then reduced the lunch to a miso soup. And dropped breakfast.

Start whatever way you can - make the tweaks and adjustments as it gets easier.

Thanks everyone. I like the idea of the graze box too. I might start with a week of 600-700 fast (and adjust the other days to make up for the extra) just to try and get used to it.

But it isn't no food for 24 hours!

There is a long thread, read it and you will learn lots.

I have been doing it for about 3 weeks and after years of food issues I now rule food.

And I have lost 6lbs.

My way is to have a very low calorie lunch- about 150 calories- today I had 3 ryvita, half a cucumber and two tomatoes. For dinner I have a hairy dieters meal- tasty and low cal. A steady 1lb a week for the past 9 weeks. I can see a stone off in a few more weeks

Miss Strawberry I do need to do some re-reading of thread etc. I think. From watching the Horizon documentary I thought 24 hrs without food was good - gives body/cells chance to do work other than digestion. But keep seeing 16:8 a lot, which I guess means you fast 16? That I could do, esp if 8 of that am asleep Advice v welcome!!

Ps God I want to rule food!!!

It will be hard, at first. But to be honest, it sounds just what you need, to retrain your thinking around hunger and deprivation. I've found that after a while you respond to hunger differently, and don't have the urge to snack like I used to.

All my life I thought you had to eat breakfast. Can't exercise on empty stomach.
It's been a revelation.

A big bowl of Birdseye steam fresh microwave green beans with soy sauce for lunch after a morning work out then a Waitrose love life Moroccan chicken soup made the first few fasts easier than I thought: it helps to get out house and be busy. Good luck; I also think it helps if you treat it as resting your digestive system and kind of observe the hunger and wait for it to go - its just a feeling, it passes, you can eat whatever tomorrow, it's safe and ok to eat lightly and get on with other stuff for just one day.

What savoury stuff do you really enjoy eating?

Stir fried rice, cheese & crackers, Singapore noodles, decent ham sarnie with lovely real butter when hungry. Sounds like I am being totally facetious doesn't it but I am answering honestly!

Green beans with soy sounds nice. And the other dish you mentioned trucks.

Okay. So here is an egg fried rice thing....
Microwave packet of Uncle Ben rice, half packet 190 calories.
Birds eye steam fresh green beans, big double handful, about 70 calories
Soy sauce - splash.
Chilli flakes, chuck em in.
1 small egg - about 70 calories.
Three slices Waitrose wafer thin ham, shredded.
That's your main meal of stir fried rice.

For your lunchtime meal,soft boiled egg sliced up with big handful of rocket and lettuce and black pepper,so the yolk mixes in the leaves, big grind of of black pepper. Or big bowl steamed green veg with soy sauce?

Another good one: you like noodles - shred a Savoy cabbage into noodles. Put in a pan WITH A TIGHT LID with a knob of melted butter and lots of salt and pepper. Add a couple of shot glasses of stock, or wine, or just water and herbs. Stir. Cook on medium-low until tender and liquid has evaporated; add more liquid if it needs it. Tastes like buttered luscious noodles. Serve with a few slices of shredded ham, chicken, chorizo, shrimp, tinned sardines or spoonful bolognaise sauce, but its actually gorgeous just on its own.

Cheese crackers, ham sandwich: you say to yourself. By God I will enjoy eating these first thing tomorrow. You mentally savour them. You tell yourself; there at no restrictions here, no guilt, no sins, no points, no punishments. I am simply choosing to defer them for a day: just one day. Just a few waking hours. This is not a diet where you feel bad if you eat a forbidden food. You just choose to wait to eat it, waiting won't hurt you. It will still be there in the morning.

It is like being a child and waiting for your birthday present or Christmas present the night before. You can't wait to have that present. Oh how you want it. But it will be yours the next day. One more sleep. And isn't the thing you wanted all the sweeter for the wait? And didn't the wait not kill you after all? And the next day after the fast: suddenly its just a sandwich or a cracker and you can have it if you want it, right now.

And so you make it, and this time, you choose to have it with a really bloody great cup of fresh coffee, on a nice plate, and you savour it, and it is so damn different to the guilty, hurried stand up sandwich you would have had before. This time, its satisfying, perfect.

Or the other thing happens - and you are just not that hungry for it after all. You can take it or leave it.

And you astonish yourself and you suddenly realize -its just food.
And it has lost its power over you.
And you are amazed.
And that's the best thing about this 5:2 stuff.
It makes food just food again,
And that is so damn liberating.

Yum! Thanks all. From what you are saying I need to plan my fast days so that I know what I am eating and therefore am not tempted to snack on crappy stuff. I will be brave and have a go

Trucksanddinosaurs - if that happens, it will truly be a miracle!

Planning is VITAL! I never unsderstand people who say "Oh no, I've managed to go over my 500 calories" Did they not know how many calories it was BEFORE they ate it?

/endrant.

Nocomplications, you might try the zero/miracle/shiritaki noodles in a stir-fry. Some people find the texture odd, but I quite like them with a strongly flavoured sauce.

Trucks thank you so much! I will definitely try those noodles, which sound perfect. And totally not like diet food. And you've just given me a plan for entire next fast day, which will happen when we're home from hols on Tuesday. So helpful to have a peptalk. And Cheeks too - of course planning is key. Food just food - aah!!! No more standing up hurried guilty sandwiches or the like. I know it well. and clearly am not alone.
Excited!!!

Cheeks what are the zero/miracle shiritaki noodles? Sound well worth a try, esp for those times when only carbs will do.

Holland and Barrett stock them (other health food emporia are available)

If you saw last week's Dragons Den, there was someone on there with a new version of them.

They are also available (much cheaper) in Asian supermarkets - konjac noodles I think they are there.

Low cals (about 15 per packet) and no-carb.

TBH it doesn't have to be hard. I have had 30 years of food issues and they have gone just like that. I have found it so easy tbh because my head was in the right place and I was ready. Plus the posters on the 25 thread are awesome .