5:2 Thread number 51: Whoever said "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" obviously never tasted ice cream or chocolate ! 5:2 is for those who enjoy good food and don't want to diet every damn day

[BigChocFrenzy]

Welcome to the continuing thread for those following 5:2 or other forms of IF (Intermittent Fasting) such as 4:3, ADF, or daily 16:8

The 5:2 diet was introduced on BBC Horizon on August 2012:
Basically it is 2 very low cal days ("fasts") per week - which need not be consecutive - and eat "normally" the other 5 days.

For those who have dieted or maybe overeaten for years, eating "normally" means somewhere around the number of calories your body needs to maintain - NOT reduce - its weight (see TDEE calculator below).

For most folk, 5:2 results in a weekly 3,000 calorie deficit, so averages 1 lb loss. However, some folk may lose much more quickly / slowly, or in fits & starts.
Initial weight loss may be much quicker, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose.

When you are within a healthy BMI range and just want to trim a few more lb, progress may be much slower and you may need to monitor carefully that you don't average above TDEE on non-fast days.

Acronyms & Calculators:

16:8 is a different type of fasting, which can be combined with 5:2.
Daily zero-cal fast for 16 hours and eat within an 8 hour window. To lose weight normally needs a weekly calorie deficit as well

4:3 = fast on 3 non-consecutive days per week

ADF (Alternate-Day Fasting) = fast every other day

FD = Fast Day: aim for 500 calories (600 for men) or 1000 cals for BF
If you exercise, do NOT increase FD cals

MFP = My Fitness Pal, a useful website or app to track food & drink caloriesi

NFD = Non-Fast Day, averages around TDEE

NSV / LSV = Non Scale Victory / LifeStyle (change) Victory, e.g. compliment, smaller waist, new skinny jeans

TDEE = Total Daily Energy Expenditure, the average number of calories you burn in a day. TDEE is calculated from your current weight, height, age, activity level.
Aim to average about this over the week's NFDs.

To speed up your weight loss and to train yourself how to eat on maintenance,
optionally calculate the lower TDEE for goal weight,
but eat to current weight TDEE at least 1 day per week.

WOE / WOL = Way Of Eating / Way Of Life. We say this instead of "diet", to emphasise that to maintain our new healthy weight longterm requires a permanent change in how we eat.

How to Start

. Take initial measurements: weight, waist, hips
. Use TDEE calculator above as a rough guide to how much to eat on NFDs
. Choose any 2 days for FDs, non-consecutive is easier.
. Before each FD: plan, shop & calorie count ALL food & drink for the day

FAQs / Tips:

• WATER: Start each day with a pint of water; and drink plenty during the day.
• HOT DRINKS: No limits on tea or coffee, just count any milk / sugar calories on FDs.
• FDs: If possible, choose days when you are busy, but not preparing meals for others.Concentrate on protein & veg; avoid / reduce starchy carbs & sugar, including juice.

Soups & stews are good; ready meals are fine. Many prefer to skip breakfast & save most cals for supper.

• BFers: start with 1000-cal FDs; optionally, reduce to 700 cals gradually. You can return to 1000 if growth spurts or sleep-deprivation require more fuel.
• NFDs: No rules, but to improve health, try to cut down on added sugar and junk food. A few treats per week are good though!

Aim for TDEE, but you may under-eat by say 20% on 3 NFDs to save calories for weekend.

• CLENCH for health: Men & women should exercise pelvic floor daily
• SLEEP: Try to get enough sleep, or it may slow weight loss.
• EXERCISE: is healthy & can help weight loss - BUT only if you do NOT eat back exercise calories. Fasted training can burn more fat.

HIIT and resistance training both work well with 5:2/IF. If you exercise, do NOT increase FD cals

• Do NOT fast: if pregnant, under 21, over-stressed, have past or present EDs, fever, stomach bug, even a bad cold.

When ill, your body usually needs more nutrients and less stress. So don't force yourself to eat, but if hungry then eat nutritious food to TDEE & cut out junk, added sugar, fizzy drinks, alcohol

• CHECK with your Doctor: if you have diabetes, any other endocrine condition, or if taking ANY prescribed medication (fasting may affect absorption rate)

Useful MN Threads
Browse previous 5:2 threads in the fasting section

Tips and Links : breadandwine’s thread collects practical tips and info we have gained over all the 5:2 threads. It is especially useful for newbies.

Inspirational: eatriskier’s Thread has reports from Mumsnet 5:2ers who have lost weight.
Read to boost your motivation.
Add your own when you have lost weight too

Recipes: frenchfancy has collected delicious FD recipes from all the threads.
Post your own here too.

Exercise: bigchocfrenzy has a Thread for advice & support on combining 5:2 with a healthy exercise regime.
The OP explains the science behind fasting, exercise & health and has many calculators.

Maintaining: talkinpeace has a Thread for those who have successfully lost weight on 5:2/IF and are now maintaining.
Some of those sharing experiences have been maintaining for 2 years, which shows 5:2 is sustainable longterm.

Scientific Evidence for Fasting
==================

BBC article on the Horizon program

Telegraph comments on 5:2 and gives a brief overview by Dr Mosley, useful for newbies.

This InterviewPart1 and InterviewPart2 with leading ADF researcher Dr Varady explains why fasting helps you to lose weight AND improves some health markers.

A science Study specifically addressed the effect of this diet on obese men & women, wrt health and weight loss:

"... After 8 weeks of treatment, participants had an average 12.5 lbs reduction in body weight and a 4cm decrease in waist circumference. Total fat mass declined by about 12 lbs while lean body mass remained relatively constant."
i.e. almost all the weight lost was fat, not muscle, which is unusually good for a diet.

It also describes improved blood values:
"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%)."

Dr Michelle Harvie (funded by cancer charities) showed possible benefits of intermittent fasting compared to standard daily calorie reduction in her trials with women at high risk of breast cancer: ComparingDiets , EarlierResearch52

Dr Johnson showed intermittent fasting helped Asthma

Why Intermittent Fasting Works: Mattson , BlackSwan and Hormesis

Recent research into the health benefits of fasting: e.g. by world-respected neuroscientist Dr MarkMattson showed:
. Improved glucose regulation
. Loss of abdominal fat with maintenance of muscle mass
. Reduced blood pressure and heart rate
. Improved learning and memory and motor function
. Protection of neurons in the brain against dysfunction and degeneration in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke and Huntington’s disease.

Some of his research is in HealthyAging , Health , AvoidParkinsonsDisease
Also this ScientificDiscussion MoselyMattsonLomgo , and a LongoInterview

Recent trials with Type 2 diabetics and those at risk of having it used a form of daily fasting - skipping supper.
Their conclusions: eating 1-2 meals per day is better than several small meals for losing weight and controlling insulin levels, see Type2Paper

Roundup

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed their experience and tips over all these threads.
This has created a wealth of very valuable practical knowledge to help us all.

Any lurkers and newbies, come join us and share your experiences too. These are lovely supportive threads and everyone is welcome !

MrsNutella No problem, we're all different. Don't eat if not hungry.
Banana and toast will keep you going for the day.
btw, if you are BFing it might help to prepare portable minimeals for FDs, like hardboiled eggs, 30g pieces of cheese, so you don't get bored with DC-type food.

Sounds like you are doing week too, OneOrg

oops, Doing well this week, OneOrg my ipad is hair-trigger wrt posting atm

managed back to back FD fine. Just had my first solid meal since Sunday and feel satisfied. confident that I will last a few more hours until bedtime.
I have no trouble fasting or keeping to TDEE during the week, I just need to be able to rein myself in at weekends. Anyone else have the same problem? I think I still see eating more as a novelty after 3 months of rigid calorie counting. I wasn't half as bad before I started dieting!

Thank you for that. Calories not kilojoules now being counted!
NFD to day and LC completely ruined by my friend cooking pasta for lunch... There was no choice but to eat it, but I just had a small bowl.
I'd been thinking about introducing a few carbs every now and then anyway (and reducing my fat levels). I know that it's meant to be fine but it does seem so unhealthy never being allowed fruit or even whole grains.
I've got rabbit fricase for supper so will come in just under 1800 cald if I don't have a glass of wine...

moo try gradually introducing low-sugar fruit, e.g. berries, plums, clementines, kiwi fruit
and complex carbs like quinoa (contains all amino acids), flaxmeal, oat bran, steel-cut oats, brown rice, sweet potatoes

MrsW On Friday, try to roughly plan your weekend meals, as a loose framework so you don't eat / drink on impulse.

Right, I'm off to the gym now for 90 mins boxing & Tabata.

I'm another one who needs to try and plan on a Friday for the weekend. Various social things have ruled out a second FD this week so I'm planning on doing minifasts for today, tomorrow and Thursday. I'm all planned and calorie counted for those days I just need a plan for the weekend that can encompass wine and takeaway with a friend on Friday and the Easter teatime cakefest we've planned for Sunday. The 3 mini fasts are all well under 1000 cals but still ...

I've done a rough outline for the rest of the week and weekend on mfp have left about 500 calories free each day in case I feel like anything extra but tbh I've planned quite well with lots of low(ish) calorie filling foods so hopefully I can keep a bit under this week in preparation for going away next week.

It really does come down to planning across the whole week
and then the whole month
and then the year
and then the rest of your life

you have to think about what you eat over much longer periods than single days

Can I ask if those of you who have been doing 5:2 for a long time and reached your goal weight have reached a point where you no longer crave really unhealthy things? All my previous attempts at long term healthy eating fail when I can't resist the cravings any more and decide life is totally boring if I can't have my weekend take away or a daily chocolate bar or whatever. Then the weight creeps back on. I know treats are ok in moderation but with a TDEE of around 1500 I know I can't really fit in too many pizzas etc, not to mention the sat fats, salt, added sugar etc. in them are bad for me anyway. And yet I always eventually cave.

I drink too much.
I love pizza
I love cheese
but I only indulge one or two days a week
the other days I'm sensible
and thus have been at happy weight for well over 2 years

stripey the first time I was on 5:2 I didn't cut anything out on non-diet days. I was careful not to eat way too much but didn't calorie count then. I lost 14 kilos in around, lets see, 6 months. I used to drink alcohol every non-diet day (then). Our family has a take away or pizza once a week. We had desserts about 3-4 days a week, but I did keep mine small.

I stopped the 5:2 diet in favour of the HG diet (hyperemesis gravidarum; you sure loose weight on that) but it all went back on during the latter half of the preg and for some reason this time around it's proving a lot harder to loose the weight. It's been 3 months more or less on 4:3 and I've lost 4 1/2 kilos. I'm overeating slightly (200cals or so) but drinking much less on NFDs but really not sure what the difference is.

Eating midnight hamburger. Nyom nyom.

I haven't weighed myself yet but I can see my shape changing for the better. Love this WOE!

Phew, after 90 mins full-on boxing, I cycled back through 65mph winds, thunder & lightning with a wet bum & legs That was interesting. All those clothes are now drying

Good to hear that some folk are going to have a rough plan for weekends. This will help train you so it becomes automatic to enjoy weekends, without going 1000s over TDEE

stripy Some 5:2ers lose the desire for junk.
However, like talkinpeace I am not one of those virtuous souls. Like her, I don't have desperate cravings as such, but I indulge 1-2 days per week with fries, ice cream etc. However, even on those days, I'm in control, not in a frenzy. So, simce I'm in maintenance I eat back my FD deficit, but no more.

I eat more healthily than I did pre-52, which wasn't planned, but it seems a common effect of fasting to desire better food.

All WOEs: Why it's often not as easy to lose as the very 1st time

. It has actually been measured that people tend to consume fewest cals the 1st time. Even if they think their intake is the same on later diets, it's usually higher. The reasons for this seem to be psychological - diet fatigue - and complacency / tending to more indulgence the 2nd time round - unless you mfped daily for each diet.

. Repeatedly losing and gaining more than about a stone tends to lower the TDEE. This is partly because of muscle loss if loss is too rapid ( e.g. puking for months during pregnancy) However, even if all muscle is retained via resistance training, there is still adaptive thermogenesis (body requires fewer cals)

. Any changes to the endocrine system / hormone balance (a pregnancy could easily cause this) or new issues such as PCOs, thyroid, being prediabetic.

. Age: For women, even a couple of years can mean suddenly being pre / menopausal, which causes the body to tend to store a lot more fat.

This illustrates why a definite maintenance plan is so important, not just hoping to remain virtuous

Thanks BigChoc. I managed to stay within my TDEE as I planned my meals carefully today, but when I was feeding DD to sleep I was getting irrationally angry about not being able to run downstairs and binge on Nutella. It is currently banned from the house as I cannot resist it. I also have not yet dusted off my skipping rope, though I used to love skipping as a child. It will be quite a test for my pelvic floor when I do!

stripey I am not a long-term faster, but have never had weight issues as such. In terms of long-term maintenance of happy weight (BMI around 19.6 for me), I used to use the 80:20 rule, making healthy choices eighty percent of the time and indulging my whims 20 percent of the time. Then again, I know that I still have relatively young metabolism and my TDEE is quite high.

I think the battle is in your head. BigChoc mentioned up thread in response to Meerka how eating whatever you want for three meals a day, even without snacking, would mean consuming too many calories for most people. That strikes me as terribly unfair, never mind the fact that I would love to snack in between meals too! The thing is, our society is facing an obesity epidemic because lifestyle changes (availability of ready-made snacks and foods, influence of food giants and supermarkets, vastly reduced opportunities for exercise) make it terribly easy for us to put on weight. The reason why staying slim requires effort these days is not because we are all of a sudden less able to control ourselves and have all become lazy, greedy and unable to handle sugar/carbs/fat. It is because our society has become obesogenic. Naturally, individuals are still in charge of what they eat, but the influence of the environment should not be underestimated, because we are social creatures and rely on copying behaviours for psychological and social reasons. That is why obesity is a social problem.

What I am trying to say (in under a million words, hopefully), is that resisting cravings enough not to become overweight relies partly on one's understanding of the fact that society/supermarkets/modern lifestyle/life-work balance all conspire to make one fat. In other words, it is increasingly difficult to stay 'naturally' slim these days, which the vast majority of people managed without difficulty only 50 years ago. Today staying slim in an obesogenic environment requires constant active resistance.

FD for me tomorrow, good luck everyone!

Apologies, stripy, I managed to get your name wrong. That will teach me not to rant against obesogenic environments late into the night.

OneOrg Very true. I was born mid-1950s, so grew up with 3 (boring) meals per day, no choice. Also no snacks, hardly any takeaways, junk or ready meals - so there were no temptations to resist. The limited kinds of choc, crisps & ice were expensive wrt average incomes, so were very occasional treats. Feasts were 2-3 times per year.

I saw one overweight child in my entire time at school and the only (mildly) overweight adults were middle-aged. Noone dieted and calories were just something we learned in chemistry class. Fewer cars, more manual work, kids 5+ roamed for miles playing unsupervised ....

I think I suddenly noticed there were a lot more overweight people in the late 1980s. Funnily, just a few years after food started to become an exciting consumer product & lifestyle rather than nourishment.

NFD day and my weigh in appears that I've maintained, can't help but feel disheartened that the hunger was for nothing.

hm, thanks bigchoc good possible explanations there. my weight yo-yo'd badly - 78kilos down to 64 in 6 months, then 8-9 kilos off in another 14 weeks (HG), then 22 kilos on another 26 weeks .... that was 11 months ago now but even so the system's been through quite a bit. 5:2 is the only diet I've tried as I knew I wouldn't be able to keep to others.

Sounds like you got more of a workout cycling home than at the gym, 65mph winds!

I'm meant to be on a FD today but home with sick DS. We were meant to have a day out London sightseeing. I'm pretty sure I won't survive the day, but even if I go for as long as possible, it will mean I eat less than I normally would!

I had a sneaky weigh in this morning, and I'm 170.8 meaning that the 4lbs must have been water and I've actually lost 1.5lb. Happy with that.

oneorgasmicbirth I think you're spot on with your description of how society and the values and importance it now places on "treating yourself" with food and "enjoying" food has a lot to answer for with regard to rising obesity rates.
We no longer see food as essential fuel, it's more and more about something to reward ourselves with, to talk about, to see as a social occurrence, to indulge ourselves with. And yes, therefore it's a constant battle to resist those pressures coming from all directions.

Anyway, it's another FD for me today . Don't like having them this close together in the week but with the kids off school and normal routines out the window, I can't do a Thursday as usual. Am going to try a 16:8 tomorrow though, just to keep on top of things.

moo I hope your DS is better soon, so you can have your day out together later this hols, on an NFD. (Crikey, were you really going to have an FD on an outing ? That's dedication)

Good news about the SV. Shows how much weight can fluctuate. Do mfp though, so at least you know what you consume and have a baseline: you might need to tweak later and you need to know where you started.

hevs Some weeks you'll lose, probably some you won't, but most folk average out at 1lb weekly over the longterm. Water retention, totm can hide fat loss for a few days. Leaner folk already within healthy BMI may lose more slowly.
If you are staying within TDEE on NFDs, you'll lose. Did you mfp for a week to check ?

April Fool Musings:

.The word 'aerobics' came about when fitness trainers got together and said, “If we want to charge £XXL per hour, we can’t call it jumping up & down ”.

. “Aerobics:" a series of strenuous exercises which help convert fats, sugars & starches into aches, pains & cramps.

. The trouble with running is that by the time you realise your knees are buggered, it’s too far to walk back

. The only reason I would resume running is so I could hear heavy breathing again.
I like long walks though - if they’re taken by people who annoyed me.

. I don’t do yoga. If God wants me to crawl around the floor, she’ll put chocolate there

. And I’ve no wish to contort my bod until my face is behind my behind – and get stuck there smelling my own farts until someone unwinds me.

Right: how about YOUR thoughts on weight loss or exercise ?

So folks, tips for a 5:2 "break"?...
Away from home for most of next week, so most of my eating will be hotel or restaurant; Teppanyaki booked for Wednesday night, family meet at a steakhouse Friday, probably too much booze also - hardly conducive to the 5:2 regime.
So it'll be Sunday dojo, Monday FD and dojo again. Then Tuesday through Saturday morning/midday away from home.
I'm thinking the week will be more or less a write off calorie wise, and I'll miss the Tuesday night karate... To counter that, I'll be on my feet a lot more than at work where I'm desk-bound most of the day.
Who am I kidding?!
Bollocks to it, I've had six or seven weeks of steady losses, I'll just take the hit this week!

Goodness, lots to catch up on. My first FD went well. I was flagging a bit after dinner - I think I probably needed something a little more healthy and filling. But I'll plan that better for next time.

Out of curiosity I weighed myself this morning and I was 87.5 so that's about 800g lighter! I'm not expecting that to stay off. It was pure curiosity because I had weighed and measured myself yesterday morning. I'm convinced my belly is a bit flatter today. I actually felt really good about fasting. Not deprived or weak at all.

I have both dc at home today DS is normally at nursery (which is a godsend). But he has a slight ear infection and is driving me mad instead. It worked well having a fast day yesterday!