Idiotic question about the 5:2 fast diet

[LaurieFairyCake]

I've just read the book and read the big threads on here but I'm struggling with one thing.

Is any 24 hour period a fast day?

So, for example if I ate 'breakfast' now at dinner time (150 calories) and then ate nothing til lunch when I ate my main meal (350 calories) could I then start the new 'day' at 7.30 tomorrow night?

There are various different ways of fasting and that's certainly one way but it's not 5:2 and probably won't get you the same weightloss. Basically if you want to do 5:2 then 'a day' is 36-38 hours rather than 24 - two nights and a day. Your fast begins after supper on, say, Monday and ends when you wake up on Wednesday morning and you would then eat normally.

It isn't 5:2 then? As each 24 hour period is a day?

Ive definitely misunderstood it then. As there was one bit where she talked about fasting from 2pm one day to 2 pm the next day and I thought that might work for me as Mondays and Fridays are my days off work and I was hoping to finish fasting in time to drink wine Friday night

If a day is really 36 hours then that's far longer than I realised.

Does this mean there are now more than 7 days a week?

We're secretly in the Matrix

Ha! I'm actually watching The Matrix right now :)

The fast is for a day, as in, the period we're awake. You don't eat while you're asleep - well most of us don't anyway - so that's a natural fast. You are fasting (but eating 500 cals) during a waking day, twice a week, so 5:2.

I'm genuinely not looking for a way round this but if I stop eating after dinner at 6pm like normal, then have the next day as a fast day and then don't eat til 9 am on the following day I will have been 39 hours without food.

Is that the point then? to go that long without food?

I've totally misunderstood then, I actually thought it was 5:2.

You don't go without food, you have 500 calories that you can eat at any time in anyway you wish during the fast period. If that really doesn't work for you then by all means do it the way you proposed first - as I said, there are many different methods of fasting out there, have a google around on IF, you just asked about 5:2 in your title.

Sorry, I do know that there's the 500 calories.

I just thought it was any 24 hour period. I would so much rather start the fast after dinner, then eat 500 calories over the next 24 hours and then eat properly the next evening.

The books not that clear really, I've just spent the entire day reading it and it seems like there are lots of different ways of doing it. He eats it all in 2 meals, she snacks between the meals. And in the anecdotes (of which there are pages and pages) people are talking about exercise and how they do it individually.

I just want it to be simple but if you add in the exercise people talk about and deliberately sticking to tdee on the days you're supposed to be eating 'normally' its just like any other diet.

To be fair it seems like the writers actually did eat 'normally' without counting calories on the non fast days and the book says they 'naturally' ate less over a period if time. On the Mumsnet threads though there's a lot of calorie counting and 'being good' on the non fast days.

I would so much rather start the fast after dinner, then eat 500 calories over the next 24 hours and then eat properly the next evening.

Then try it that way and see if it works for you. If it doesn't then play around with it till it works the way you're comfortable with and hopefully gives you the results you want.

For what it's worth, I do not exercise, I don't really calorie count (although I did use My Fitness Pal for a while so I could get an idea of how many cals I consumed because I really had no idea) and I eat a certain amount of junk on food days, sometimes. What I have found over time is that what I want to eat and how much I want to eat has changed and I have do have a healthier diet without really thinking about it. Having said all that, I should also add that while I do stick to the night/day/night fast I do 4:3 rather than 5:2.

Glad to hear you don't exercise, I am struggling with that in winter

I've just found a Q and A with Mosley on Gransnet and he answers a couple of questions about this - he says try 2 til 2 (which I really fancy) and he replies to elizabethb saying that any 24 hour period is fine (in response to her saying she starts fasting after dinner and then stops fasting in time for dinner the next night).

I'm dead pleased to hear you do 4:3, I really wondered about that

If you are doing 2pm until 2pm then I suggest you don't have the 500 cals, just do a 24 hour fast. If you have the 500 cals then you aren't really getting the calorie deficit you need over the week to lose weight.