PS
The woman I met yesterday was the one who introduced me to IF. The thing is that the person she had told me about doing IF so successfully has completely fallen back into old patterns. He started smoking again and has his belly back within a few months.

That really surprised me because I love the fasting experience itself – the energy and happiness and greater awareness coming with it. How can you voluntarily stop this again… Gee…

Maybe that is the difference between being heart (and belly 😉 ) driven and being driven by the ego only? Dunno. Think so, though. Once this is happening in your body and soul you would not let go of it, would you.

Lichtle
Great insights on lifelong maintenance. We all have to find a diet approach we can stick to. IF has been that for me. I realize that I only hit my target weight last September and I decided then that I wouldn’t state I lost it for good until I could go two years without gaining it back. Obviously, I have another year to go. Your comment about not knowing it didn’t work for someone else was spot on. We are all easily influenced by anecdotal evidence, and expected results become reality.

In the meantime I continue my quest to find out what is meant by healthy eating. As I think I said in my first post on here, the only consistent guidance I’ve found in the nutrition community is less sugar, more vegetables. I no longer accept any article I read, regardless of who wrote it, unless it points to a study I can find online and check. As a result I’m learning a lot.

As to someone’s comment “to the ladies”, I guess I never really introduced myself. I’m a married guy who lives on Perdido Key in Florida. My real name is Jack. I’m retired. I first retired from the Navy in 1988 after 27 years of service and then from Northrop in 2009. Was a pilot in the Navy and a missile defense engineer at Northrop. My wife of 48 years, Ruth, is simply the most wonderful woman in the world. My health is excellent. As a result there are no stressors in my life and I enjoy an active lifestyle. I have had, and continue to have a wonderful life.

And I intend to keep the extra weight off.

Hi, Jack your introduction is much appreciated and how wonderful to talk about and describe your wife in such loving terms. It says more about you than an essay. Do you fast together?

You are right to be skeptical about claims about healthy nutrition. Have you heard of Ben Goldacre? His book “Bad Science”. is essentially a rant about how badly the mainstream media report so called scientific studies (often food related). He unpicks dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dubious government reports, pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks. You can also google him and there is a TED talk. My son is a scientist and he has given this book to me, so now all those headlines leave me cold and I stick to my two mantras which are:

a) Moderation (includes fasting)
b) as much as possible unprocessed food – basically cook as much as possible from scratch.
c) no processed sugar

I am not claiming to adhere to it all the time but in terms of healthy eating it is all I really need to know right now. Reduction and eventually elimination of processed sugar is my long term goal. But alas I am still a long way off.

The 5hr rule has nothing to do with 5:2 way of life. It is another school of thought (called “food combining” – in the US by Dr Shelton) which says among other things not to keep grazing all day and to leave enough time between meals (4-5hrs) so that the body can fully digest and rest in-between giving the opportunity for regeneration and healing. However with fasting you give your body a rest twice a week anyhow and if you are doing IF – ditto.

The five hours without food are about insulin. Insulin food combining was how I started my journey of weight loss (as mentioned). Basically I am still following its main rules on non-fast days. Eating all day on non-FD has the risk to fall back into old patterns (for me that is).

To the ladies,

If you’d read Jairlie’s profile you would have seen he was male!

Hi Jairlie,

Nice to know a bit more about who we’re speaking to though!

My take on healthy eating is pretty much as the others state. In addition to moderation, unprocessed, and low sugar, I’d probably add ‘variety/ diversity’. The research on gut flora is interesting and seems to support the idea of eating a wide range of food stuffs in moderation, so a little of a lot of things for a healthy digestive system.

I don’t eat as much meat as I used to. I don’t feel the need to eat meat every day now, and I tend to eat less when I do. I don’t believe excessive meat consumption is good for me and it definitely isn’t good for the planet. My diet includes more vegetarian than previously, and also more oily fish. And I try to eat more beans and lentils.

I’d fallen into the habit of potatoes/ pasta/ rice/ bread at every meal time. I now tend to think pasta, rice and bread are just cheap bulking agents, not a lot of nutrition and not healthy in excess. I don’t eat them every day now, and when I do (and back to moderation and variety) they’re a component of the meal but not dominant.

If I snack (and I do!) I choose nuts, almonds being my current preference.

On the subject of sugar, I pretty much cut it out when I started 5:2 and now I have much less of a sweet tooth. I cook from scratch so I know most days there’s no added sugar in my diet. I do cook cakes/ biscuits at weekends as a ‘treat’.

And if that old sugar craving does try to take hold, and I find myself thinking ‘why shouldn’t I eat biscuits every day?’, I remember that a treat is defined as something out of the ordinary that brings great pleasure. So cake or chocolate once or twice a week is a treat; every day it’s just habit, and no more special than anything else I eat daily.

I think my diet’s reasonably healthy now. And having cut down massively on the processed carbohydrate and added sugar, and eating appropriate portion sizes, I know I could maintain my weight without fasting (particularly as I exercise). I want to carry on fasting for health however.

I’ll be interested to see what you come up with following your research/ reading. Hopefully you won’t tell us that we’re all doing it wrong…!

Mahalo, I wonder if the man who introduced the woman who told you about 5:2 has had some event in his life that has thrown him back into his old habits. We cannot know what is going on in people’s lives, but it is a great shame that he has fallen back into the old habits.

Lichtle, as sugar is a processed food, I think you can sneak it into the second point, but with emphasis 🙂

Barata,

I happen to know the background. He has fallen in love. The lady he fell for smokes, eats and drinks. He is joining her in all three habits and calls it “enjoying himself”. That was why I thought of him as falling out of self-love and surrendering to “the ego”. Only the ego calls self-destruction “a joy”. And I am not judging at all because I know all three habits myself. And all the PR talk of my own old ego…

M

Mahalo, Ah, that explain it. It is difficult to not join in when you are in a relationship.
Re: results of ADF mixing with large amount of fluid intake. This amount of fluid in the system weighs quite a lot so don’t take it too seriously and let it average out.

Oh Mahalo, he is being led astray.

Well done indeed, Kindle.

Lichtle I expect you are doing a lot better than you think re your sugar intake – our perceptions change so much!

Well done Kindle!

Welcome, FFS, I was starting to wonder where you were 🙂 Interesting you should mention the Jamie Oliver school food campaign. We were living in England at the time, and I would be interested to know – did things actually improve, and if so, have improvements been maintained?

Barata, JO’s campaign did make a huge difference, which is still continuing in many schools, where children are now being offered much more varied and healthy foods (and packed lunches brought from home are ‘policed’ very thoroughly, causing aggro among some parents!). It did raise awareness, which can’t be bad. And a lot of vending machines full of chocolate and fizzy drinks disappeared, which was good.

The other side of the coin is that we are now into the third UK government in a row aiming to turn as many schools as possible into ‘Academies’ – commercially or charity sponsored, and free from local authority control andtherefore from many of the regulations which apply to local authority–controlled schools. As well as being allowed to employ teachers with no teaching qualifications, they can ignore the rules about nutrition, so standards of both are variable – some are brilliant, some dire – and the drive for financial profit in some means the reappearance of less mindful food, as well as the dreaded vending machines.

Speaking of which, does anyone else go to a gym ( local authority leisure centre, not posh private making huge profits) which is full of said chocolatey, crisp-y, fizzy-drink-y, machines? The small cafe does stock fruit, but in tiny quantities alongside the sweet stuff, and children do love slot machines! I’ve tried campaigning for change via suggestions to management, but with no result – they’ve obviously just written me off as a pain! But it does seem paradoxical to me that a place so dedicated to the body healthy should be so wilfully in thrall to the vested interests of the junk food suppliers.

Hi All,

On the subject of sugar and sweet, the following makes for interesting reading… Big business yet again, getting you hooked at an early age!

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/30/baby-foods-found-too-sweet-to-encourage-variety-of-tastes-in-children

Hello all,

Lichtle,
right now my main challenge is the confusion caused by my weigh-ins. I do not understand the ups at all.

Okay, what is about water that makes the weight go up that much? Just do not get it ;( Or do I in fact regain? Can not believe that really doing ADF.

When I had a weigh-in at the start of my ADF on 17th of August I had 65.8 kg. That was on 17th of August (evening of a WFD, usually I weigh in the morning with empty stomach). Next was 28th of August morning after almost two weeks ADF: 63.6 kg. This morning 64.0 kg.

Can someone explain to me why/how water intake makes the scale go up so much? (If that is the reason at all.)

I find it so hard to orientate where I am at now. (And yes, I admit, even if I know “kg on the scales” is not the most important thing it bugs me 😎 .)

Trigger weight is the name for it. ARGH!

Have a nice day all
M

Mmm, if you have read my post to Jairlie, this is one of those meaningless scientific journalistic writings that proves nothing. This subject is far more ccmplex than baby food by money driven baby food manufacturers. Of course they will produce food that actually gets purchased in the same way that this journalist and his paper will only write stories that sell. That is life.

Baby food is made in less time than it takes to go shopping. Cooking meals with vegetables which can be blended with a stick blender takes no time. But the chances are the same family get take away food for themselves and their elder siblings. I don’t think this article will make any difference to the puchase of ready made baby food because our food crisis has more to do with personal responsibility than with big manufacturers – and personal responsibility is hard work – it is much easier to blame others.

BTW: Neither I nor my children ever had ready made vegetables in a glass jar – I couldn’t afford them – and all but one have a sweet tooth….and yes toddlers spit out brokkoli and spinach and prefer carrots and banana. So if I had had the money I would not have wasted it on a bitter vegetable jar that baby spits out.
My vegetable battles at home are still re-told by my children. Each one got a small amount of vegetables and were not allowed to leave the table without eating it. So one of my daughters who hated peas ate all of her five compulsory peas by swallowing them like pills. .

Sorry for this rant but sadly with today’s information oveload my cynicism increases year by year.

And Mahalo, I’ve definitely noticed a delayed effect on thr scales – if I overindulge I can think I’ve got away with it for a day or two – but it normally shows up about 3 days later (and I definitely avoid scales in the evenings!). Any help?

Lichtle,

I didn’t need to read your post to Jairlie to realise this is an article selling newspapers. And yes, I do appreciate it’s a complex subject. And I’m all for personal responsibility. But not everyone is as well-informed, intelligent and able to cook as you are!

@ Happy, My post didn’t have a go at you re posting the link here so I don’t understand why you see any need for sarcasm (I am not particularly well informed and definitely not a good cook) or disparaging about asking my children to eat a tiny amount of vegetables (we are talking tea spoons here). I didn’t put vegetables into bottles, I breast fed until they were a year old and able to eat with a spoon. When raising children you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t that is for sure.

Sorry Lichtle, I wasn’t being sarcastic when I commented on you being well informed and intelligent! You clearly are, and if you think you aren’t you should try talking to 98% of the population!

I do know a lot of seemingly intelligent people who resort to bought baby food though, and probably do think it’s healthy (especially if it says ‘organic’). And actually it isn’t unhealthy (apparently if fed properly it provides no more sugar than breast milk), just that it perhaps makes parents lazy in introducing other flavours (and textures? I know adults who still mash their food!).

And I didn’t mean to criticize your parenting. I apologize for my slightly tongue in cheek comments, but your family meal times did remind me of my own…all those times hoping one of the dogs would come in so I could pretend to have eaten the offending whatever and leave the table!

@happy, I was obviously a bit touchy and should have noticed the smiley face. Thanks for getting back to me. 😉
@fast, you are so right, – and much of how interpret things also depends on our mood etc. I will look at the article a bit later.

Hi Happy, I really don’t know the answer to that. I presume that all babies and toddlers had some kind of mashed baby food be it home blended or shop bought so if there was a correlation, almost everybody would love smoothies and vegetable purees. Do they? I do. ? I don’t even know the statistics of what percentage of people prefer sweet to savoury. If anybody has the answer, I would be very interested.

My next question would be. “Are the early years (baby and toddler) more significant in developing our tastes than the rest of the childhood or are our tastes developing slowly and are in effect learning, by going out in the world and experiencing other people’s food?” Are the tastes of today’s children who travel more and visit family in other countries more varied? When I grew up I was not exposed to much food experimentation (we didn’t go on holidays) so my taste did not develop or change significantly throughout my childhood making it difficult to pinpoint a time that determined my food preferences. What do you think?

I’ve not really thought before about what has governed my food preferences, although I did not encounter the Mediterranean/ middle eastern food I now love during childhood at all.

I have read that what your mother ate while pregnant influences your tastes, as the flavours turn up in the amniotic fluid. (That’s why we don’t feed onion or garlic to the hens – it taints the eggs!) But apparently if you ate garlic while pregnant it would be more palatable to your baby due to familiarity.

I guess a lot of pregnant women would think about things to cut out to avoid harm (salt, alcohol) but might not conversely think about what to add in to ensure a happy healthy and adventurous (foodwise) baby?

Hi all
I’ve been reading your posts with much interest and nothing different to add . I remember being forced to eat breakfast cereal until I vomited and I still do not eat it!! My kids had to try everything and I cater for their dislikes when they come for dinner. Our 21 yo son has just moved back home and I cater for his many dislikes if he gives me 24 hours ( or at least 12 🙂 ) notice that he is home for dinner. But when my gorgeous granddaughter stayed the night last night and didn’t like our dinner- she did get something she did like haha

Hello all,

wishing you a nice evening/day.

(The nutrition/eating of toddlers and childhood dramas at the dining table triggers me too much. That is why I am not joining in. Brings up hurtful memories.)

Lichtle,

today I was on the go all day and outside (which is unusual these days because I live very withdrawn) due to Arbeitsamt measure. So today I could only drink less than 0,75 liters during the day. There was just no time and occasion to drink. Gee. Now I have to get down the missing 2 liters plus 😉 Hope my stomach will be able to cope.

My weight-up was hormonal (do not want to go into detail 😎 … the intervals are up to 40 days now and that makes timing really hard “these days”…)

🙂 Cheers and happy Fast/Feast Day
M

re Sugar & Wine…
I have set “no wine” (no alc) during my four weeks of water-challenge. Basically almost all year 2015 was without alcohol. Now, doing the ADF I have some (sugar) treats on every feed day, hm… With 5:2 I did not. The “10 in 2” version of ADF even allows/recommends a small glass of red wine in the evening.

Next Monday the water callenge will be over. I will then have coffee again on my WFDs (yay!). And I may even try the little glass of red in the evening (not sure yet). They recommend it for health reasons.

I will do the ADF for another week. At the end of a whole ADF-month I will decide what to do and how to go on from there.

It is all a big testing for me 🙂 Well, as long as it feels good…

Have a nice week-end all
M