This topic contains 11,627 replies, has 174 voices, and was last updated by hermajtomomi 6 months, 3 weeks ago.
Hi Bay
Sounds like the soup I used to make last year. Now that we only eat one meal and you know who doesn’t eat soup, I don’t have any.
Managed the morning and lunch with the little girls and didn’t even lick my fingers.
Now to hit the shops. The cat is getting desperate!
Well done on your new eating regime. Only 4 more hours until food. Easy. P 🙂
Wow, woke up this morning to find a massive influx of new fasters! Fantastic to see so many people enthused and excited to be starting 5:2.
I’m going to fast today also. My weight has nudged over 60 this weekend. i know why! We’ve had relatives staying which has involved bread, pasta and puddings (crumbles made with fresh picked plums or blackberries… I know I should have eaten the fruit and left the crumble but I’m only human…!).
Anyway I know a longer fast and low carb will drop me back under 60 by tomorrow. So no worries.
Unfortunately my mouth is now watering at the thought of your soup Bay! Think it’s the ginger and chillies….
Same thing happened to me, Happy. I did the shopping late this afternoon after not eating since last night. Never a good idea, but couldn’t be helped. I bought some chicken and corn soup, 130 cal as I kept thinking about Bay’s. I took it home, hoping to just put it away for another day. It WAS delicious and I did wait until 4.45….nearly 23 hours. I think that counts as a long fast, don’t you?
Now I will be a lot less irritable when I cook OH’s dinner. I can survive perfectly well all day without any food now, but as soon as I put anything in my mouth, I’m gone. I’ve buzzed off upstairs to tidy, so that I am away from the kitchen.
I’ll have to restock the freezer with more of my emergency fast day goodies…dahl and veg soup.
It IS amazing how one tv show, with Michael on it, can increase our numbers massively. I hope they all keep it up. P 🙂
PS I had the devil’s own job finding the LOACA Recipe thread yesterday to add a recipe….and I was one of the original contributors. How do newcomers find it? It has a lot of chatter on it now too 🙁 The original idea was to stick to recipes only, with the comments elsewhere. Ah well, the best laid plans…
Hi PVE, my OH makes an amazing chicken soup when we’ve had a roast, but otherwise can’t really be persuaded that soup is a meal you can eat in the evening! He’s away for a few days next week, so that’s my opportunity to eat those things I like and he doesn’t (soup, salmon, chickpeas…)!
So it’s the fifth anniversary of Mum’s death today. Time flies. I don’t know what she weighed (at least UK size 18, at 5ft2, so heavy). She was unfit (she hated hated hated exerting herself!), hypothyroid, with high BP and cholesterol, and primary breast cancer took her. She, like so many, had adopted the low fat/high carb, 3 meals a day with snacks, way of eating and struggled with her weight for probably at least the last 25 years as a result. And in her later years she would not forgo ‘treats’ (‘why shouldn’t I eat cake before lunch every day if I want to?’).
I hope I’m mapping out a different future.
The anniversaries are hard, Happy. My mum died at 90, 3 years ago. Like yours, she ate what she liked and always struggled with weight. I didn’t until I hit my 40s. She had demenita and Parkinson’s so by the end she was a frail little thing unable to do much other than smile and mouth the words of songs.
Hopefully we have taken the path to avoid some of their problems. Big hugs to you, mate. P xx
What IS this soup and chickpea thing with the boys? I do the same,H, I enjoy all my vegetarian delights when he is away. It was easier when the kids were home, as there was always someone who would like what I made for me. I often cooked 3 different dishes to please them all. Lucky I LOVE cooking!
Tim, any ideas on soup and chickpeas? P
1lb left to lose.
It’s Monday and after a weekend of (some) indulgence the scales showed 1lb up from Saturday (day after fast) so I did lose 2lbs last week with fasting and low carb. After a plateau period of one month that is amazing. Now I want to lose that last pound so this week I am going to be extra vigilant with my fasting and low carb meals. I am very motivated now and want to proof that I can reach my goal.
It’s base layers that I keep buying and following a sudden urge to get my knitting out and finish that extra warm jumper with cables I started a few months ago – oh, and hand warmers and hats. I have plenty of socks from last winter’s productivity but jumpers I never have enough of. Oh I should live near the equator. :-))
Hi Lichtle,
I’m also getting the urge to knit again now we’re heading to autumn. Stupid though that it’s an activity for long dark winter nights! If it’s a big project I may not finish it before winter’s over…
Good work on breaking your plateau. I fasted yesterday, fully expecting to be 1lb lighter today, but am only 0.2kg down. Think this may be due to the fact that my wheat flour and sugar intake (and thus total calorie) has been higher over the last week. I know a few weeks ago when I was strictly low carb/sugar I couldn’t do one fast day per week without dropping at least 1lb.
So I’ll have to see what the rest of this week brings. I’m back on low carb (guests have gone and I’ve eaten all the crumble!), but may need a second fast day to get me back under 60kg…
As I think PVE says, I’m my own experiment. This seems to confirm that I can maintain either eating 16:8 and low carb/ sugar (but relaxed at weekends) or, if I want to eat more carbs and cakes, that I will need to do at least one calorie restricted fast per week.
Great to have such a flexible weight loss and maintenance tool. I really do appear to be in control…
Thank you Happy, Had a successful fast yesterday (under 400 cals). Today scales are spot on goal weight of 50kg. With week ahead full of good resolve I want to maintain this goal weight for a bit by fasting/eating low carb as if wanting to lose weight. I need my body to accept and respect this new weight and if it means going a touch lower, that can be sorted out quickly.
Funny I too still have some apple crumble in the fridge from the weekend 🙁 …good test of resolve when I open the fridge door to get out eggs for scrambled eggs this morning. Enjoyed the break of the fast nonetheless and I am very full and satiated. I feel I could run a cake shop with the determination I am feeling today. Is this the dieter’s high? :-))
Hi Lichtle and PVE,
My fast yesterday was a really good one, and I slept really well. This morning I am not hungry so Will wait to break fast until I am, and maybe even aim for a longish fast window.
Lichtle, if there was any blackberry crumble left in the fridge then yes, today I would have been able to ignore it..! The fast day is almost like some sort of reset button for my eating, keeping portion sizes reasonable and breaking the sugar habit.
Congratulations on achieving your goal weight. You must be well pleased with yourself!
Don’t know whether you will have seen this or not…. Simcoeluv posted it on the Basics for Newbies thread, but things pretty soon disappear off the recents posts page (now half of Australia is fasting!). Given all the scare mongering about how fasting was great for blokes, but not so good for women, it’s an interesting read!
A clinical study on a variation of 5:2 that concludes it is safe and effective: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3017674/
That Harvie et al study is interesting tho’ I was a little surprised at these findings:
“Fewer of the IER group (58%) planned to continue with the regimen beyond 6 months compared to the CER group (85%) suggesting difficulties with long term adherence to IER. Further studies are needed to address issues related to adherence.
…
Our data is suggestive that periods of severe restriction may have different effects which may be important in the long term for disease prevention. However IER was no easier to adhere to than CER particularly in the longer term. Predictably, ease of following the diets varied between individuals. IER can be offered as an alternative to CER for reducing obesity and obesity-related disorders in some individuals…”
Then again, in various forums, I suppose you only see posts from people who do find it more manageable because others disappear (tho’ a fair number seem to return, and subsequent reboots seem to be successful).
Hi everyone,
Just to assure you all that I haven’t flounced off in a hissy fit. The failure to post is down to the fact that I’ve finally got all – well most – of my ducks in a row and am working away on my dissertation. So far, there have been no cravings for ‘brain fodder’, in other words chocolate and other naughties, and no fast days have been screwed up so far.
It’s a lovely day in London. Hope it’s the same where you are.
SSure:
The Harvie study required the participants to do back to back fasts. Aside from being a bit harder, they also run into many more scheduling conflicts (guests stop in on a diet day, friends call and ask you out but you can’t eat that day, etc.) The Fast diet allows you to move those diet days around to fit your schedule, gets the same results, so is easier to comply with. The number of people reporting they have been on the diet long enough to lose 30 to over 100 pounds proves it can be followed for a long time.
Thanks Simcoeluv and Happy
I couldn’t believe how I kept drifting off and doing other things while reading the report. 🙂
You are right, S, the strictures imposed on the participants are very different to what we experience as long term 5:2ers. Flexiblity and experimentation means we are in control. The women in the study were not really in control.
I read an article in the Canberra Times today comparing different “diets”. The reporters tried them for a month. The person trying 5:2 obviously hadn’t done much research so didn’t eat interesting, varied foods. And, as we know, it takes time to change habits. It is much easier the longer you do it. Cheers. PVE
There has been a lot of discussion lately, with lots of new Aussies, especially, on how much they “should” eat on a fast day.
I did some calculating. When I started 17 months ago, I weighed 85kg. Using the homepage calculator, I would have had a TDEE of 1915. That would be 478 cals on fast days. I didn’t eat that much. I started on 400 calories on fast days and 1400 on normal days. Both these figures were maximums. I often ate lower. I lost 1 kg consistently every week for many months. When I plateaued I reduced it to 350 cals and introduced extra fast days now and then. I continued to drop off fat.
I am now 58kg. I have lost 27kg. I’ve gone from size 16 pants (slacks) to size 8. I don’t count calories any more, but with experience, know what I consume. The calculator says I can have 1544 cals per day (386 on fast days). I often eat much less on feed days. Usually about 1300 cals. I have maintained this weight for 5 months now.
I am concerned when I hear discussions about having to eat 500-600 calories and worrying if they don’t eat it all! This WOE was designed to promote health, not lose weight, so it is obvious that in order to get to the weight to maintain the health benefits, people need to eat less than the TDEE.
Another aspect coming out of the influx of newbies is people watching a 16 minute video and misunderstanding. Many are seeing Michael dabbling with his 4 day fast, having only a cup of weak soup, and thinking they are to eat no solid foods, or to do back to back fast days. Many experienced fasters do back to back, eg Nicky, but it takes time to get to the stage of experimenting with approaches. When first starting 5:2 it is better to follow the tried and true and then branch out.
We only eat one meal on fast days now, but there is no way we could have jumped straight into that last year. We would not have continued. Better to split the low cals into 2 or three “meals” initially and learn not to snack.
Knowledge and understanding allow you to handle this whole new approach to health. P
Agreed. It’s more because I started out ADF and then moved to 4:3 because of my social/sports commitments but knew other people who managed their ADF by devising back-to-back fast days in a similar manner to that outlined in the Harvie et al study. I wonder if, as you indicate, the difference there was that the people who modified to that from the ADF felt in control whereas the participants in the study had the regime presented to them rather than it feeling like a wholly free choice?
I may bear this in mind if I need to modify my fasting schedule after some upcoming surgery. (I’ve been in maintenance for a while with 4:3 but I’m a little concerned that I’ll be sedentary for quite some time after the surgeries so I might need to shift to 3:4 – or, for rehab/healing purposes, I might experiment with maintaining 4:3 but making 2 of the 3 back-to-back.)
Thank you, Simcoeluv.
I can only agree with your summary, PVE: for a lot of people, learning to eat a meal and finish – no snacking – seems to be tremendously helpful in starting within a pre-determined kcal allotment. Your ‘tried and true and then branch out’ has strong overtones of Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build hypothesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broaden-and-build
If people experience positive emotions in connection with an activity (in this case, fasting) it can broaden and build your skills and resources and make contribute to a greater sense of confidence with experimenting to see what else might work from the strong foundation you’ve already built.
I understand the anxiety of newbies who want to get it ‘right’ but are impatient for results tho’ I’m concerned that in Fredrickson’s terms, this associates negative emotions with the activity of fasting and develop an accelerated ‘fight or flight’ response when they don’t see the results they’d anticipated/fantasised.
Although I’ve only been fasting since 2011, it seems to be quite common that the people who start out with higher kcal intakes and continue to nudge them down, when they know they can handle it and have comfortably integrated fasting into their WOL, tend to be the ones who reach their goal and maintain successfully. (One particularly successful woman comes to mind who is now maintaining a >300lbs loss for >4 years. I can think of several men and women who are now >2 years into maintaining 90-200lbs losses.)
As for not understanding what’s happening in the shortened video – it’s the danger of partial attention that viewers/readers will miss the nuance. And this may well lead to raising anxiety or unrealistic expectations (after Fredrickson).
Evening maintainers,
After a 6:1 on Monday, and a ‘normal’ food day yesterday (skip breakfast, low carb), I’ve dropped back to 59.3 (from 60.4 at weekend).
I ‘celebrated’ by eating 1000 calories bag of carob brazil nuts….doh. Once the bag was open, there was no stopping… Was having bad day at work though, and thought I’d lost my new Oakley sunglasses… (found in car after work, phew). Anyway, I then went out for run to offset some of my gluttony, and came back really happy (despite being a pathetically weak-willed carob nut glutton…)
So, that will be me fasting again tomorrow!
PVE. Liking your attempts to restore forum order! Hopefully people will start joining up into coherent threads rather than everyone starting their own, and order may yet be restored from chaos!
Hi Happy
Can’t help myself….I like things put in the right place so that they can be found later. Not scattered everywhere 🙂
Understand your nut fettish. I sat with a wine and an almost empty container of cashews last night and ate them all. But that’s ok. You and I are both simply maintaining our health now, and we know how to do it. I fluctuate between low 58kg to just over 60. That is well within normal fluctuations. I can live with 60.2 late at night. It is always gone by morning.
Busy day in the city today, so LOTS of walking. Had my black tea, must get up. Have a good evening, H. P 🙂
@ssure, always interesting to read your contributions. Your health struggles seem to have made you determined to understand how to get your body into the best shape possible. Good health is invaluable which we often only realise when there is a problem. I love how you keep experimenting using various fasting techniques which is common with other long term fasters here on this thread. Are you also a psychologist? You seem to have read a few books on the psychology of dieting (read on other thread).
Good luck with the upcoming surgery and finding the a new fasting rhythm to suit your new level of (in)activity. Please keep us posted how you are doing.
Just out of interest… How did you come to ADF in 2011 a year before the Horizon programme?
@happy -good to hear the run has cheered you up. I have also taken to buying (and eating) mixed nuts as a switch/ substitute for (being good and) not eating sugar. I love them but need to really be careful to stop. My mum always maintained that a handful of nuts every day were good for the brain. As part of the new “fat-is-good” thinking I eat a handful10-20 nuts on non fast-day. Remember they are also good for you unlike chocolates and sweets.
@purple Veggie Eater. I love your weight loss/health journey,too. Well done on your sustained loss. This is exactly the kind of story newbies need to hear – inspiration from people who are maintaining like all the lovely maintainers on this thread. Sustainability remains the key when people search and read through the site. Of course the mutual encouragement of this forum is of great benefit to us all. It would be so great if previous posters who don’t seem to have the time anymore, could just every now and then pop in and let us know how they are doing.
Hi all Maintainers and those nearly there! Have just got back from 7 week OS holiday and have good news and bad news! The good news – easy to maintain my fast days when we were in Canada because we were staying with family and shopping at the supermarket so always had healthy food on tap. I didn’t have scales but could tell by clothes I lost a bit more while we were there. I also noticed I put on a little bit too and when I thought about that, realised it was all to do with bread, pastries etc. whenever I ate them the weight went on! But overall happy with being able to maintain.
Bad news – when we got to New York for 8 days it all pretty well went out the window! I fasted the first day which was a travelling day and then after that my attitude just completely changed. From not wanting to eat sweet, pastry, bread type things (always my downfall) since doing 5:2, I developed this attitude of ‘well I’m on holidays so why shouldn’t I have it’. Talk about childish and self-sabotaging! So I had the cheesecake and the bagel and the toast with breakfast and boy have I paid for it. Have put on weight I know but too scared to weigh myself. But worst reaction has been the swelling of my legs on the flight home. Cankles! I’m fasting today and starving!
This has been such a good lesson to me that if you start to eat the sweet starchy things again you develop a craving for them straight away.
Don’t know what I am going to do about this ‘attitude’ of deprivation I feel though. I seriously thought I had conquered it. Guess I put it down to experience, get back on the straight and narrow and see what happens next time!
The sad thing is when I tried all that food I so desperately wanted it didn’t taste half as good as it looked!
Welcome home Carol.
Ditto re naughty foods. I am staggered how easy it is to slip back, but then not enjoy them anyway. Hold that thought. Better in the bin than on the hips 🙂
When you get back into the fasting and eating good home cooked food you will revert again, I’m sure. Plan some really tasty meals this week and stock up the cupboards again with the right food. Get on the scales…I’ll bet it’s not much damage. Happy Thursday fast. P
Nope, Purple, not today
So far today I went 17 hours on water, and have just had strawberries and blueberries and a few almonds. Black coffee of course. 🙂 this morning I spent 3 hours lifting the Capeweed daisies. Only 3 more hours tomorrow and I think I’m done. Then we seed the nature strip.
Cheers, Bay 🙂
Don’t worry, Carol
I can say, me too! I put on 3 kgs in the last week of my holidays through wheat and sugar products. At least we know what to do, and we know what causes our problems. I lost it all in one week of 5:2 so don’t fret.
That’s why I bang on about wheat and sugar so much. Like you, I only have a small amount and I crave it, and I put on weight.
Happy fasting. I love my fasting days. I feel so in control as will you after today. 🙂
Cheers, Bay 🙂
@carolann, what a lovely long holiday – and almost impossible not to feel/think as you did. After all we want to relax on holiday. It brings it home to us that sugar is a drug and as much as we may think we have conquered the sugar craving – once we get going…
Your comments that the food you wanted so much didn’t even taste that great, I found interesting. I wonder why that is and if this was always the case but with the discipline of fasting, we actually ask ourselves whether it tasted good enough to put on weight and if it was worth it? Or has our taste changed through re-education?
Anyway welcome back and as PVE said you will quickly take up low carb and fasting again and you can sit back and enjoy the lovely memories of your spectacular holiday.
@bayleafoz – I like you banging on about low carb. We need to be reminded every so often.
I have relatives coming to stay for a week at the end of the month and I am already thinking/planning how I can stay as low carb as possible whilst offering lots of bread (breakfast) deserts and some cake.
Yes, Bay, bang on about low carb as much as you like.
I agree, Lichtle, I often wonder whether our tastes have changed or we really were often disappointed by treats and didn’t realise. We now know we don’t need to eat food that is not top notch. Staggers me how often I just don’t finish things. While we were away we bought some chocolate as a donation. We had a couple of bis each, but a couple of days later, on a fast day, with the block looking at me from the car door pocket, I threw it in a bin at a petrol station. I find temptation much easier to cope with if it just isn’t there!
I’m a bit disappointed as I have been really disciplined all day (I have walked miles and miles today including through numerous food markets without even salivating) and had planned a simple salmon and salad for dinner. Now one of the kids is popping in and will want dinner. Not enough salmon to share, so I will have to be really creative. Be blowed if I’m eating too many calories tonight when I could have gone overboard many times today 🙁 P
Hi All,
Ditto, on eating sugar/processed carbs being a slippery slope back into addiction and weight gain. Days out are manageable (hmm, cake, yes or no) but longer periods of time away from my normal food choices are challenging. So I can sympathize with your NY experience Carol.
And ditto re enjoyment/taste. I recently had a jaffa cake (not had one for years, but the MIL lives on them and left an open packet in the fridge). It tasted foul, horribly artificial. The rest of the packet are going stale as we speak!
Carol, Re: deprivation. I no longer feel I am depriving myself if I don’t eat pastries/cakes etc. I am making a choice not to eat them. IF is not like other diets, in that no food is forbidden. So I know I could eat it if I want. But if I stop and reason I often conclude that I don’t want it after all. I now know that these ‘treat’ foods largely do not taste as nice as I remember. They tend to be massively sweet, so drive up insulin and feed addiction. They are empty calories. They tend to be supersized, so I will either waste some or eat it all and then feel bloated and sick. So not a ‘treat’ at all!
I think another thing is, because we have learnt to put off our food wants “I can always eat it tomorrow” (and we usually don’t), we have trained ourselves to resist impulse eating. I know once I weaken I am hopeless. So I don’t start, or I serve out a small portion and put the rest away, then sit down and eat the treat and it really becomes a treat.
Gee whizz, starting to salivate, 20 to 6 here and dinner an hour or more away. C’est la vie! I can do it. P
Also I’m getting a lot more picky about my ‘treats’. If I’m going to have a cake I’d rather it was fresh, home cooked, with fewer high quality ingredients and less added extras and preservatives. So supermarket mass produced cakes, I think I’ll pass. A friends fresh coffee and walnut cake, yes please.
In addition to being more mindful, I think my palate has changed. Strip out all the processed rubbish for a while and you start tasting your food again.
All very insightful, supportive comments everyone. Thankyou! I agree Happy Now all the serves are super sized and most of the time all I really want of the sweet treat is a mouthful or two. I just like to try it and my appetite has reduced so much now and also my tolerance for sweetness I think, that a mouthful or two is satisfying.
I agree PVE, quality not quantity in what I eat now. I have to say the cheesecake and bagel were fantastic! ha ha. And that’s a great expression – ‘in the bin not on the hips’ – have to remember that one! These habits are so hard to change. Don’t know if you were brought up the same way as me – not to waste food. I think that contributes greatly to me finishing what I am eating even when I have actually had enough but trained not to waste!
Ah well, tomorrow is another day! 🙂
Lichtle, Caloric Restriction has been part of longevity research for decades. ADF as a form of caloric restriction with added benefits for people who want to lose weight has been around for a long time before MM explored it in his Horizon programme – he interviewed several researchers such as Varady who had been in the field for approx. 10 years. I was aware of her research and Mattson’s as well as the JUDDD (Johnson Up Day Down Day Diet) devised by James Johnson and based on that research.
I’d heard of the research and thought it interesting enough to keep a look out for any trial results. Fortunately, by the time I needed a weight loss programme, and when it was clear that conventional continuous calorie restriction did not suit me (I’d gained weight after an accident), some research results had been published so I felt comfortable in trying out ADF (followed by 4:3) – and that was 2011.
Oddly enough – I’ve not read the Spinardi book, I just keep seeing recommendations for Spinardi and managed to track down some good discussions and quotations so that I’d feel comfortable enough mentioning it to others. The Fredrickson research is part of Positive Psychology (the Seligman et al work) and it interests me for a number of reasons as it has much to say about behaviour and that includes health behaviour and education.
I have this problem, that I was brought up to always finish my plate. To my mother’s credit she never piled up the food and would rather us having seconds than throwing food away and that habit has stayed.
Now my husband does most of the cooking and boy does he cook LOADS and unhealthy curries etc and no amount of me trying to coax him to eat a healthy diet will change that. Change of eating habits has to come from yourself.
But what I end up with is lots of pots of leftovers in the fridge and since OH does not use up “old food” (habit from his parents) I end up eating it in subsequent days. When the children were home this clearing of fridge was never a problem. But now I am struggling to catch up and as you know with the fasting routine eating leftovers has to wait another day. Generally he is away a great deal so by the time he comes home I often manage to clear out the fridge pots.
At the moment he is home a lot and I can’t catch up (and the freezer is full as well (freezer pots)!!! He has promised to cook smaller portions.
One thing I only just manage is to throw away the carbs (pasta, rice, bread if stale) – it hurts but they are no good as fat on my ribs either which is worse than food in the rubbish bin. I just soooo hate throwing food away knowing how many people struggle to feed their families and rely on food banks (and I’m not talking about Africa even here in England. I feel ashamed to be wastefuful. For me it is a constant struggle to not use my body as a waste bin.
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