Hey Bay, see if this works:
http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/2014/10/22/skip-breakfast-lose-weight-study/
This topic contains 11,627 replies, has 174 voices, and was last updated by hermajtomomi 6 months, 4 weeks ago.
Hey Bay, see if this works:
http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/2014/10/22/skip-breakfast-lose-weight-study/
Hi Purple,
Back from my trip to the mountains with no excess baggage. I managed a few fast days and lots of hiking/walking. I even tried the famous/notorious French Canadian dish (also known as heart attack on a plate), poutine, and live to tell the tale. My BMI is now down to 21.5 to 22 (started at 25) and I don’t want to go any lower – I have a cheek bones problem – as in I, need a cushion to sit on hard chairs! When I was this weight as a young mum I don’t remember needing a cushion.
I think I’ll keep doing 5:2, going without eating till the evening meal is a doddle now (at work at least) but being at home could be different. I’ve been working full time since I returned and now I know I don’t have time to work full time. This friday will be the end of full time work for a while, back to just a day and a half a week….. and I’ll be able to water the garden properly 🙂
Hi VM
Well done with the weight success. I know what you mean about uncomfortable bony body parts. The bottom seems to have lost most. Glad I don’t ride a bike any more.
Finished my fast day with some yummy Thai seafood. I’ve taken up eating twice on fast days as I like a bit in the late afternoon and a bit more at dinner. I keep changing. That’s the joy of this, isn’t it?
You’ll love not working full time. You’ll wonder how you ever had time to work! P
Today’s FD has been fine, food and appetite wise. Good luck to those with several more hours of an FD to go.
I’m most of the way through the Christmas Cake baking but still have a fair way to go.
I’ve managed to prepare some cookie batter to refrigerate until Friday when I’ll bake them off (two types of peanut butter cookie; hazelnut and molasses thins; ginger snaps). I’m experimenting to see if any recipes that are new to me are better than the recipes that I currently use.
A friend’s offered to lend me an amazing 3D skull tin some I’m trying to work out if I have the oven space and a decent recipe to allow me to bake a special Halloween cake. 🙂
Hi@ Ssure – How do you do it? My fast days are always when at the office. I admire all retired people here because I don’t know if I could do this whilst at home with a fridge in the middle of the kitchen. If I started baking on fast day I would “crumble” :-)) Low carb would definitely be out of the window.
Just to report that I am still happily maintaining at goal weight. Haven’t managed to go two lbs below goal weight “wriggle room” as intended, just sitting right on top of it. I call this a plateau. 🙂
Hi ssure and Lichtle and all MCs
Well done both of you.
The Halloween cooking sounds interesting, ss. Now that I’m not teaching I don’t do Halloween at all any more. Grumpy old woman!
L, are you within your “healthy” range? I do wonder whether the body gets to an equilibrium level if you are eating sensibly. We are both smack in the middle of our healthy range, fast twice a week and eat mindfully the rest of the time. We don’t feel deprived but don’t pig out ever. We have both moved very very slowly down since April but aren’t trying to. Most people would call it plateaux but I think we are basically at the weight our bodies were built for. We are both the same as we were at 30. Does this make sense?
Btw happy birthday OH. Should I still feed him? He’s 64! (Beetles song)
Cheers P
Hi Lichtle and Purple
I have been staying at 60 kg for the last four months. I learnt this week that I cannot bake and fast on the same day. Doh! I have sabotaged both my fast days with eating sweets.
I am just accepting it and having an unscheduled break from strict 5:2 fasting. Probably it’s more like 6:1 and a couple of semi fast days per week.
Cheers, Bay 🙂
Hi Purple, I’m also a grumpy old woman – have been since the age of 35 🙂
Trick or treaters get told where to go in Hermaj’s brand of eloquent English.
Hope OH has a great birthday. Question: do the two of you have ‘grandchildren on your knee: Vera, Chuck and Dave’? And I’m sure he deserves ‘birthday greetings, bottle of wine’.
Found some nice swordfish steaks today. There are cashew nuts in the cupboard. Guess whose recipe I’ll be cooking tomorrow evening? For other ladies – and gentlemen – see the LOACA recipe thread for Purple’s excellent chili fish with cashews. It’s not a fast day tomorrow so maybe we’ll have brown rice with it instead of Zero Noodles.
Hi Bay. You don’t need to worry. What you are doing obviously works. Go girl.
Hi hermaj/aka grumpy 🙂
Thanks for the cooking compliment. I do so much seafood these days, the fishing industry must be thrilled.
Last night I used a few each of scallops, king prawns, swordfish, mussels cooked really quickly in the wok with a Thai sauce (garlic, ginger, chilli, coriander, soy and fish sauce and lime juice) served on a big bowl on lettuce and pea shoots. A really yum fast night meal. What a life. ..good food and a healthy body. We CAN have it all! P 🙂
Well I have own up to being a grumpy old woman also! Luckily for me, OH likes children and seems happy to answer the door to trick or treaters (he turns indoor lights off, and uplights his face with a torch spookily to scare them!). My approach is more muttering this is England you know, not America… Anyway, now we’re in the sticks we don’t have that problem (although we are on the Carol singers rota)…
Bay, I’ve sabotaged 2 fast days this week also. Not eaten until 12 or 1, then had something light and low cal, but by 4 I’ve been on the cooking chocolate/ fruit and nut mix.
I’m up at 60kg this week, so need to be a bit disciplined. All I need is one proper fast day to drop 1lb…I’m so weak!
Another reason to get a grip is that maintenance is likely to be more challenging over winter. It’s OK for the Upsidedowners, where midwinter would be a balmy summer day here, but we get proper weather here 😉
Ooo cheeky girl Happy 😉 We can’t help it if our weather is so unbelievably bearable. No wonder our ancestors left the cold behind for the sunshine. Should I mention we’ve had another stunning day? Going out in a slinky black number only a girl weighing 57-58 could wear! I bought it 14 years ago. I promise to eat too much tonight 😉
You had best jump back on the fast wagon with some yummy veg soups. P
Hi everybody, yes @purple I am at healthy range and I am also convinced that we have a set point – a weight our bodies are meant to be. I just think my body is meant to be lighter than others as I have very fine bone structure. When I was a kid I was put into feeding camps (opposite to modern fat camps) with the result that I did so much running around playing ball sports with the kids that I usually came home with less weight!!
I don’t have this problem any more in fact in the last 15 years the weight crept up ever so slowly just a pound or two per year and I felt there was nothing I could do to stop or reverse this trend. Along came 5:2 and I have managed to lose 17lbs getting me back to where I was in my mid thirties.
My husband thinks I only lost the weight because of my constant fidgeting and not being able to sit still for any length of time. I think I have something wrong with my skeleton because I really can’t sit in one position for long and I start aching. He also maintains that nobody should be alive who is as cold as I am. I hope I don’t look that way? :-(( …or I might ‘trick or treat’ effectively…
I have only been maintaining for two months and so far I am fine, I imagine that the motivation to fast might wane when there is no weight to lose. We will see. For me it is still early days…
I cook/bake on such a large scale that it doesn’t trigger my appetite at all, if that makes sense. I never think of the food as mine – it’s always intended for others, or the freezer, or some other form of storage. I spray vinegar on mixing bowls, both to cut the grease, and to remind me not to eat the batter absent-mindedly. 🙂
Lichtle: “He also maintains that nobody should be alive who is as cold as I am”. I was always cold for most of my life and my DH was similarly startled that it was compatible with life signs 🙂 However, for the last few years, I’ve also experienced heat burst episodes that leave me purple and splashing perspiration from my face on to my lap. So, in Winter, I can alternate between a state with hands that are 9C (according to an IR thermometer) and feet that are so cold that I can scarcely feel them, and an episode of excess heat that then adds to the sense of chill because of the perspiration 🙂 It’s such a smart and elegant look. 🙂
@ssure I think when you bake in such quantities it does prevent you from eating too much. But spraying the bowl with vinegar to avoid licking? Ooooohhhhh I think I would lick – vinegar and all…
I think you are refering to the “LOACA GLOW”. Very attractive I imagine ;-)).
I entered this phase so young (in my late thirties) that I was put on HRT by my doctor due to osteoperosis running in the family. So I am very fortunate at this time in my life that I don’t have the bother of young women and the heat of a LOACA. Luckily I don’t suffer any other side effects (apart from maybe weight gain) but I have this under control now.
A couple of years ago, I stopped using the HRT for a week and I was reminded what is yet to come, but I was happy to wait for it!!
Hi, maintainers, may I join you, please?
I’m 69, 5’6″ and had weighed around 116-120lbs consistently, apart from pregnancies, from my late teens to my early 40s. In my 40s and 50s a combination of hormone changes, a very busy job and all the right things eaten in all the wrong quantities took me to around 168lb.
After I retired in 2009 I managed to get down to 145lbs, but it was hard work, and I started 5:2 at 145 in March 2013. My initial target was 126lb, but when I got there I revised downward a bit to give myself a ‘holidays and birthdays’ margin; I reached 116 in June this year, and have maintained it since.
I find the easiest maintenance plan, for me, is either a very disciplined 6:1 or a slightly-cheaty (ie maybe 700calories on fast days) 5:2., combined with lots of walking, Pilates and Fitsteps (a dance-based workout.) Like lots of you, I weigh 2-3 times a week, and have a more disciplined fast day if I gain: losing 2lb is so much easier than losing 20! But one thing I’ve never denied myself is my 2 squares of 90% chocolate each evening, with my after-dinner coffee!
Hope that’s useful to somebody! I’m really glad to have found a supportive group for this next stage: thank you all.
@fastfastslow a very warm welcome to you. You did amazingly well losing all the weight – over 50lbs is awesome. And well done for maintaining for the last four months.
It is great to hear success stories beyond ‘losing it’. There was a thread started a couple of weeks ago asking exactly that question. I suppose once people are successful and have a routine they feel that they don’t need support as much anymore. Once goal weight is reached, we can show that 5:2 is a sustainable maintenance option.
Loving your level of fitness. I am trying to do Pilates, too for my back mainly.
Hope you feel at home here soon.
Morning/evening MCS
Welcome to the fold, Fastfastslow (FFS?)
Congratulations on your success with 5:2. You have done almost exactly the same as me. I started in April 13, lost a total of 27 kg, like you, and have maintained for 6 months by also doing a ‘looser’ 5:2 combined with being strict if I have a planned social occasion or gain slightly. I don’t eat chocolate though,as I don’t like it. I do lots of walking.
Keep posting FFS as it is important that we share our experiences on this life long, life changing journey. Talk soon. Cheers P 🙂
Thanks for the welcome: I’ll keep in touch. Under no illusions that the price of staying slim and healthy will be eternal vigilance from now on! That comes hard to one who spent 40 years never needing to give it a second thought, but I feel so much better, and so happy to be ‘me’ again, that it’s worth it. Just wish I’d sorted it 25 years ago, when it first started to slide, oh, so gradually…..
Hi Ssure and Lichtle,
You’ve put the fear in me now! I’d like to laugh at your description Ssure, but at 45 I’m not sure it’s a laughing matter!
Hi FastFastSlow,
Congratulations on the weight loss and maintenance. I’ve also been maintaining since early June, mostly by fasting 16 ish hours each day and throwing in the odd 6:1 or semi-fast, and mostly low processed carbs and sugar. I don’t eat chocolate on a daily basis, but when I do it’s 70%! What a lightweight I am!
Ditto FFS
I’ve never had to diet, wish I’d heard about this 10 years ago and know it takes vigilance 🙂
On the phone and can’t scroll back (thanks JJ) I think it was Lichtle who said she was always jumping up. That’s always been me. Never sit still long and if I do I get really achey. OH is far more sedentary. That’s why I have always eaten more than him, but after I retired I sat down much more and the weight piled on. I’ve only myself to blame by not noticing.
Thanks Dr M and my supportive mates on this forum. 🙂 P
@purple. I did notice the steady weight gain over the years and I did try and diet but all I achieved was a slowing down of the inevitable trend. Once lbs gained I could not shift them any more. It was the inevitability of the steady weight gain that was demoralising and I could foresee another 20-25lbs over the next 25 years. As with @fastfastslow 5:2 would have been very welcome 15-20 years ago but still it came in time to enjoy (hopefully) many more healthy years.
Not sure if this is the place to raise this, but it’s complicatimg my maintenance, so here goes:
Anyone else have dear friends and family doing their best to sabotage them? Eg the friend who has ‘worried’ volubly about me ever since I started to lose; the close friend with whom I regularly swap home-cooked suppers and share coffee dates, who has started cooking much more calorific puddings than before and ‘just happening’ to buy a cake with coffee and need to share it; my mother suggesting Complan because she’s ‘concerned’…..All, needless to say, are quite well-padded – though I don’t point that out to them. ….I don’t go on about losing weight, or criticise them or their choices, promise; any tips for responding graciously while resisting being undermined? Smiling sweetly gets wearing, I find!
@fastfastslow I can understand your situation. I guess that our nearest and dearest somehow want their “old” friend/mother/daughter back. i wonder if there is a bit of subconscious grieving going on. I don’t even think it is envy or any such notion after all they love you.
All I can suggest is to let them know that you are happy to have reached such a healthy weight and that you want to keep it that way, which means that you plan your eating and that sometimes you will not be able to join/accept their invitation/food and ask them for their support and trust that.
I only have had a couple of ‘concerned’ comments not to go ‘too low at my age” It does not worry me too much. 🙂
Hi FastFastSlow,
I’ve found that I don’t have such a sweet tooth anymore, and now very rarely have cakes. I’m not depriving myself, I just don’t fancy it. So that’s what I say. It’s funny, the whole cake thing though and saying no. Friends presumably wouldn’t try and make you eat a boiled egg or a jellied eel…
And when people say I shouldn’t lose anymore, I say indeed I’m not losing any more, I’ve been this weight now since June. I’d love to say I won’t lose any more if you won’t gain any…!
One of my Dad’s neighbours caught him this week, to say she’d seen me when I was visiting him a couple of weeks ago, hadn’t I lost a lot of weight, I was quite thin now (she’s known me 30 years), was I ill, and I shouldn’t lose any more.
Luckily Dad is doing 5:2 himself, so just replied that I was a healthy weight and very fit, so no need to worry!
Yeah, love the thought of pushing jellied eel on visitors! You are quite right, all of you, other people seem to have great trouble coping with our successful weightloss. Are they jealous? Envious? I’m not sure, but the constant undermining is staggering. … “Oh go on…it’s an eating day isn’t it? …I made it specially for you. ..it will go to waste….it won’t hurt,… you have lost enough. ..you don’t want to get scrawny. ”
I have heard it all. I tend to say something about not needing it, tastes have changed, have already eaten.
Just be proud of what you have achieved. Dress to show off your body and hold your head high. Your body thanks you! P
Just to join in the chorus of ‘welcome’ FastFastSlow.
I’ve said this before FFS, but despite having shed 60lbs, nobody has ever mentioned it, so I’m fortunate enough not to have people pushing Complan or cake at me, nor jellied eels and hard boiled eggs 🙂
HappyNow – it’s the oddest sensation. It’s long been a truism that if you spend most of your life cold, then you’re unlikely to experience radiant heat episodes when your hormone profile changes. Well, Pah!
It really is quite the thing to be purple and dripping one moment, feeling as if a blowtorch is being played over you, then shivering as the perspiration cools on you the next. Most of my tops, including for work, are now sports technical fabrics as they’re the only way to cope – and, even so, I change the top at least 2-3 times during an average day. I lie on micro fibre towels when I go to bed and during the Summer I use more micro fibre to blot dry myself and to provide a quick release cover for when the temperature-drop shivers start.
I shall be very glad when this stops. [/whine]
Hey Ho, it’s Friday so it’s one of my usual 4:3 days. I still have a lot of baking to do when I get home but looking forward to the weekend.
Good Luck to fellow Friday fasting maintainers.
@ssure, when do you think this will stop? 😉
I have a friend who is 96 and she still “glows”. My mum at 80 – too. Not heard it told quite so eloquently by any of them, though. 😉 Starting to save up for technical sports clothing 3 x 7 = 21 (top and bottom) and additional wardrobe. Wow, if this isn’t an incentive not to change clothing size, it could bancrupt someone. Well, lets keep fasting then…
Sorry guys, but I’m not sure it ever stops – think my thermostat is gone for good! HRT is brilliant – but be warned, it postpones rather than avoiding, as it starts again when someone takes away the little pink pills….it does seem to slow down to more manageable frequency/intensity, but I guess it’s now a friend for life. Try to think ‘power surge’!
And what a out the ‘size-8-body-in-size-16- skin’ syndrome? Any (non surgical) ideas?
Oh dear, I’m quite outdoorsy and warm blooded anyway and have always experienced flushes in the office or friends houses that are hotter than ours. And I always overheat in the night once I’m up to temperature. Is there a future risk of spontaneous combustion or perhaps total melting (I’d say like an icecap or glacier, but they don’t come in my size 🙂 )?
Lichtle, I thought the severe episodes would stop within a few months so I was a bit wrong with that estimate. Of course, several years later…but, Oh No! Please not until I’m approaching my century 🙂
I thought it would be bad enough if it were to continue until I reached 55 or so but the thought that it continues substantially beyond that is wretched. I can only hope that the frequency and intensity diminish or I’m going to be a very oddly-dressed Senior Citizen some day – not so much, When I’m An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple as frequently appearing to be purple and clad in inappropriately coloured technical sportswear.
I also wear non-grip socks whenever I can to stop the elastic digging into my legs and causing a groove. I’m such a dandy…
FastFastSlow – “And what a out the ‘size-8-body-in-size-16- skin’ syndrome? Any (non surgical) ideas?”
Sadly, none. This is a frequent topic of discussion on other fora, particularly for people who’ve lost 100-250lbs or so and the general consensus is that it’s surgery or making peace with it in as comfortable a way as practical. And remember to take good personal care of any substantial skin folds so that yeast infections don’t gain a firm footing. Oh, the glamour and the humanity…
I’m afraid I can’t really help on the subject of loss of elasticity and excess skin.
I have never been a dieter (I always understood it needed a lifestyle change, not a diet, but didn’t know how to make the change). Luckily for me 5:2 came along before I had gained too much (I was overweight but not obese). So my excess (28ish lbs) was not sufficient to leave me with a lot of excess skin.
However, I have a lot of stretch marks (just through normal puberty, not massive weight gain; bad genes I guess).
So in tight trousers my thighs are slim. Unfettered, my inner thighs are those of an old lady..no structural skin integrity.
And my breasts, sad pancakes of their former selves, are never going to be those of a 20 year old (except maybe in zero gravity).
After 5 months these things don’t look so bad as they did initially. Has their appearance improved, or am I now more accepting/ less critical of the new me?
Hi gang
I’ve been off the air since yesterday but didn’t know. I thought it was quiet!
Ssure…dress in purple as an old woman.? I already do and look ok!
Happy, I think your skin changes after losing weight, especially if you moisturise it. Remember (QI fact) every skin cell is being replaced at a phenomenal rate, so nothing is set in stone (or skin)
Regarding flushes, I started getting them in my early 40s and also got migraines. Eventually I got on to Remifemin, a herbal compound to relieve menopause symptoms. It worked for the migraines, but (sorry) at 63 I still often wake up in a pool of sweat. I’m always tossing the quilt off and then shivering and pulling it back. OH is used to it. I wear tshirt fabric nighties to absorb the sweat!
Like Happy I’ve always been someone who moves around a lot and gets hotter than others. I am not into drugs so wouldn’t consider HRT (too many doubts about it) but obviously some people find it works for them.
Lovely swimming day here in Sydney. Not conducive to any work. Ah well. P 🙂
Evening/ afternoon P!
Thought you’d been quieter than normal! Thought perhaps you’d gone away for the weekend or got house guests… And there you were thinking we’d all gone away!
Sounds like another hard day at the office for you 🙂
Definitely not swimming weather here 🙁
I’m hoping it will decent enough for a run later. If not it will be jumping jacks in the kitchen again!
59.7 this morning. Will have to keep am eye on it though, as my activity levels will be much lower over winter (tomorrow will be the first of our long dark winter nights…)
PVE, it’s the poem, Warning, by Jenny Joseph.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter…
HappyNow – oh, these auto-corrects but that’s a good correction to need to make. 🙂
Off to paddle – never happier than when on the water.
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21 Oct 14