Have you tried consuming up to your TDEE on 5 days and up to 600 calories on the 2 FD?

If you look under ‘resources’ at the top of the page, there is a drop down menu, select ‘bmi calculator’, which is all carefully explained. It is very easy to undo your good work if you eat and drink with abandon on the other days.

This is not a diet, but a way of life. You can eat what you like, just not how much you want. There will have to be changes if you want to lose weight and keep it off.

Can I suggest 2 books that have helped me? One is ‘that sugar book’ by Damon Gameau(it will change the way that you think about healthy food) and the other one is ‘fat chance, the hidden truth about sugar, obesity and disease-the basic premise is that we are not overweight because we are weak and feeble with no will power etc, but simply because our biochemistry was designed when lives were very different. He is an endocrinologist who dispels the diet myths, explains what happens when we eat and how we become fat…and what to eat to become healthier and slimmer. Nothing weird, good food, avoid anything that has diet or low fat too.

Hi crican,

Unfortunately eat anything you want does not mean eat as much as you want. 5:2 works well but neither Michael or Mimi had much weight to lose because they didn’t overeat to the extent that the majority of us have. Many of us have a large number of pounds/kilos to eat due to years of overeating and have no sense of portion control.
I’ve being following this WOE for almost three years with a couple of breaks where I regained some of the weight lost. Prior to this I’ve been on every diet under the sun, always lost weight and always regained it plus more. I am finally succeeding in getting rid of my bad eating habits but old habits die hard.
Today I am 28.5 kilos less than when I started and am determined to keep going and lose the remaining 9.5.It hasn’t always been easy and I gained a few kilos in the middle of last year and am finding it difficult to get back to losing weight again as I’m eating too much on non fast days and undoing all the good work which is somewhat frustrating.I know I can do it and won’t be giving up any time soon.

My suggestion would be to do as annette suggests and calculate your TDEE and then do 5:2 for two weeks counting every calorie every day. It is a bit of a chore but it will be an eye opener for you when you realise exactly how many calories are in your meals and equip you with the knowledge you need to eat well but not over TDEE on non fast days.

Good luck.

5:2 is simple you just follow the pattern and you will lose weight. That the simple part.

If you have only water on fast days you will loose more weight. How much is the question maybe a 1/3 of a pound more. But you may see increased health benefits and greater weight loss because you will spend more time in the “fat burning” stage

Here is where I get windy ……

5:2 Fasting is caloric restriction.

1. Calculate your TDEE using the BMI tool under resources at the top of the page. http://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day/

2. Fast days are 36 hours stop eating on the evening prior to fast day, sleep, get up fast, sleep get up and eat normally. Do this twice a week.

During the fast day you can eat 25% (1/4) of you TDEE Example Male 45 at 177 CM tall and 100 Kg with a sedentary lifestyle the TDEE would be 2264 Cal. Fast day intake allowed would be 566 Cal (I’d round it down to 500) which gives you a caloric deficit each fast day of 1764 on the fast day. Times 2 = 3528 which equates about a pound weight loss a week. Have zero calories on fast day and you add another 1000 calories deficit per week

Now everyone is different and your mileage may vary.

I suggest keeping a food diary recording everything that goes into your mouth. ie Vitamin C chewable table 8 calories each. No name brand multivitamin 5 calories. 1 pistachio nut 4 calories. 1/3 of cup (a palm full)adds 109 Calories. Knowing where your energy is coming from can show you where things have a tendency to add up and send you off the rails.

If you have a metabolism that is low for some reason and there are many who have metabolic disorders. You will have to adjust your TDEE accordingly.

Alternate fasting as proposed by Dr. Varaday will cause you to loose weight. Provided your normal diet isn’t double what your caloric intake should be. Ie. your TDEE is 2264 and you normally eat 4528 calories. You’d have a zero calorie deficit and not lose weight. In Dr.Varaday’s initial study it showed on feast days people consumed 125% of their normal diet so you would gain weight.

Weight lose is a total required energy to move around and exist through the day, (TDEE) minus energy reduction. Reduce energy two ways restrict intake ie. fast or increase the use of stored energy (fat) through exercise and movement or both calorie restriction and exercise. It takes a LOT of exercise to loose a pound. 200 lb person would have to walk around and extra 11 hours a week to loose 1 pound.

Hi LA, I’m completely with you regarding grains. I had been doing beautifully this month, avoided all processed carbs and sugar, not feeling deprived at all, fasted regularly and ate under my tdee on nfds. I then ate out on Tuesday, ordered a lovely salad which unexpectedly came with a warm half baguette which unfortunately I couldn’t resist. Since then I’ve craved and given in to bread every day and ended up around 500 cals over my tdee every day. I’ve also wanted, and eaten chocolate too. Bread is clearly a massive trigger for me and to be avoided. Determined to get “clean” again from today. I felt so much better before the bread attack so onwards and upwards and have learned something important about myself. Hopefully when I get to my target weight I will be able to find a way to enjoy bread occasionally without sabotaging myself.

In short: no, there is nothing magical about 600 cals. It simply means you don’t get as hungry or frustrated and therefore are more like to continue the diet. Zero cals is better if you want quicker weight loss.

Interesting post. What is sad or bad about 5:2.

Diets are done by people who overeat. That is, eat more than their bodies need.

Diets work because people eat less than they need, the body uses its reserves of fat, and they lose weight. Job done.

Diets don’t fail. They are hugely successful.

The sad thing is that people fail. They end the diet, which is fine, some people then figure out how much their bodies need to maintain weight. Most people however, start the whole cycle once again eating more than they need, and put the weight back on, and usually more.

5:2 isn’t sad or bad, it is a great way of, first of all stopping weight gain, and then weight loss. It is better than a diet because there are no food restrictions, and two rules. Severely restrict two days a week and eat what your body needs on 5 days. It helps us to understand what our body needs by showing if we eat little or nothing two days a week, we don’t die, or eat our arm, or faint from hunger, or even actually feel the need to stand in front of the fridge and grab everything in sight.

A revelation to many over eaters!

To understand ‘feast’ we need to understand that, when 5:2 is done by people who don’t overeat, who are able to manage to eat exactly what they need to maintain their weight, and therefore don’t have fat reserves from overeating, they can, and should, ‘feast’ ie overeat, to make up for the calories they missed on fast days.

So 5:2 might be for life, perhaps purely for the health benefits. The evidence of millions of people successfully completing diets and then regaining the weight suggests that retraining the brain to work out how much the body needs would be either a long-term or even a lifetime commitment. Especially as we need a lot less food at our target weight that the amount we can eat at the beginning of the 5:2 journey.

So be pleased that, with 5:2, once you have reached your target weight, as long as you continue with 5:2, you CAN FEAST on your feast days. You will have to overeat to maintain your target weight. As long as it isn’t too much feasting, alternatively feast less and fast less, like most people who do 6:1 to maintain. Or your brain may have figured out by then how much you need every day for the rest of your life and you can stop 5:2. Which would be good, but a pity to abandon 5:2 and its health benefits.

Your choice, your rules.

Food for thought eh???

Avoid anything ‘diet’ or ‘low fat’ too as they are all full of sugar. Full fat yoghurt is lower sugar than the diet! Jar tomato sauces are also very high in sugar, so make your own. Sweeteners play havoc with the liver and are best avoided too.

Have a look at ‘that sugar book’ by Damon Gameau-“this book will change the way you think about ‘healthy’ food” and another is ‘fat chance, the hidden truth about sugar, obesity and disease’ by Dr Robert Lustig-full od advice on what to eat and what to avoid and why. Explains how we get fat, why diets don’t work etc.

I have given up sugar in my tea now-after 40+ years and eat less processed and more wholefoods, with the result that I feel better, am shrinking and eat far less of the sweet stuff.

5:2 isn’t a diet it’s a pattern of eating. So you won’t fail a diet. All of us are successful eaters, overly successful most of us.

Working at 5:2 being conscious of what we are doing and why, mindful of the purpose in doing this pattern. Thinking about everything we are going to consume before we do, “is this going to advance me in this pattern or send me in a direction I don’t want to go?”

I suggest keeping a strict food diary every bite you take for as long as you can stick to doing it. This will show you that yeah I grazed on that handful of pistachios from the bowel every time I passed it at 109 calories each time. It adds up. So does taste testing when you’re cooking. I was getting up to 250 calories a day extra at times.

Think before consuming.

5:2 isn’t difficult it’s easy 1. fast two days a week for 36 hours. 2. Eat within your TDEE the other 5. Keep on keeping on and you’ll get to where you’re going. Forget where you came from and where you’re going (and why) and you will get lost.

Hi Newburk, the answer to your question is in the 5:2 documentary in which Dr Mosley looked at different types of fasting, and the health benefits.
Because he found the strict fasting wasn’t sustainable for his life, he checked whether a light fast (arguably not a fast at all, but it is an easy term for it) two days a week, would bring the health benefits associated with stricter fasting. It did. It also led to losing weight, which is why it has become so popular.
Check out the documentary, the book, or many of the articles that have been written about it and you should find all the information.

Cinque and simcoeluv have explained the usual 5:2 method to you and provided some excellent sources of background and additional information. There are, however, variations including the Alternate Day Easting described in the documentary.

I do 5:2 and I do it in probably the way you first anticipated. I do a water fast on Saturdays and Sundays when I can be active at things that interest me and distract me. Then, during the week, I have a large (huge actually) salad of cold vegetables and greens for lunch and a conventional meal of protein (animal protein for me) and veggies for dinner. I feel great during and about my fasts. I enjoy my food days. I mean I can take genuine pleasure in them even though they are sugar and starchy carb free.

I do it this way because it’s much easier for me than restricting myself to 500 calories. The hunger I experience over the course of 64 hours is minimal and, as Dr. Mosely says in the documentary, it doesn’t get worse and worse, it waxes and wanes. OTOH, if I (that’s me personally not at all necessarily you) if I ate 500 calories I would want 500 more in about an hour and 500 more the next hour and 500 more after that. I would be resisting and fighting that continually. Even if that weren’t the end of my 5:2 program it would make it fairly miserable on a weekly basis whereas I’ve been able to do it with my variation very comfortably and with good success for 5-6 weeks with no reason at all to stop.

You should start with the guidelines, Newburk, and see how it works for you. If you are left wanting there are other variations including 16:8 (a pattern of fasting and eating within a 24 hour day), alternate days, complete fasting and probably combinations thereof that may be more ideally suited to you.

And, of course, there is this forum where you can get support, ask more questions and discuss what you’ve found to work. Best of luck with it. Bet you’ll actually feel better the very first week! I know I did!

Hi Crican

I am concerned that some people have reported no improvement in their cholesterol reading. I am doing the 5:2 for my cholesterol, while appreciating that a little weight loss may come along with it. I do not tolerate statins well, which is frightening, as I must find a way to get my cholesterol number down. And I have always had blood sugar issues, too, so am hoping that will improve. Love this group therapy!