Weight always goes up and down as our bodies do the amazing complex things they do! So long as you are trending down, try to just let it go and enjoy. Tummies often look fatter in the evening. You are losing well!

Hi Kilsh,

Youre losing 1 pound per day? Im suggesting that might be some water as well as real weight unless your TDEE is about 5000 cal per day? As long as you think its sustainable Id stick to it. Only you can answer that. Without being too delicate the food you eat has to travel south for a while before it leaves you. I normally put on about 2 pounds for the week before starting my 2 fast days. As long as youre heading in the right direction then all is good.

Hi Kilsh and welcome:

Your experience is common. The body can easily gain/lose two or more pounds a day ‘for no reason’. Of course, there is a reason. The usual reason is a combination of water retention and the weight of ‘food in transit’. On your diet days, your water weight is reduced as is your food in transit weight. When you next eat, a pound of food of any type and two 8 ounce glasses of liquid and you have gained two pounds. People that weigh daily just get used to it and work on averages.

This same concept explains short term (one to three week) ‘plateaus’. If you weigh weekly and weigh in on a day with low water retention and low food in transit weight you will get a nice low weight reading. If on the next weigh in you have high water retention and high food in transit weight, you will not see any weight loss and may see a weight gain. In addition, if the person has instituted an new or higher level of exercise they may retain more water which also masks any fat weight loss.

When you put the above in the context of a diet where the average woman loses less than a pound a week, you can see that fat weight loss can easily be masked by ‘external factors’. See: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/tdee-for-the-curious-or-why-dont-i-lose-weight-faster/ That is why weight loss on 5:2 or any other diet is not consistent, but goes in ‘chunks’ – no loss, no loss, 2 pounds down. But over time, weight loss will occur – you just have to be patient. See: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/really-no-weight-loss/

Your weight loss is largely water so far – people that eat nothing only lose on average a pound or less a day. As you are eating 4 or 5 days a week, your ‘real’ weight loss will be less than that. You might also expect that your rate of weight loss will slow or plateau as you have less water weight to lose and must rely on ‘real’ weight loss to continue your downtrend. There is nothing wrong or unusual about this, but if you expect to continue losing at your current rate you will be very disappointed.

Good Luck!