Rockville, it’s fine for your first fast. Varying your fast day diet will also help keep you from boredom. Yesteday, I had a hard boiled egg for starters, a cup of miso with mushrooms at 1 pm, and then a shrimp kimchi taco at dinner.

Sounds like it was a good day, Rockville. Let me know what alternatives you find in the book. I plan on chicken breasts, fish, canned salmon or tuna. Tonight I put imitation crab on a big salad — not sure that’s the perfect health food but I do like it!

Hi Rockville — I looked up the calorie count of a 4 oz chicken breast and it said 142 calories. I think 4oz, especially on a Fast day, would be a good amount. Don’t know if you have a kitchen scale…… I just used balsamic vinegar on my salad. Just looked it up and it is 14 cal per TBSP. I thought it was very tasty and didn’t miss the regular dressing. I was ravenous this afternoon! Really hungry! Made my huge salad around 5:00. Ate half of it and then the other half at 7:30. It was just lots of lettuce, chopped red pepper, imitation crab and then the balsamic. Quite tasty and filling. Almost bed time so I feel like I’ve done OK on the first fast day! Sounds like you did too.

Beware all the hidden sugars in foods. Balsamic can be up to 50% sugar content. Use pure vinegar instead.

Thanks for that that information on the balsamic vinegar, Bigbooty. Mine says 15 calories for a TBSP and 3 grams of sugar. I probably right around a TBSP. To me, it still gives flavour but way less fat and sugar than a regular dressing so I’ll keep up with it. But I never would have thought of checking if you hadn’t mentioned it. So thanks.

Hey RS — So Tuesdays and Thursdays will be your Fast days? That seems to be a good combo for lots of people. I think my plan is to just see what the week is like and which days would be easier to fast on. So I think this week I’ll do Tuesday and tomorrow, Friday. I ate normally today but ‘normal’ was quite a bit. I had dinner with friends and then out to a book club group — there is always wine and nibblies. For the dessert, I skipped the cake but had yogurt and berries. I’ll try to make little changes like that. But I think since I ate a fair amount, I’m actually looking forward to fasting tomorrow. Glad the tuna went well today for you. That can be such a nice quick and easy protein. Have you weighed yourself at all? I was going to weigh daily but now I think I’ll just weigh weekly……can be discouraging I think to weigh too often and not have the scale budge!

Morning rlw66. Congrats on the 4.5lbs! That is excellent. I was going to weigh myself daily but I think I’ll do the once-a-week weigh-in. My first day on the 5:2 was a fast day and I was down one pound but haven’t weighed since. Today will be a Fast Day foo. Then I’ll weigh myself on Monday.

I found my first Fast Day not too hard — certainly got pretty hungry in the middle of the day. But I stuck with it. Skipped my usual glass of wine with nuts in the evening. Felt better the next day. Lighter. Very encouraging.

Have a good day everyone.

Today was my second Fast Day. It’s gone very well. I wasn’t nearly as hungry as the first one. Friday was going to be my Fast Day and I was half way through the day when I got an invitation to friends for dinner. So I decided to skip the Fast Day! That’s one of the things I really like about this way of eating (trying not to call it a diet which makes it sound like something you go on and off of). If one day doesn’t work out, it just means the next day might. There is no real going off this ‘diet’ because ‘off’ just can mean one of the regular days. I think I’ll weigh myself in the morning.

Good to hear from you Rockville. Glad it’s going well for you. I’m in my second week too and today is my second fast day of this week. I’m amazed at how well this is going for me, too. I have lost 3.5 lbs and just feel lighter. I love the feeling of never feeling stuffed. My typical fast day is a smoothie I make with blueberries and almond milk along with other things like protein powder, chia seeds, etc. It comes in at just under 300 calories. Then for dinner I have a huge salad with mostly greens and some red pepper and tomato. Protein might be a small amount of fish, chicken or imitation crab. I figure it at 200 calories.
On my non-fast days, I eat similarly but I’ll add things like avocado to my salad and then I’ll have it or something similar for lunch too. I’ll eat more nuts on my non-fast day, too. I still have wine when I’m socializing but on the days when I’m on my own in the evenings, I don’t have wine and I’m surprised at how easy that is for me…..and how much I actually enjoy not having the wine. I think the wine always made me eat more in the evenings. I am so enjoying this 5:2 plan. I really like that it is not something that you can really fall off of……if I have a day where I eat too much — fine. Just have another day be the Fast Day. Somehow it makes more sense to me than other diets have. Enjoy your day!