Di – I hope you can make it work for you. I have never had to be on a diet – up until recently I’ve been someone who exercised all the time but I have some injuries that have curbed my exercising – 3 lots of knee surgery and now a problem with my shoulder due to too much swimming (up to 9hrs a week) that is proving hard to diagnose and resolve so… I felt I had to do something as I’d put on a bit of weight and I didn’t like it. Firstly – I agree with the people on here who have kept reminding me to think of this as a “lifestyle choice” not a “diet” – you said this in so many words yourself – “the health benefits” – there are many listed in the Moseley book. I’m almost at my target weight of 84kg (now been bobbing around 84.1 – 84.4 for a week) – down from 90.1kg and started on Jan 16th. Even when I hit my target I will continue with 5:2 for a bit – not sure how long – weeks, months – and see what happens – I don’t think I need to be any lower but I now see 5:2 as being a part of my life forever. You will see plenty of people who have said it’s straightforward – it’s not complicated to do – 5 days of the week you are not pre-occupied with what you eat – however, i think you will find your start adopting better eating habits – many people say your sense of taste changes – I found that it has – vegetables and fruit taste a lot more vibrant to me now and I’m eating foods that I rarely used to eat – I am going mad for tangerines (not the easy peel oranges which are usually mandarins) and grapefruit (in particular). I think it is pretty easy to do – I find on the 5:2 (the fasting) days I just don’t even think about food – in fact – I have my most productive days of the week and just get on with “doing things” – I took on an allotment and about a week ago, on a 5:2 day, I left the house at 10:30am and was down on the plot until it was starting to go dark at 7:30pm – never ate a thing or even thought about it. One of the most important things I have leaned is that we often eat for no particular reasons – it’s definitely not in response to hunger – it’s often habit or opportunity (you have bought tempting, unhealthy food and it’s in the house) or simply just mindless – I can’t really describe it any other way. With the fasting days you get to experience hunger (this only at first – really it doesn’t take more than a couple of weeks of fasting to get used to that feeling of hunger and then to start not really noticing it – often I just drink some herbal tea or just hot water). Anyway on 5:2 days I did get some thoughts about hunger but these days I rarely feel it and hence don’t have the need to even think about eating. I hope you will take to it – don’t think of it as a 3 month thing – this is probably going to be good for you if you can adopt it for life – because of that timescale I don’t think there is any need to stress out about not hitting targets or having days or weeks where nothing seems to be happening – the important thing is not to stress over it and just “keep going”. I think it’s a good choice for you as you have clearly tried other methods so I really hope you can get into it, tough out the first few fasting days and stick with it. I often look forward to my 5:2 days – I get a sense of achievement from doing it – the hard part at the start was not to ruin the 5:2 day by eating unhealthy things at the end of the day – just say to yourself – tomorrow – I can eat this stuff – and you can. Good luck – I found this a helpful and supportive community and I find the science and research around fasting to be an interesting topic to learn about – I have encouraged a few friends and family to look at 5:2. I hope it works out for you – it could change your health and life forever in many positive ways.