Hi DG,

From what you are saying you don’t eat because you are hungry. Is that a fair comment? Certain foods release dopamine (feel good hormone) and the two foods you mention contain a lot of sugar. Bread is turned into maltose in your mouth (two glucose rings joined together), it is then turned into glucose shortly after leaving your stomach. Lots will argue otherwise but I consider bread to be junk food. Cherries contain fructose (and glucose) once again it will release dopamine. Add insult to injury fructose inhibits lepton signalling (tells your brain you don’t need to eat anymore).

No easy solution, you will have a hard time of it for about 1-2 months. Fasting coupled with eating whole foods (bread is not a whole food, its highly processed!!) will help establish a better relationship with your food. Being at ease with fasting will probably take about 6 months. Does fasting coupled with eating whole unprocessed foods work? Absolutely, it really boils down to you.

Just trying to give you a realistic picture. I went from 202 down to 154 lbs. Been in maintenance about 3 years now

Hi DG,
Yes I consider bread, pasta, pizza, biscuits , cookies, cakes, breakfast cereals all highly processed junk. They are treat foods, to be had maybe once per week. Your liver is supposed to act as a two way processing centre. It takes excess carbs and stores then as glycogen and then fat. When glucose levels are low it takes stored fats and turns it into glucose and ketones (fat burning). It is this second action that the liver becomes very lazy at doing. Like any other organ or muscle it becomes inefficient if you don’t exercise it. I just went cold turkey when I decided to try fasting, I still do it every Monday but not for weight loss anymore. Try cold turkey see if you can do it. Or try it gradually see if it works. Try skipping breakfast and see if you can make it to lunch. Or it you cant manage that try a low carb breakfast. Bacon and eggs. No bread or cereals. No fruit juice!!!! Pure junk. You want fruit eat a whole apple.

Good luck with it.

One should be careful with refined carbs, that I can agree with. I just disagree that going from one extreme to another is okay. Most people like bacon, but bacon is probably just as bad for a person as white bread. Just trading one set of bad problems for another. Once in while it should be fine, everyday though is asking for problems. It might work well for losing weight for some people, but please don’t consider it a healthy alterative.

Look, I am a weakling when it comes to food and drink and have to be really mentally strong to get through a 5:2 day. I was recently given a present of a bottle of PENDERYN Welsh Single Malt whisky with a Madeira finish. Welsh Whisky for goodness sake, who would have thought it?. Yes I know the Japanese make whisky and Sean Connery has even advertised it. (Shame on you). I have to say that this Penderyn is very good and yes, every sip I took made me feel guilty about the calories I was putting on. The good news!!! is that I have just finished the last of the bottle so back to sparkling water for me.

Hi DG,

Ok none of us are psychologists and what you’ve said so far indicates that you are not consuming food as a source of nutrition. Its for “other” reasons. For me it was simple, I didn’t know what healthy food was. Did some research came to my own conclusions, started eating “my healthy foods” and the weight came off and has stayed off. But what you are saying doesn’t fall into this category. So what is your worst “poison food”? Cookies, ice cream, chocolate? Bite the bullet and don’t buy those foods any more. Don’t have them in the house. As a family unit we bit the bullet and stopped buying biscuits/cookies. The kids whinged at first but now they don’t miss them at all. So get rid of your biggest comfort food and replace it with apples, or carrots or whatever. Just make it healthy.

Try Becky, she explains things in a simple manner and has a method where you eliminate one bad food but you must replace it with one good food.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDI1UamF_gYPizV-R3LKjtw

There is a book by Jason Fung that really helped me called The Complete Guide to Fasting. Very easy to read, I borrowed it from the library after it was recommended, but I am going to buy my own as a reference book (for the dark days!)

Hi DG,
If I was going to save you from all of the mistakes that I have made it would be, in no particular order, stop adding sugar to hot drinks(I gave up after 40+ years), give up added sugar(usually means shop bought breakfast cereals, jar tomato sauce, fruit yoghurts, anything low fat/diet), stop snacking(3 meals a day but make breakfast optional), don’t celebrate a FD with an Almond Croissant(just treat it as an ordinary day-its noting special, a third of the worlds population is supposed to last throughout their lives(Fung), eat whole unprocessed food.

Take a look at Jason Fung The Obesity Myth. He states that Obesity is a hormonal disorder of fat regulation and that Insulin is the major hormone that drives weight gain. He also argues that refined grains(bread/pasta/noodles/wraps/cakes etc) stimulate insulin production more than virtually any food. It makes sense to avoid them and after some gentle encouragement from bigbooty, I did. I wondered what on earth I was going to eat(fussy, not a fan of vegetables). I then tried rice and pasta separately and found that I felt so sleepy(sugar crash) so now I rarely have them and I feel better.

I actually eat meat/fish with salad or raw vegetables, cheese, eggs, nuts, full fat milk, full fat yoghurt, fruit, avocados. I make hummus-very easy. Instead of spreading things on bread, I eat whole food with cutlery. Its really easy.

Fung argues that long term weight loss is dependant on 2 factors-what we eat and meal timing. To break insulin resistance-fast. I have just finished a 24 hour fast-ate dinner last night, skipped breakfast and lunch and broke my fast with a pile of cherry tomatoes/cole slaw and prawns, followed by a banana and some fresh apricots. I will eat nothing else, sleep and then have breakfast tomorrow.

The reason that you are hungry and snacking is those beige carbs-ditch them and swop them for a handful of nuts or a banana. Nothing else.

I have come a long way from that round little person that thought that she would collapse in a heap if she didn’t eat for half and hour, used to hide food, felt rubbish and completely fed up with my shape and size. There is 3 stone less of me, I have a waist, 3 dress sizes smaller, love new clothes, my knees don’t hurt going up stairs and I am not breathless or really slow going up hill.

I haven’t noticed any difference in my mood and the family isn’t telling me that I am grumpy. I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to do any fasting but we are all designed to fast, its not nearly as bad as you think it is going to be. I also found that I felt so much better on a FD that I started to change what I ate on a NFD.

So give up lunch instead of breakfast if you must have breakfast. Or Dinner? If youre not ready to reduce any one of those three meals then you may not be ready to start youre journey. I place a lot more importance on what you eat rather than how much you eat. But that’s me. So what exactly is a luxury breakfast? If youre hungry two hours later I suspect it consists of a lot of refined carbs. Only you can start youre journey. Good luck.

When I started fasting it was by skipping snacks/supper. I didn’t want to give up breakfast and it turns out skipping supper is probably healthier. However, it is sometimes a real social problem.

After some number of fasts, I noticed I didn’t like being overfull so much. That helped curbed my overeating. Sometimes I still overeat like this last weekend, but now my overeating is a fraction of what it used to be.

Avoiding added refined sugar also helps a lot. We I do have refined sugars I notice I will eat a lot more and feel driven to eat.

Have really enjoyed reading all your posts. I only joined the forum yesterday. Today was my first fast day. To my surprise, it was not so hard, my problem is lunch, all my colleagues go together and I used too as well. Not that I was that hungry. Just a habit. Nothing more, nothing less, a habit.

Relationship with food is complex. I’ve tried many diets but the science is simple. Too many calories, especially certain simple carbohydrates or fats, and you know the rest. But no matter what excuses we make, there is always a choice, although may be difficult at the time, the choice is there. Nonone is forcing us to eat. We chose.

By reading the many inspirational stories on this forum, I am determined to be one of the success stories. Like other things in life, amazing what we can achieve if we put our mind to it.

@purplevilet – Welcome!

@delayedgratification – Changes can be scary but sometimes after you make them you find what you were doing was harder. For example the change that really started turning things around for me was greatly reducing my refined sugar consumption. The first step was giving up a daily ice cream bar that I really liked. I had even worked it into a calorie restrictive diet. I gave it up for a few weeks and then noticed my constant hunger was pretty much gone. I felt so much better without the hunger I cut more sugar and over a period of four months I lost 6kg. I was even eating more food in terms of calories because I started replace sweets with nuts and cheese. Before the change I couldn’t lose weight and I was gaining fat. After getting my refined sugar consumption down I was eating more food and losing fat. A side effect is I really felt much better too. Scary change but I’m happy I made it and right now I wouldn’t go back. The way I eat now is much better and more enjoyable. My tastes have also changed a lot.

So just make a change and see what happens. There worst thing is you go back to where you already are.

@pv. Way to go. Lets hope that your success will help DG jump on board.

Way to go DG. No bread!! Your body will be thanking you. 🙂 Apples so lots of soluble and insoluble fibre (make sure apples aren’t peeled).

So, I don’t know if this is valuable for you. I have a complicated relationship with carb based foods. If I were left to my own devices I could probably eat nothing but fat and carbs forever.. But I’ve been reading that some of that may be stress triggered. Knowing that, for some reason helps. I mean I can’t tell you why knowing that would make a difference, but there you are.

I don’t like carbs less, I just feel less compelled by them.

Instead of avoiding carbs, which I enjoy, (and life is short and why not eat some damn cake every now and then for goodness sake) I try to just make sure that I’m eating a healthy proportion of carbs. For a while I was trying to do one third carbs one third protein and one third fat. The truth is I just couldn’t cram in that much protein (and fat can be a struggle too.) I mean what are you supposed to do at 8 at night when you still need to eat a bazillion grams of protein? Mainline liver? Now I’m trying to eat 24% protein and that’s a lot more sustainable.

I um… also started taking antidepressants. It took about six months, but it’s really improved my relationship with food. Now, I’m not recommending welbutrin as a weight loss tool. I mean I started taking them because I was depressed and a doctor thought I should. But sometimes that’s a component in the happy carb merry go round.

My carbs come from fruit and vegetables in the main. Nothing is banned but as time ticks on I find that I want the cakes less and less because I feel better without. I cannot be bothered to look at the proportion of what I eat in terms of protein/fat/carbs because I think it is important to consume good fat in terms of butter, eggs, cheese, full fat yoghurt and milk, nuts and avocados. I like fish and meat, so eat them regularly simply cooked with unprocessed fruit and vegetables. Anything that comes in a box is something that I rarely eat.

If anti depressants help then that is great. I find that my mood is better with a combination of out walking every day(I don’t have a car so walk 45 mins each way to work in wind/rain/sun). I also find that eating simple food makes me feel better, but the pasta/rice makes me feel sluggish and tired.

Depression is nothing to be embarrassed about and it isn’t something that you can choose to have or not, rather like a broken limb or chronic disease. If we had a choice, we would all be as fit and healthy as was humanly possible, but the best that we can do is make the most of what we have and do anything that helps.

My son had severe depression and failed his first year at university when he came home a complete shell, a fragile gaunt desperately unhappy young man. The plus was that he was very compliant and trusted me to do what was best for him. He tried a whole range of antidepressants until we found the right ones/dosage for him. He also had ‘talking therapy’ which has been very helpful. Exercise helps to lift his mood and he cooks nutritious food for himself too. He is much better and with support seems to be flourishing without the antidepressants but counselling.

I think that mental health is where cancer was 5 years ago in terms of people being open and talking about it. If you find the antidepressants helpful then that is great, but look at talking therapies too. There is no harm in eating food that nourish both body and soul , as well as getting out and about in the sunshine.

Have any of you seen ‘The truth about carbs?’ a BBC programme. Very interesting. I had no idea that the sugar from a baked potato could equate to 19 sugar cubes which may convert to fat if not used.

A GP selected patient volunteers who were overweight or had type 2 diabetics. He wanted to see what carbs affected blood sugar(they were wearing monitors). Aim for porridge or eggs. Swop beige(biscuits/cakes) and white carbs(rice/pasta/white bread) for green carbs(fruit/vegetables).

Being clever with carbs can also reduce bowel cancer which is linked with obesity. Eat more foods high in fibre. Also the effects of white/beige carbs on infertility and impact on the next generation. Fascinating.

Low carb volunteers after 2 weeks-didn’t struggle, reduced weight(7LB EACH) and waistlines, diabetics-blood sugar control was improved and on the way to reversing their diabetes!

Reduce rice/pasta/white bread.

While it is true that many of the starches break down into glucose it isn’t as horrible as the added refined sugar which also breaks down quickly and often is about 50% fructose. That is a simple sugar that can really cause problems. So I don’t think it is fair to claim a baked potato equates to 19 sugar cubes as there will be very little fructose in a baked potato. However a sugar cube is 50% fructose.

Blood sugar can have complex behavior. For example when I workout hard in the fasted state my blood glucose often goes up into the pre-diabetic range and often it is much lower after eating my breakfast. That isn’t what one would expect as I often have multiple servings of fruit with my oatmeal. However I’m measuring blood glucose which doesn’t monitor the fructose in my blood.

I am really pleased DG that you have had the experience. It certainly makes you think doesn’t it? Don’t worry about the calories. Now you know what cake can do, try avoiding pasta for a week or so and then have some and see how you feel/what happens.