Hello you long-term 5:2 dieters!

Has anyone else had a “lull” in their regime?

Is this a “normal” phase of adjustment for the body?

What did you do to make your metabolism pick up the pace again?

I am now starting my 8th week in this nutrition lifestyle, and I was beginning to have my doubts over it’s long-range effectiveness. The reason being was that I had ZERO WEIGHT LOSS over Week 6. I kept losing a few inches, but the weight was still hanging in there.

Then I read about TDEE, and I thought, “Oh, no! You’ve got to count calories again?

I thought this was all about ‘you can eat what you want on feed days’ and ‘you never-ever have to count calories’!”

Well, I didn’t want to get out the food scale again. I really hate the idea of measuring everything I eat because it reminds me that I’m being restricted, and that 5:2 isn’t much different than the “Eat Half of Everything” diet plans of millions of conventional diets which had all failed me in the past.

I was still stuck, despite that I am doing 4:3 and eating zero calories on my fast days, and that’s really frustrating. I don’t want to count calories, and I found it very unfair that I lost 11 lbs in the very first week, and ever since then it’s been very little until Week 6, where my body seemed to be telling me, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to shed so much as another single ounce!”

So I thought about what had changed. Was I really eating more? Not really. Was I loading up on sweets? No, if anything I’d cut back.

Was I still exercising? No. It felt too cold. I was getting muscle cramps from the temperature differences.

So, I went back to increasing the amount of exercise from “sedentary” to “very active”. I went from no exercise to walking 8-10 km per day. It wasn’t hard to do, because I’d been walking those distances off and on some time now, and walking didn’t really do as much for my weight problem as it did to reduce my blood pressure. (Yeah! I don’t have to take meds for blood pressure!)

Lo, and behold in Week 7 I lost another kilo. Total weight loss after 7 Weeks of 4:3, with no (or less than 100 kcal) intake on fast days: 10 kilos (22 lbs) weight loss. BMI from 36.3 to 33.2.

@angie090465 – Thanks for the flowers. 🙂

@newbiefaster78 – I keep my measurements – hips, waist, breast, bicep, calf, thigh, belly and neck. As long as I keep losing volume I don’t get that frusted at that zero loss week. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if it’s a “body survival strategy”. You know… where your body instinctively clings to every fat cell to slow down the “starvation” process, until it “gives up and surrenders the fat”.

Under the FAQ they recommend that you “fast every other day” if your body “goes on strike” to help make your metabolism “make the right decision”.

Under FAQ here on this website:

“If you want to lose weight faster, or have hit a plateau with the 4:3 Fast, then you might consider doing Alternate Day Fasting. As the name implies, with ADF you cut your calories to ¼ of their normal level (ie 500 for women, 600 for men), every other day. On your non-fast days you eat normally, though in some trials of ADF the volunteers were allowed to eat what they wanted and still lost weight. Studies on people doing ADF have shown that, on average, they tend to lose around 2lbs a week, most of it fat.”

I simply slacked off on exercise, and now I picked it up again. That let me “win” another kilo in Week 7