Hi, Anissa – I’m not sure I’ve got it clear in my head what your pattern has been to date and I wondered if you could say a bit more to clarify things. From the sound of it, you work full-time, leaving home early, to start work at 7.30am each day; you normally have some lunch at work and then you get home in time to eat around 7pm. (Do please correct me if any of this is wrong.) Is your work schedule constant, for five days in a row with two consecutive days off, for example, or does it change, according to shift-patterns maybe?
On your fasting days – usually Mondays and Thursdays – you say you have been choosing to skip breakfast and have a light lunch at 1pm and then you eat again around 7pm. So, on that basis, taking fasting day Monday as an example: your first fasting period actually starts from the time you last ate on the night before (Sunday) and includes all your sleeping hours, until the time you next eat on the Monday. If that period is from dinner at, say, 7pm Sunday until lunchtime 1pm on Monday, then you will have already done one substantial fast of 18 hours.
There has not yet been enough research done on humans to categorically say, so far, what the optimum period of fasting is but, as I understand it, health benefits should be gained if one fasts for at least 12-14 hours. (I feel I’m on shaky ground here but I believe that 10-12 hours is the time it takes for the body to clear one’s store of glucogen fuel from the previous meal, so that fat stores can then start to be drawn upon in activity and the body has also had a break from producing hormones like insulin to cope with food metabolism and has had a chance to go into ‘repair mode’ instead, thus keeping one healthier.)
The pattern most recommended, to get a second effective fast fitted in to your fast day, is to eat a light meal at, say, 7pm on Monday (using up the last one’s fast-day allowance of 500cals) and then not eat anything else until breakfast at, say, 7am on Tuesday, a non-fast day, when ordinary meals are eaten throughout the day – that’s another fast period of 12 hours. This pattern is often described as Sleep-Fast-Sleep and actually covers a total period of 36 hours rather than 24, because it includes two nighttime sleeps.
Your timing seems OK, if I’ve read it right, so something else needs looking into. There could be lots of reasons why you have not seen any weight-loss and I suggest you read around the various topics to find other people’s experiences and advice. One difficulty can be that it’s very easy to under-estimate one’s total weekly intake, especially if one relies on calorie-dense foods – the phrase used for non-fast days is ‘eat whatever you like’ although, in truth, that refers to the unlimited range of foods rather than their unlimited quantities. Also, many people using the 5:2 approach find their weight-loss is slower than average because they have some underlying health issue, such as an under-active thyroid or diabetes.
I really feel for you, after trying for a few months now, but I hope that you can find the time in your busy life to do more research on the site and discover some appropriate solutions. I wish you every success.