Hey Suzie,

Well I just started today, on 5/20, so I am 24 hours behind you. I had some success with this a few years ago so I know I can do it…. you can too.

What I found was keeping it simple on fast days was the best for me. I gave myself 600 calories and then found an easy way to stay at that level or below. For me that meant 0 calorie coffee for breakfast. 150 calorie yogurt for lunch around 2pm, and then a 450 calorie dinner which usually was scrambled eggs with a little cheese and veggies or a simple salad kit. That and drinking a lot of water. The fast days weren’t that fun at first, but I got used to them. The worst was always the 4-6:30pm window.

But here was the amazing thing… my non-fast days became different all on their own. I thought I would susceptible to binging, but it was the opposite. I found myself feeling satiated faster. I actually ate less often, healthier, and with a reduced amount of calories than before the 5:2 plan and felt pretty good… and it just happened all on its own.

So good luck to you, and to myself. I hope to get a week or two adjusted and then I need to add in a good exersize plan.

Alex

The approach that has worked me has been:-

1) Weigh every day so you get used to the idea your weight will go up and down all the time – the general direction is what matters.

2) Remember it’s a marathon not a sprint. Some people have hugely unrealistic expectations of how quickly they can healthily lose weight. About 1.5 lbs per week on average was what I did.

3) If you have a goal weight set yourself a few targets on the way to it so you get a sense of achievement as the earlier ones are achieved.

4) Stick with it. Your appetite on non-fast days should naturally reduce too, but if you just stop its so easy to slip back to the old habits which helped you gain the weight in the first place. Make it your way of life. With the exception of holidays I’ve now stuck with it for over 6 years.

5) Find what works for you and keep it as simple as possible.

Hope this helps.

Mr. Data

Hi Kari and Mr. Data, nice to meet you both. I love the tips, but I will share with you a different perspective on #1. I would argue that its better not to weigh yourself daily and to do it weekly at the most. I say this because, as Mr. Data says, your weight will fluctuate daily, especially after a fast day and indeed it is the overall trend you care about, which is much easier to see at 1 week intervals.

Remember, the fast day works because it messes with your metabolism and sends you into ketosis. The body’s response to ketosis is to prevent ketones and this in addition to burning fat stores, you will also urinate like crazy. So despite drinking a lot of water, you are going to lose a lot of water weight. I can lose 2+ pounds on a fast day, but its water, not fat. As you come out of ketosis on the non-fasting days, you tend to re-balance your normal hydration and can get a truer sense of weight.

I weigh myself on Monday mornings. I typically fast Mondays and Thursdays so I find Monday morning to be a good predictor of non-dehydrated weight level AND it helps keep in line on the weekends should I be tempted to go nuts.

Now, if anyone knows a way to get motivated to exercise more, please let me know.

Best of luck to everyone!

Hi Again,

I don’t usually keep contributing to the same forums. When I add my latest measurements to this website’s tracker from my own Excel sheet I tend to check who has created a new post without getting a reply from anyone else, and if I feel I can usefully reply I do.

I don’t really know anything about ketosis but I did think it took 2 or more days of fasting to exhaust the gluten stores in the body. If that’s true I don’t think just one fast day on 600 calories would put your body into ketosis.

A review of 17 separate studies have shown that regular weighing, anything from daily to weekly, is generally associated with more weight loss and not with negative psychological outcomes. Whether you do it daily or weekly is very much a personal choice. Although I weigh daily I only do my tracking on this website once a week (Sundays in my case) and I know when I first started that despite following the same regime all the time, in my weeks 6, 13, 17 and 25 I would have seen a weight gain over the previous week instead of a weight loss. That early on in doing 5:2 I imagine I would have found that quite dispiriting if I hadn’t known that during all those weeks I had also seen some daily losses. Week 29 would also have been particularly depressing as I put on 1.7kg on my week-to-week measurements – yet 5 weeks later I hit my lowest weight. With a weekly weighing there are bound to be some occasions when the timing will coincide with a heavier day – particularly when you get into maintenance mode. However the key thing is to do whatever works for you. I happen to like numbers – hence daily recording appeals to me psychologically.

Very best of luck with it.