Hi Karen, do you find the fast days easy or difficult? If you find it easy to fit in your life you could try alternate day fasting.

Or think about incorporating some fitness to get rid of the extra 200 cal?

I think that’s what is stopping me losing any further weight, I have no problems on fasting day but apply no brakes on the other days. I don’t want to be thinking about ‘dieting’ – that’s most of the attraction of this lifestyle.

leevee –

Somehow we need to get over the idea we can ever eat all we want. If you have truly lost touch with what your body needs (as I have), caloric restrictions are the name of the game for the rest of my life.

Leevee:

I am pretty sure that the weather will improve in a couple of months — it typically does. Then you can do other things other than be trapped in your house. I live in the US in Texas and we do have some warmer days with the flowers budding and trees starting to leaf out.

At least you are not gaining.

Karen, I’ve had this problem as well…which has been discouraging because I don’t have that much weight to lose. However, here’s what I’m experimenting with now: keeping my same 5:2 days but fasting dinner on about 3 of those 5 normal eating days. I actually discovered the 5:2 because I started fasting dinner on nights I had evening tennis matches & I didn’t like a full stomach while playing. No matter what I was eating during the day (keep in mind though I’m a vegetarian, healthy eater, & workout at least 5 days a week) I was still losing weight simply by fasting dinner. So I Googled fasting & found the book & this website. Anyway, I switched to the 5:2 & lost a few pounds…then gained it back over the holidays. Oh my! Anyway, I think I had somewhat better results just fasting dinner…but I’m now going to try a combination in hopes that it helps jump start my weight loss!

Hi Karen, am just starting out too, just going into my 3rd week, have always been a binger, am like you in that I do overeat on non-fasting days too…

trying to not be hard on myself for it though, the overeating has always acted as some kind of self-comfort, if I add guilt to the equation it becomes a lot worse.

Decided that being patient with myself is the way to go…not going to be able to just put an immediate halt to a lifelong habit…this week on normal days I scoffed a load of chocolate brownies that were at work and generally attempting to sabotage any good work I might be doing by fasting…

Saying that I’m pretty confident that it’s going in the right direction, lost a little bit of weight but best of all I’ve had to go down a notch in my belt and my jeans are looser.

I think somewhere in some of us there is a horrible little gremlin who wants us to fail, the way I ate on Monday after a fasting day made that quite obvious to me…not going to throw in the towel and let it win though..

Don’t be too worried about not losing a big chunk of weight on your first week…I’ve only lost about 3lbs in 2 weeks, but I can really see a difference already!

I think you are spot-on LainyLain about not being hard on yourself and adding to the guilt. That’s the problem with most diets. I ask myself before I eat treats and extras on non-fast days; would I have eaten that before 5:2. Even if it’s chocolate brownies, if the answer is yes, then I tuck in. But I do try not to get out of control.