I must be the plateau queen. I got stuck on one for 5 months, despite doing everything right – 90% of the time, at least.

So 2 weeks really is nothing to worry about. And it might not be fair to assume that someone who isn’t losing as quickly as expected is doing something wrong.

For me, the weight started to come off again when I suddenly discovered that lunchtime carbs, e.g. a sandwich, panini, ciabatta or whatever, on non-fast days made me feel sick and bloated. Lunch every day, fast day or not, now consists of the sandwich filling only, i.e. lean protein and green leaves and slowly but surely the scales are showing a more positive result.

Hi pattience,

I do know for a fact that despite having two diabetic parents my blood glucose has always been and continues to be in the low 5s, which I understand is normal, so that isn’t the problem. Certainly, no doctor has ever made an issue of it.

I have regular medication reviews every 6 months. Since starting on 5:2, my BP and cholesterol readings have gone down to acceptable levels, in the case of BP it has sometimes been on the low side of normal. I’m on 2 minimum dose BP medications – I’m of an age when the medical profession seems to think I should be stuffed with pills whether I need them or not – and off the statins. And the quack is most impressed. So was I when on her clapped up old scales I weighed 2 kilos less, fully clad, than on my own starkers. 🙂

Now that I have long since moved off the plateau and I am two-thirds of the way to my target weight, I’m no longer concerned. I simply wanted to encourage a fellow poster with a minor plateau problem. It’s just a case of hanging on in there.

Why create a problem if none exists? I tend to keep away from the surgery as much as possible. All consultations, which are always about no more than medication reviews, are done by phone and I’m reluctant to pathologise a symptom – if you can call slowness in losing weight a symptom – when it’s simply a matter of being patient.

One last thing. I believe that those who have previously been eating all the wrong sugary, fatty stuff have more spectacular success than those, including me, who generally ate healthily (but probably in too large quantities) before embarking on the Fast Diet. The very logistics of 5:2 lead to portion control, i.e. very restricted calorie intake on fast days and, after a relatively short spell of living with this WOE, on non-fast days I find I can no longer eat nearly as much as I once did without feeling decidedly unwell. So you are probably right to say I was probably deluded, as are many others, when it came to true calorie consumption.