Hi Natasha
Congrats on your first week! 🙂

My understanding is that on non-fast days (it might be better not to call them feast days!!) you eat ‘normally’ – ie, around your TDEE – and you can include in that whatever types of food you would normally eat to maintain a steady weight. However, for many on 5:2, over time, there does seem to be a reduction in desire to eat the less healthy foods.

I wonder if starting with 4:3 is a bit too drastic and perhaps caused you to give into temptation? I would really suggest that you just do 5:2 for a while – at least 6 weeks – and see how that goes re weight/ cm loss. You can move to 4:3 if you get stuck on a plateau for a while. However, I found that 5:2 is a LOT easier to cope with than 4:3 – I don’t feel anywhere near as ‘deprived’ with only 2 fast days, and thus less likely to overeat other days. I didn’t try 4:3 til after over 6 months on 5:2, and I have decided it is not for me.

This Way of Eating is not about fast weight loss, but about long term sustainable weight loss. Average loss of a pound a week, or a bit less, is all that is expected. If you push yourself too hard, you may have trouble sticking with it…

It is all about finding an eating regime that will work for you from now on forever! Best wishes for finding that! 🙂
Sassy 😀

Hi Natasha

General thinking is that you eat just below your TDEE on normal days.

I know the book doesn’t say this and it perhaps gives the impression that you can eat all the ‘bad’ things and then ‘cure’ this by fasting. But you have to be sensible – let’s be honest it was bad habits that brought us all to needing to lose weight in the first place.

If you think about this …

let’s say your TDEE is 1500 cals (a nice round figure)- your weekly TDEE intake without fasting would be 10500 cals

With 2 days fasting it would make your weekly total (5 x 1500) + (2 x 500) = 8500 for the week.

If you exceed your TDEE on normal days by even 500 cals, your total for the week will be 11000. This completely negates the fasting days.

I am one of these people who calorie count on normal days because it suits me to do this, but not everyone does. You do what works for you.

You say you ‘ feel somewhat deprived when I cant have some of the things I love.’ Why can’t you have these things, in moderation, on your normal days? OK, chocolate is not what you should be wasting your cals on, on a fast day. But you can have a couple of squares the next day and it’s something to look forward to.

I agree with all that Sassy says, start with 5:2 with the ‘2’ on non consecutive days – I do Monday and Thursday but I can change these if I need to. Do this for 6 weeks or so until you get into the routine. Make sure you plan ahead and have everything you will eat on fast days ready the day before. Having to root around for something to eat too often leads to eating something high cal because that’s all there is.

Also, my opinion is that weighing at the end of a fast is not a guide to what you are losing, it’s a false figure. You should be looking at a weekly loss of 1-2lbs. Some people like to weigh daily and again it’s what works for you.

Go on to 5:2 and give it few weeks. Hang on in there. x

Hi Natasha! I am really glad you have posted this, as I find myself exactly in the same situation. I am doing the 5:2 instead and found that on a Sunday, expecting that the day after I will be fasting I tend to overindulge on cookies or goodies that otherwise would not be in the house “so that tomorrow they will not be here and I will not have the temptation”.
I am on my second week, so I cannot say whether this is going to change over time or not. One thing I can tell works to keep me satisfied is keep my house full of all the normal things I would have before 5:2 (fruit-veg-lean protein-whole grains) but cooking those in a “less heatlhy way” on the 5 days, and super clean on the 2 days fast. I have also noticed that on non fasting days I tend to be very inspired by cooking interesting meals, maybe because for 2 days I dont really have to think about food or to prepare anything complicated. Maybe you should try this too, give in your temptation but make it yourself! it will take you so much more time to make burgers from scratch than pop in at mcdonald’s if thats what you like and will definitely satisfy you more by taste and nutritional value. hope this helps!

I think if you stick with it your appetite will diminish a bit overall. I think the stomach does shrink a bit and you just can’t fit as much in. Also, in the book he says don’t try to gorge in a bid to make up for lost time and he says eat till your satiated not busting. He says, it’s not a cycle of bingeing and starving….see pages 106-107 in the book. Just for clarification, I am just starting so I am by no means an expert, however I have lost weight in the past by eating as little as possible for as long as possible till I couldn’t stand it any more, then I would binge. Over time, I just couldn’t eat as much. This approach is so much better and I think it is something I cans stick to.
Jen

Heya Natasha! I think what they mean with “you can have it tomorrow” is like people already said, having it with moderation. So don’t eat an entire cheesecake, just have a slice. I know that’s tough, but it’s better than not being able to eat them at all right?

5:2 is a good sustainable way of eating where you can still eat most of the things you like, but not without limits. And it’s a whole lot better than most other diets out there (it’s a lifestyle change) but it’s no magic sadly 🙁

Oh yeah and I call them ‘low’ and ‘normal’ days ^^