Hi @kimhalliday welcome to 5:2 and well done on your first fast. The main thing on fast days it to try not to obsess about calories. What you think of as hunger is usually thirst and a cup of black coffee or a glass of water will sort them out.

As for when to eat on fast days, it’s a case of trying things to see what fits. Some people have 3 small meals – a fast from dinner the previous evening until breakfast (12 hours), some people have lunch and dinner (18 hour fast) and some, like me, do dinner until dinner (24 hour fast) and yet others wait until breakfast on their next fast day (36 hour fast). There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way. This way of eating should fit round you and your lifestyle, it shouldn’t take over your life. If you can’t fast on a planned day, no problem, do it another day. If you start fasting and then something happens to upset the plan…do it another day.

If what you’re doing today doesn’t work….do a different way next time.

I’m sure you get my drift 😀 Just relax..it gets easier as you go on and you wonder what you were worried about. It’s a very sustainable way of eating.

Good luck

xx

Hi, I’m new to the forums myself but have been doing the fast diet for 3 whole weeks and am on my 7th fast day today. I would split your cals into two meals or even see if you can go through to dinner without eating at all. I do it that way as I find that once I start eating I’m just starving all day so I find it better to save my cals for a substantial meal in the evening so I feel full going to bed and not too deprived. It is hard doing it this way but it gives you the maximum amount of ‘fasting time’ (eg nearly 24 hours without food) and as long as you keep yourself distracted and drink lots it’s bearable. My saviours are radishes, you can have 100g for just 12 cals and I just dip them in no cal hot sauce, helps me through my kids tea time 😉 Good luck 🙂

Hi Kim, I too prefer to eat nothing during the day and have all my cals at dinner time. I tried spreading them out during the day for the first week or so, which might help you for a start, but I found it easier to just drink water, herbal tea etc. It means I only have to work out my 500 cals once instead of having some and then having to calculate what I have left. It’s also too easy to have a few too many cals and then you have nothing or not as much as you would like left for later. Linda

Hi Kim, hope your fasting day is going well so far. It really is trial and error. If you’d prefer a larger evening meal then forget breakfast and have a 100 calorie meal (from the recipe book perhaps) at lunchtime. My first day I had a small breakfast of grilled mushrooms and tomatoes but found I was ravenous then. Now I try to just eat once a day on my fasting day so I consume nothing all day except 2 or 3 cups of tea/coffee with semi-skimmed and mineral water.

I prefer to wait and eat a more substantial evening meal at about 5pm so deducting the 50 calories for the milk in my tea means I can eat around 450 calories in the evening. Mostly on fast days I would have a cooked chicken breast or piece of salmon and a huge salad. For a change today I’ve had a Tesco “healthy living” Vegetable, chickpea and; lentil dahl ready meal (440 cals) it was delicious.

Occasionally I have had some soup at midday (cup-a-soup or homemade mushroom soup) usually out of boredom than real hunger (I work from home) but eating at lunchtime seems to make me hungrier and the afternoon drags as I am thinking about food more.