Day 24 – USA – NFD

Did pretty well on FD yesterday – had my perfunctory apple for regularity mid-day then a small salad supper. I also tried a mock-grilled cheese sandwich with the bread made from cauliflower rice held together with egg shaped in the fry pan and cooked (browned) like bread then add cheese. I was slightly over 500 calories, but that ‘sandwich’ really filled me up for a better night’s sleep. But as always, I was cold all day so glad I didn’t have too much to do – drank hot liquids all day.

I read up about Kefir after reading the new Dr. Moseley article. I will be curious to see how @coda and @debster do with it. I have always loved milk anyway (cheese, all kinds, too). I live right next to a dairy farm so probably could beg off some raw milk along the way.

Apple Cider Vinegar: interesting discussion. My Silver Sneakers exercise teacher has suggested it with Turmeric added, and honey if you wish. I tried it once and had to gag my way through it. Must be an acquired taste! I might go back and give it a couple more shots as she suggested at night.

@strawberriesandcream – let me join the others with my kudos on the admittance of your alcohol use. Everyone knows how difficult stopping can be, but it sure sounds like you’ve got a good grip on what you and your OH need to do.
@fatrabbit – YEAH for you eating salads! I can’t imagine being a vegetarian and not enjoying them, so good for you!
@scs – there is such joy in purging one’s closet and bagging up clothes for those less fortunate! When I did my charitable contributions for taxes, I saw 4 slips from Goodwill all of too big clothes this fall and winter. Feels good getting rid of things, and, well, also buying new ones.
@debster – your travels sound most interesting! A caravan would be marvelous, but the places we still want to go might not help: The Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Iceland, and more. 🙂
@metatauta – I was so excited to be able to get into a dressy royal blue silk dress that had been hanging in my closet for decades and wear it to a concert until those massive shoulder pads hit my body. Whew. 80’s indeed. It went to the costume pile!

Onward and downward!

@coda – mine is due to arrive about next Thursday, so watch this space. My friend offered to get me some from a friend, but that might never happen so I ordered it! I’ve used it before but I think I was too quick to dismiss it!
@ SongBirdMe NY in March with some girlfriends – first trip to USA and long overdue.
Perhaps New England in the fall later in the year. Cambodia and Vietnam are on the list too along with your wish list! The caravan won’t go that far I fear. We use the van for weekends and the occasional week/10days in Ireland and England, although the ferry across the Irish Sea is dear.
Turmeric is the latest idea for reducing inflammation. Tried it in milk as a ‘coffee’ but not so keen. Am learning to like apple cider vinegar. If you start with a teaspoon in a pint of water and increase the amount, it gets better.
@allsmiles well done you for braking that boundary – those are so important for our self esteem. When I get near to one, I tend to self sabotage 🙁 Keep strong everyone

Day 24: Fasting in Gloucestershire, UK:
Feeling strong.
Good luck today’s other fasters.
@coda thanks for the link to the next challenge….it works fine.

Day 24 Ireland FD

Day 23, Dunsborough, West Aust FD
Day 24, NFD
Day 25, NFD

2nd post

Answering some posts in the March challenge, then started setting up a spreadsheet ready for 1st March completely distracted me from any thought of food so I did manage to do my water/cups of tea with a dash of skimmed milk FD today as a result……YES!!! Last cup of hot water then bed to read for while before a good night’s sleep I hope

There seems to have been a few of us doing FDs today – Hope we all stayed strong and make it to the end of our day wherever we are in the world – @ciren2, @coda, @bert1802, @fatrabbit, @jojo58, @jarbia, @lynzm, @lany36, @elektron, @dykask

Goodnight all – hope the scales are kind tomorrow!!!!!

Second Post:

@jojo58 – I’ll join you for the Hula Hoop exercises. I’ve not done this since I was at junior school so I’m not sure I can still do it, but I will buy one and try. I want to tone up my stomach. What a great idea 🙂

@scs – what is ACV? And what does w/a mean in ‘w/a piece of cheese’? Thank you 🙂

Have a lovely weekend everyone! xoxo

@goldensun acv: apple cider vinegar

Day 25 NFD NZ
I’ll look for March link shortly.
I’m in this for life and love the companionship of the monthly challenge.
I’m at the gym getting another fasted workout in before I break yesterday’s fast at about 40hours when I get home.
I suspect I’ve become fat adapted quite well, I have possibly an easier training session now when I’m fasting compared to when I’m in a fed state.
Interestingly I was reading an email from the team at Auckland University who are pioneering lchf in New Zealand and the professor was talking about his personal 10day challenge to get himself back into nutritional ketosis after Christmas.
One of the ways he unscientificly measures when he is in ketosis is by holding his breath. When he’s burning carbs he has a substantially shorter breath hold time.
From a scientific view point I guess it makes perfect sense, we can’t utilise fat for fuel in the presence of Oxygen, which is part of the reason people mistakenly avoid higher intensity exercise when trying to lose fat thinking it needs to stay below their threshold to stay burning fat. (Forgetting about metabolic boost from HIIT and energy expended in recovery repaying oxygen debt and oxygen deficit during cellular repair and returning to homeostatic state etc etc).
So maybe it’s a quick and easy trick some of us could try when we wonder how our fast is going, have we pushed into a low enough insulin state to be fat burners?
As a fully unscientific exercise I still think it sounds interesting…and cheaper than keto strips!!

Day 24 | FD | Bucks UK

Day 25 FD country West Australia
Well it’s going to be about 40°C today so will need to be careful outside.
Might work in the garden in a woollen jumper to drop a few calories- just kidding. Too much office work awaits.
I’m suspecting a lag effect with weight loss in my case. When I think the scales will be down they are up and vice versa.
Official weekly weigh this morning and those same pesky 400 calories which were absent yesterday appeared again today with 100 friends!
The past 4 weeks I have lost only 500 gms despite eating to or under TDEE on most days and doing some strict FDs once or twice weekly.
At a bit of an impasse weight wise but have already signed up for March and the hula hoop at the ready.
@strawberriesandcream, with all the others I think you are amazingly honest and it is humbling to know that you trust our group so much as to share your story. Hope it goes well with you both. One step at a time – rather like this WOL really. You will certainly have a lot of supporters here.
@lynz thanks for being chief ‘cat herder’ for February, it was a big herd! Well done and much appreciated.
@allsmiles, like you I LOVE food and have no plans not to enjoy it, going to restaurants, entertaining, trying new recipes etc.
My DH and I have always eaten reasonably healthily, including Mediterranean ( I worked in Fremantle for some years where there were a lot of Italians who introduced me to their style of eating,cooking with EVOO etc long before it became ‘ fashionable’. )
Nevertheless too much of any food does not have good consequences. And obviously I have made a lot of poor food choices over the years. Cheesecake is not the best choice for one’s favourite dessert!
Buffets also were not good as I enjoyed tasting all the different culinary delights on offer.
I have no desire to try keffir, I plan to include some carbs in my diet, continue to enjoy quite milky coffee and have the odd glass of vino.
Anything else as a sustainable WOL, for me, wouldn’t be sustainable.
So I have to cope with not losing weight as fast as others – everyone’s path is different – and enjoy the other benefits of 5:2 with a tweak here and there.
Off to have another glass of water, another cup of tea and then do some officework😆

Day 25 Melbourne NFD
Darn, can’t shake this head cold and it’s now in phase 3: runny eyes/nose, sneezing, little voice, and feeling like a little piece of poop. Haven’t had one for a couple of years, nevertheless OH is still in the doghouse for giving it to me.

Hey Lilymartin, I’m intrigued by kefir. Prompted by todays Good Weekend (Saturday newspaper mag) and an article about, well, guts, really. A German woman, Giulia Enders, has written a book ‘Gut: The inside story of our body’s most underrated organ’. Turns out it might be responsible for all sorts of things, including mood. I went in to Google Scholar to look up what the research about probiotics is and it all seems to be heading in the same direction, which is that it is extremely good for our guts/us.

Luckily I love ginger, and my mum used to make her own ginger beer, so ginger kefir sounds quite attractive to me. I have just called my local health food store and they have promised to ring me when they get their next batch of water kefir grains. I will also have a crack at kimchi, eventually. I have tried a couple of different versions and one of them I enjoyed, so it’s about time I gave it a red hot go, I think.

@strawberriesandcream just want to add my congrats and warm wishes to all the others, well done You!

@biddiev
I agree that gut health is important, as is digestion for good health. Inflammation also plays a part. I think the way our parents and grandparents ate and lived would be a good model for some of us to follow in many respects. Science is validating some of what our forebears did out of necessity – eg their own vegetable gardens, making food from scratch with raw ingredients which hadn’t travelled many food miles, drinking only on special occasions, no soft drinks, treats rarely etc.
I use a lot of garlic, ginger, chilli, turmeric in my cooking. I also cooked with chickpea, rice, wholemeal and white flour. I don’t use palm or coconut oil as I read somewhere that some poorer countries are cutting down natural habitat to plant plantations of palms and coconuts and it is very very bad for some critically endangered species.
Gut flora has been in the news for a while now ( will try to get a copy of the article you mentioned).
Will gladly indulge in some ginger and soda water. Have been trying different teas and drinks courtesy of the children – Macha and a few others can’t remember the names of. There are a lot of cafes springing up in WA with all manner of good for the health trendy foods ATM.
Keffir just sounds too awful to me😶but I really admire those who are drinking it and guessing the benefits will be worth it.

Gut health is interesting and unlike a lot of weight related things there doesn’t seem to be so much conflicting information. Just overall the information is sparse.

In Japan there are a lot of fermented foods. Some like natto seem to require a bad sense of smell and probably poor vision wouldn’t hurt either. Others like the pickled vegetables are yummy, crunchy but very salty. There are also variations in-between, more like kimchi without the spice. There are also things like pickled plums which were actually consumed in the past to combat stomach problems. Still I don’t have any desire to try kefir. Call me chicken.

@lilymartin you definitely eat healthily, you must have a healthy gut with those foods! I love them too. And yes, heartily agree that eating like our grandparents is generally good – real food.

@dykask I think it has taken me awhile to get to a point of thinking I might try kefir. It was the water version that swayed me, esp with ginger as flavouring. My sticking point has been Yakult, for some reason. Even though I like yoghurt, I can’t bring myself to try it.

Day 25 UK NFD

successful fast day yesterday, I didn’t have as much trouble making it through until all the animals were tucked away to haave my 500 cals despite not finishing until after six. Partly because I was totally shattered. It has been a hectic week and sawing through branches is as good a dose of HIT as can be devised. I certainly got my exercise yesterday, and on top of a days work not instead, although I only did a bit. Cal and her chain saw and loppers did the bulk of it. The rabbits have their runs back but there is still an enormous pile of tree hanging dangerously over the steps supported by the apple tree, a spindly willow, a stray ash and some hawthorns. The heap keeps groaning and settling. But at least it is clear of the fence. I am not going to let any of the volunteers near it until it is resting on the ground. It is going to be quite windy today so it might get there today.

I would like to try kefir. I have seen the results of using pre and pro biotics in the animals. One of our regular expenditures is for tubes of fibreplex. It is far too expensive for what it is, but it works so I bite the bullet. I find even occasional doses have large effects. Giving an animal that looks off colour a squirt is my first action and more often than not is all that is needed. Our overall vet bills have significantly reduced since I started using it routinely. I am also very strict about feeding a good diet, no inappropriate treats (and everything marketed as a treat is inappropriate, the human food industry is bad, but the one for animals is far worse). But they don’t have a choice in the matter. Most animals give in and let me do what I want as soon as I lay hands on them as they can feel how confident I am. I am firm, but that makes them feel safe. I don’t give in because they wriggle or kick or try to bite. I know exactly how to hold them without hurting them. But making myself drink something I am leery about. That just isn’t going to happen. I am very particular about what I eat, and kefir sounds like something my head willnwant but my body will turn my nose up at. Like all the strange plants I bought when I went on my forest garden kick and couldn’t make myself eat.

I would also like tontry hula hooping but I can’t see myself actually doing it. For one thing there is no room in the house, my mum is a bit of a hoarder and there is twice as much furniture as there is actually room for, and doing it in the barn would upset the animals even more than my mad dancing does and I would have to explain it to the volunteers which I am not really brave enough to do. So I might do some pretend hula hooping to join you in spirit as it were.

Day 25 – NFD – Canada
@strawberriesandcream – thank you for sharing, making the decision you have and living this WOL are sure to lead to a higher quality and, hopefully, quantity, of life.

@allsmiles, I do feel a little depressed at the lack of foodie options/joy but am trying to will myself to redirect my cravings. It isn’t quite the same though is it? The whole 10 veg thing is going to make planning for feeding the kids much more intense.

@fatrabbit, that is such a cool insight that you turn first to pre and pro biotics on your farm. i’d just made up my mind after reading that last shared Mosley article to make my own sauerkraut. I feel I might do that more easily than water kefir which I am afraid of messing up.

Did anyone watch Mosley’s new series ‘The secrets of your food’ last night on the BBC? I started it before falling asleep. Looks interesting. I’m curious to know if he still does 6:1?

Gut health. Prebiotics and what to eat.
https://epigeneticlabs.com/best-prebiotic-foods/?doing_wp_cron=1487899498.3771030902862548828125

Day 25 / Sweden / NFD

Still going down but not as quick as I would like.

I think that is a major problem of modern society. We want it easy and quick. Hungry? Here’s an easy and quick solution. Social unrest? We demand easy and quick solutions. Financial problems? Give me an easy and quick solution. And when those solutions don’t work in the long term, we look for other easy and quick solutions.

I hope to reach my goal in another 6 to 8 months but that should not / must not be the end of fasting for me. Today, the only reason I am doing 5:2 is for the health benefits of weight-loss. I want to get my BMI below 25. When I get closer to my goal, I will take the time to familiarise myself with the other health benefits of fasting.

Sorry for the rant. I’m mostly trying to remind/convince myself that this is for life.

Take care and cheerio!

Day 25 Sunshine Coast Qld Australia NFD

Yesterday turned into a very sad day. One of our dogs, Andy, had surgery on Monday for a blocked anal gland. He continued to have major probs with defaecation. He kept walking around the yard straining to poo with no good result. Took him to the vet on Tuesday night. Gave him coloxyl and senna for 3 days and continued antibiotics. Then yesterday, I couldn’t bear to see him straining with no result so took him back to the vet. They decided to cut the lump out, but when they had him anaesthetised, they found further lumps up the rectum and said he had an adenocarcinoma. They rang me while he was under anaesthetic and suggested he be put to sleep permanently. They said there was nothing that could be done for him. So that is what happened. I went and collected him and brought him home. I was by myself, dug his grave which was quite a task in the hot sun and dry heavy clay. It took me about an hour and a half. Then I buried the poor old chap. He was 13 plus years and we took him on as a re-homed dog when he was 12. He was the loveliest fellow with the nicest nature. Our other dog, also a re-homed cavoodle, was very jealous of him, always trying to but him out of the way if someone was going to pat Andy. Molly is 2 years and one month old. Hopefully she will settle down now into a nicer dog now that there is no competition for affection.

I cooked a pizza today keto-style. the base was made of egg and cheese, and the topping was tomato, cheese, pepperoni. olives and some feta over the top. It was yummy and the base was surprisingly stiff enough to be able to hold the pizza in one’s hand. But then I went and screwed up later by having a Peter’s drumstick +++. 🎼When will I ever learn, when will I ever learn.🎶??

Day 25…… Florida….. NFD

So, it’s Sat., I couldn’t be happier. Today, is my sixth day of work only 1/2 day, then two glourios days off! Working six days a week is tough but the benefits are good. Hubby and I have date day every Monday I’m off. It is nice to have fun and to pretend we’re just boyfriend and girlfriend again.

Oh and Wholly Mhooly, the other reason, I could not be happier! I’m down 3 lbs! 3 whole freakin pounds. That’s 146lbs. 19lbs since my first challenge in Nov.

If I didn’t have to get ready for work, I’d put my dancing shoes on and go dancing in the streets!

Okay, well I’m off to get ready for work!

Cheerio!

Day 25|CD|Toronto
Weekend did not start off nutritionally “pure” yesterday due to a potato chip craving I totally embraced. Challenging few days ahead as I cope with a personal issue and write a final project paper I procrastinated about; my carb and salt cravings may be related.
FYI: Interesting and somewhat disturbing report released here yesterday about what’s in a fast food chicken sandwich; DNA test shows Subway sandwiches could contain just 50% chicken
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-chicken-fast-food-1.3993967
I wonder what is in some of the hamburgers!
Earlier the following was also an eye opener about so called “healthy” fast food alternatives.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/mcdonalds-kale-calorie-questions-1.3423938
I try to avoid all fast food outlets but we live in a world where good options are not always available, or affordable, for many.

Day 25 Maine NFD

Good morning all! Pretty decent NFD yesterday – stayed below TDEE. Very busy – deep into trip foreplay – today will load car & off first thing tomorrow a.m. Have put out very healthy snacks – 100 calorie pack almonds, apples & a case of water – for the trip. Will try to keep to 16:8 as was suggested. And, for the first time in the 6 yrs we’ve done this month away, I’m packing the scale!!

@Fuvie – I’m so sorry about the loss of your beloved Andy. So sad – these sweet little souls just capture our hearts….and live there forever. I’m happy you have Molly who I’m sure will thrive in the undivided attention.

@allsmiles – I’ve been thinking about your post – I think I went through that feeling last summer when my husband came down w/acute pancreatitis. All of a sudden, the fun went out of eating & drinking. I didn’t let on to him, but felt this meant the end of partying. That lasted a few weeks, but then I started to look at it a different way….we had a trip to New Orleans, a visit w/my son in Austin, Tx & a stop in San Antonio planned…all foodie & big party cities. Well, we had a blast – I only had a couple of drinks – had to drink on Boubon St in New Orleans – & we sampled different foods – but didn’t overdo the rich ones. Of course, I gained a little weight. But, if I had been on 5/2 – probably would have managed to remain the same – with a little planning. I think that’s the beauty of this WOL. If you plan, you can do it all. Plus, remember – you really only taste & savor the first 2 bites!

@lynz – I, too, thank you for all your efforts this month.

@bert1802 – mind if I ask what type of work you do? I love your posts – so real – & congrats on your weight loss. My hubby & I do date nights also – even tho’ we’re attached at the hip – I love our special dates.

Make it a great day everybody!

Hi all day 25 UK nfd

Did well yesterday up until after my planned dinner of garlic prawns with roasted vegetables. Then I was just not satisfied and looking in kitchen cupboards. Forgot my own advice lol – want it earn it, oh dear!

@fuvvie so so sorry on the loss of a much loved friend. They give unconditional love and it is heartbreaking when you have to say goodbye. Are you familiar with the poem rainbow bridge? I’ll try and find a link when I return home. You gave Andy a loving home when he needed it, more than some get. So think of the good times and you never know in time, if Molly is missing him there may be another rescue dog just perfect to help Molly and the rest of the family. x

Day 25 – USA – FD
Second post – Bert1802 and SCS, my OH and I also have a date lunch each time our doggie gets groomed…lol…you would think we haven’t seen each other in such a long time…we spend all day and night together, but somehow those date lunches are special!